T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY — Storytelling artist and folklorist Kiran Singh Sirah, who is the recipient of the Arts + Culture Alliance’s 2025 Community Artist Grant, speaks at the Alliance building in Marshalltown on Tuesday afternoon.

“Your name is your story,” Kiran Singh Sirah, whose first name means “light from the sun” in Sanskrit, told a small group gathered at the Arts + Culture Alliance building on West Main Street Tuesday afternoon.

The recipient of the Alliance’s 2025 Community Artist Grant arrived in the community earlier this week and shared a bit of his own fascinating personal background — the son of parents of Indian descent who were expelled from Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda, he grew up in England, where he was attacked by neo-Nazis at the age of five. He has lived in a host of countries throughout his life — including the U.S. for the last 14 — and the newly-minted US citizen now calls Johnson City, Tenn. home. He’s even coined a catchphrase to go with it: Namaste, y’all.

What drives Sirah wherever he goes is the power of storytelling in whatever form it takes, from old-fashioned kitchen table and front porch conversations to the social media outlets preferred among the younger generations. He recounted helping to organize a storytelling festival six months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with individuals from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds and discussed his work in the Scottish city of Glasgow, which is starkly divided along Catholic/Protestant lines in a similar vein to Belfast.

Sirah eventually made his way to the U.S. to study folklore and, citing a fingerprint he noticed at a former plantation home in Durham, N.C. said his work is guided by a simple question: whose story hasn’t been told?

He later took on a leadership role with the International Storytelling Center and managed to arrange a story circle at the U.S. Capitol with former Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee). Another big project Sirah is already working on is a storytelling piece for the upcoming America250 celebration on the National Mall, which he hopes will feature something from Marshalltown.

As he wrapped up his own story, Sirah invited others in the room to share theirs and what stories of Marshalltown they would like to tell going forward. While he isn’t entirely sure how it will look, he is partnering with the Alliance to undertake a storytelling project with hopes to return in the fall and then hold a special community event this winter.

“My whole objective is to be beneficial to the people of Marshalltown. I love doing this work. I love working with communities. I gain the joy of listening to people’s stories,” he said. “I’m an immigrant to this country. I’m a US citizen now, but the joy for me is when I get to work in communities with different people. Ultimately, when people start to sort of see the spark for themselves that they are a storyteller — whether that’s a young person, an elder or what happens between an elder and a young person when they start telling stories to one another because they feel alive — when a young person gets excited about the stories of their grandmother or their great grandparents whether they are in Mexico or Marshalltown or another state, that excites me. It’s the reason for doing this work. Storytelling is the essence of our humanity. It’s the world’s oldest art form.”

While the act of storytelling dates back generations, centuries and even millennia, Sirah feels that it is eternally relevant and helps to build bridges and connections between people. After spending about a week here, he plans to return in the early fall and possibly host some public talks, trail walks, gatherings or cafe conversations building into 2026.

“It’s to bring the community in conversation with one another in a celebrating way,” he said.

For updates on Sirah’s Marshalltown project, follow him on Facebook and Instagram or check the Arts + Culture Alliance’s social media pages.