We are grateful to be fiscally sponsored by ECOLOGSITICS to receive donations as a 501C3. All our time is donated but we do need some support with infrastructure… WE ARE CURRENTLY FUNDRAISING TO:

  1. Develop a digital archive and website to house the varied recorded experiences OF OUR COMMUNITY MEMBERS.

  2. To GIVE BACK to narrators who share their stories with us

  3. To purchase audio equipment, transcription services, fees associated with maintaining website/domain, and all that not so fun stuff!

PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING OUR EFFORTS AND THE RICH STORIES OF OUR NEIGHBORS. THANK YOU. DONATE HERE

Cultural Creations in collaboration with community members and organizations is embarking on a multi faceted project to capture the living histories and cultural practices  of our Indigenous, immigrant and ethnic communities.

Our Roots/Our Routes: Living Histories of Belonging and Cultural Sustainability on California’s Central Coast

Our mission is to support and strengthen diverse Indigenous, immigrant, and ethnic communities that in sharing their living (hi)stories on the Central Coast.


Our Vision: We strive to create a greater sense of place-based belonging, representation and connection among all Central Coast communities.

 Project Plan:  

We are capturing stories about cultural sustainability, place-making and belonging in partnership with diverse Indigenous, immigrant, and ethnic communities in our region.  Through these stories we will document and share stories of cultural innovation, adaptation, resilience, creativity, survival, struggle and transformation as well as the overall ways culture is practiced, produced and experienced in varied contexts. Although many elements of the project are still in formation, we are imagining a variety of forms that the project could take such as, oral histories, podcasts, journals, cooking classes, a focus on foodways, art and cultural expression, or objects of affection are just some possibilities.   

We are currently collaborating with Public Humanities Collaborative to train community members on how to conduct oral histories. We are excited at capturing the living histories of so many community members that have been underrepresented in our communities. 

Every story matters and we would love community support in connecting us to folks within their respective communities! If you are interested in joining us or have community members you believe would like to share their stories please contact us. 

More info on the project: 

Considering the Central Coast as both a "space between"--between major metropolitan centers--and as an intersection--where patterns of transnational migration overlap, interact, and impact each other--we seek to honor and amplify the non-dominant narratives of the richly diverse but historically marginalized communities.  Anchored in a commitment to the self-defined needs and interests of participants, the project focuses especially on the stories of cultural survival, resilience, adaptation, resourcefulness and innovation that undergird people's patterns of being and belonging here.  It is a project that celebrates the roots and heritage that inform people's sense of their history as much as it illuminates the routes by which they have entered into the Central Coast—how they adapt to and create their lives here, how they build community, and how they reshape the world around them in the process.

 

It is our goal that participants find value in sharing their stories, that their voices and experiences are shared on their terms, and in partnership with project leaders. The ultimate goal of this project is to strengthen participants’ communities and connections with one another, to illustrate their contributions to our communities and to support their hopes and goals in the telling of these stories on their terms.