Our Parks, Our Stories: Southeast Asian Diaspora (SEAD) Memory Mapping
The Southeast Asian Diaspora Project (SEAD) organized an Asian/Latinx Fusion Night at Minnehaha Park as part of MPRB’s Cultural Nights series. SEAD hosted a “memory mapping” workshop where community was asked to add moments from their lives to a timeline, focusing on interactions and memories with the park in general. Over 70 stories were collected and facilitated in multiple languages.
These photos show the story collection process in progress and a few of the collected stories. The entire collection will be added to the MPRB Archives.
SEAD regularly hosts Memory Mapping workshops. The goal with each project is both education and community building. For Asian/Latinx Fusion Night, SEAD used historical moments from the MPRB for the community to better understand the ways their park system came to be. Community members were asked to add significant memories and moments from their lives to a timeline in chronological order, focusing on interactions with the park in general. Stories were collected and facilitated in multiple languages.
The SEAD Project centers the Hmong, Lao, Viet, and Khmer diaspora communities. SEAD is on a mission to be an accessible creative hub that provides streamlined workshops and tools for heritage preservation and storytelling. Through safe and welcoming spaces, we hope to grow empowerment to plant the seeds of hope and possibility, locally and globally.
A few examples of the stories can be seen below, view the expanded gallery here.
