A general store in Questa, New Mexico, 1943. Photograph by John Collier, Jr.

The purpose of Voices of the Northern Rio Grande, is to encourage and celebrate connection to place, culture, history and each other through sharing and archiving lived experiences and stories. As a collection point for these stories we honor those that give them voice; sharing respectfully is important to us. We are creating an audio-visual story archive for North Central New Mexico, particularly for Questa, Cerro and surrounding communities, from Arroyo Hondo and Arroyo Seco to the South, to Costilla and Amalia to the North and just over the border into Colorado, Garcia, San Luis etc.

Taking inspiration from both traditional oral history and ethnographic approaches, as well as more informal events, conversations, the StoryCorps interview model, photography, video and the scanning of precious photographs and documents, the hope is to facilitate the recording and archiving as well as revitalization of local stories and traditions through meaningful conversations that link generations and encourage cross-pollination of ideas, perspectives, experiences and understandings.

Questa Quilters

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  • Gathering Memory: Sound, Object, Photo and Story, July 8, 2018, Questa VFW Hall

    The general public and community members, from the Questa area - La Lama to Amalia and beyond, were invited to a community workshop: Gathering Memory: Object, Photos, and Story, on Sunday, July 8, 2018, at the Questa VFW Hall. The event was organized and hosted through a partnership between Questa History Trail (a project of Questa Creative Council, QuestaCreative.org) and Questa Stories. Over 100 people attended the event. This is the collection of audio files and images of community members telling stories about the objects and photos they brought to share.

  • StoryBox Collection from Questa Stories

    The files in this collection/item set are stories gathered through the use of StoryBox, and our (QuestaStories.org) documentation of these story gathering events.

  • Women’s Tea: a story sharing afternoon in Questa, November 16, 2019

    On Saturday, Nov 16, 2019, Questa Stories hosted a “Women’s Tea: a story sharing afternoon” event from 2:00 - 4:00 PM at La Sala in Questa, NM. We collaborated with Esther Garcia as our event co-host; she is an active community member and former Mayor of Questa. (Although we had envisioned an event similar to this for some time, it was Esther who initiated it in this instance). Together, we selected a guest list that represented a variety of backgrounds and ages from within our community and created an appealing invitation. We then delivered them by hand, and by email and also made phone call invitations to women with this prompt: “tell a story about a moment, experience, or person that changed or shaped your life.” We introduced the gathering as part of Questa Stories and the Manitos Community Memory Gathering Project and explained the digital archive. Recording their stories was optional, but encouraged, and most women wanted to be recorded. We asked all present to sign release forms allowing us to record their voices, take their photo taken and for both to be uploaded to the digital archive and Questa Stories website (QuestaStories.org). The stories shared at the event were heartfelt and personal and united us as a group and also connected us to each other as individuals in a significant way. In some cases women in attendance were close friends, other acquaintances, and some met for the first time. This mix was intentional. We all left with a small but significant sense of connection to one another as a result of the gathering. One participant has since noted that since the event, when she has seen other women who were at the event in other contexts that she feels closer to them and gets the sense that they feel closer to her as well.

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