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This October, Story District celebrates 25 years of putting storytelling centerstage. Over the past few decades, Story District has helped D.C. residents shape their stories into art, turning even the most casual anecdote into a moment worth remembering. I talked with Amy Saidman, artistic executive director of Story District, over Zoom about how the organization has changed and grown. Behind Saidman was a poster of two people jumping between high-rise buildings with the fitting words, “I did it for the story.” I’m struck — or maybe hyper-aware — by how often our conversation veers into storytelling. It’s like cultural currency;
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I share a piece of me, she shares a piece of her. We empathize by trading stories, building on what it means to feel the way we do, finding out someone else might understand. In D.C., where the population is vast, transient and multicultural, storytelling is even more necessary to building a shared community. “I’ve had people say to me it was Story District that gave them a place of belonging in D.C.,” Saidman says. “Hearing from other Washingtonians gave them a sense of where they fit into the bigger story.”