Mariano Desmaras was always “my friend’s little brother” but now here he is winning awards…. congratulations!  And I see some inspiration for FAVL’s microbooks project here, as we shift into community history!

“Neighborhoods and Shared Memories” (Nuestros vecindarios y sus memorias) is a community-sourced exhibit that empowers its members to tell the story of their neighborhoods in their own words. Researchers from the design team, working with the museum’s researchers, gave shape to this collection through the grouping of stories and artifacts around themes that emerge from the collection overall. This is a significant break from the more traditional museum exhibits where a curatorial team establishes an exhibit’s story lines; with “Neighborhoods and Shared Memories,” the community is the curator.

We worked with a plurality of voices that do not necessarily build a single narrative, but rather create a web of themes that will carry on for the museum as the project continues, in future iterations, to examine El Paso’s other neighborhoods and districts. Like a casual visit to a neighborhood, where locals approach you and tell you local history from their perspective, the emphasis is on the experience of interpreting a community through the images and stories its members share. The “take away” for the visitors lies in the broadness and authenticity of the experience, and less a linear, certifiable narrative.

via AIGA | Case Study: Neighborhoods and Shared Memories/Nuestros vecindarios y sus memorias.