Collaborations & Oral Histories
Header image by JJ Tiziou for Here. Stories from Selinsgrove Center and Kencrest Services
File/Life: We Remember Stories of Pennhurst
Oral history artist working with File/Life, a community-led creative exploration of the Pennhurst archives by seven community archivists, all people with disabilities and/or family members, including two former Pennhurst residents. Together, we built an exhibit sharing stories that made us listen, feel, imagine, and remember. In doing so, we ask the question: Can a file ever contain a life?
Works on Water
Organizing member* of this nonprofit organization dedicated to artworks, performances, conversations, workshops and site-specific experiences that explore diverse artistic investigation of water in the urban environment. We seek to strengthen and nourish the community of artists working on and with bodies of water.
*On leave in 2020
Underwater New York
Founding Editor of this collaborative arts project, providing a prompt and platform for creative work inspired by the waterways of New York City and the objects submerged within them.
Works on Water
Organizing member* of this nonprofit organization dedicated to artworks, performances, conversations, workshops and site-specific experiences that explore diverse artistic investigation of water in the urban environment. We seek to strengthen and nourish the community of artists working on and with bodies of water.
*On leave in 2020
Pennhurst Archive Project
A community-based storytelling project to interpret the history and ongoing impact of the institutionalization of people with disabilities. With the Media Arts & Culture Center of the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, funded by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. Beginning January 2021.
Discovering Selinsgrove
A yearlong exploration of how art, oral history, and inclusive collaboration can work to elicit, interpret, and share first-person experiences of institutionalization. With the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University.
Here.
A project connecting volunteer interviewers with Pennsylvanians with intellectual disabilities who live or work in segregated settings. Their complex stories were told through exhibits of audio, portraits, and photographs co-created by the narrators themselves, installed in the state capitol in Harrisburg and City Hall in Philadelphia.
Self Advocate Stories
A collaborative oral history project with self-advocates who have Down syndrome.
The Bakken
An exploration with playwright Suli Holum of the Bakken Shale, a rock formation roughly 350 million years old sitting deep below the surface of North Dakota, through the perspectives and experiences of women in the region.
TILL Living Legacy Project
An oral history-based film and professional development curriculum designed to collaboratively document, preserve and activate the life histories of individuals with disabilities living in community-based group homes managed by Toward Independent Living and Learning, Inc. Winner of the 2015 Providers' Council lnnovator of the Year Award from the Massachusetts Council of Human Service Providers.
Rauschenberg Oral History Project
Research Fellow on this initiative to document the life, legacy, and creative community of Robert Rauschenberg.
Ed Fanuzzi’s Collection
Oral history interviews with Ed Fanuzzi of Staten Island, New York, a lifelong diver and collector of underwater objects and ephemera. Portraits of Ed and his objects by Nura Qureshi.
StoryCorpsU
This yearlong, cross-disciplinary youth development program was designed to help high school students develop self and social awareness, academic skills, and stronger school relationships. From 2012-2013, I managed student-produced content and teacher partnerships with schools in Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.
StoryCorps National Teachers Initiative
This 18-month initiative celebrated the work of public school teachers nationwide. As Senior Coordinator, I managed outreach resulting in the collection and archive of 687 oral history interviews, and spearheaded partnerships with ten public media outlets nationwide. The National Teachers Initiative launched at the White House on September 19, 2011, and included ten broadcasts on National Public Radio.