Storytellers 17 takes place in the historic African-American West Side of New Smyrna Beach. The project represents a partnership between Crealdé School of Art, a nonprofit community arts organization established in 1975 in Winter Park, and the Mary S. Harrell Black Heritage Museum, housed in the former St. Rita Colored Catholic Mission Church, built in 1899 in New Smyrna Beach. Until schools were integrated in the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando served the West Side with a church, one of the first school for black children in Volusia County and a health clinic.
Project creator and Crealdé Executive Director Peter Schreyer mentored and instructed the students in visual and narrative storytelling using traditional film-based photography. Students took field trips to Crealdé, where they learned how to process film and turn negatives into exhibition-quality photographs in the professional wet darkroom. The photographers also visited Crealdé’s Hannibal Square Heritage Center in west Winter Park, where they learned about the educational power of collecting oral histories and photographs within your own community. Storytellers XVII was unveiled in May 2017 and has been a traveling exhibition moving through Volusia County, including showings at Arts on Douglas and the Daytona Museum of Arts and Sciences.