From Story Tour van,
this is your life!

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

From the moment she saw it, student Phelena Karikari wanted to know the story behind the graffiti-decorated 1988 Dodge Ram blasting beats outside Temple University last week.
"I was walking to class and saw this tripped-out van," said Karikari, 24, a Los Angeles, Calif., native who is going for her master’s degree in liberal arts. "It was pretty interesting."
An hour later, Karikari found herself in front of a video camera set up inside a smoothie shop while a crew hovered and recorded her life story.
The impromptu interview was part of the Story Tour, a month-long excursion bent on visiting 100 spots across the city to get 100 people to reveal their personal histories.
Organized by First Person Arts, a group that fosters memoir and documentary art forms, and advertising agency Red Tettemer, the event culminates with the sixth annual First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Arts, which begins its five-day run on Wednesday, Nov. 7.
The artistic potpourri — all events take place at 2111 Sansom St. — will include airings of documentary films, readings from First Person’s memoir-writing competition, art workshops, food samplings, book talks, poetry readings, tarot-card readings and photography exhibits.
Dani Louchheim, an account director at Red Tettemer who is spending the month with Story Tour, said the team chose the colorful, captivating story-van method because they wanted to do something "more innovative and engaging" to solicit people’s stories. It took five months to plan the mobile studio, which includes a computer and large printer for creating posters of the storytellers.
The Story Tour visits a few prearranged sites each week. People usually approach the van, though sometimes the crew identifies the minstrels, who come from all walks of life. A dozen or so interviews are conducted in various locations each week.
"People sort of gravitate and seem interested," said First Person founder Vicki Solot.
Once they’ve assessed their storyteller, the Story Tour crew takes the subject’s picture to include on a 2-by-3-foot color poster to be hung outside the business in which they were interviewed. They then film and ask questions of the subject for about 10 minutes. Afterward, the team spends about 45 minutes creating the poster, using the picture of the subject and an excerpt from the interview.
Through the lens, the viewer discovers that Karikari is a spoken-word artist and teacher who wants to conquer stereotypes about African-American women and show children how to find their inner voice.
"It’s music without the accompaniment of instruments . . . it’s something that’s spontaneous that just comes through you," she explains of her craft.
Then Karikari busts out into rhyme: "We can sip herbal libations. Come take a ride in my spaceship . . . ." Once printed, her poster shows her looking at items in an African shop while her spoken words dance across the page.
That element of life transformed into lyricism is part of what the Story Tour hopes to capture as it travels the city for tales.
"It’s amazing how open people are," said Louchheim. ••
Individuals can visit www.storytour.org to view bits of people’s stories and find out more about the program. To learn more about First Person Arts and the November festival, including the full schedule of events, visit www.firstpersonarts.org
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com