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About
Project Aim
This project aims to inform, educate, inspire, engage and connect different constituents in the Southern California Inland Region around issues of immigrant justice. The goals are threefold: to amplify ICIJ and IEIYC’s outreach and engagement with community members to inform them of the issues such as detention, health and labor; to inform public about ICIJ and IEIYC’s organizing and policy work to address these issues; to inspire public engagement through art to explore the lived experience of immigrants in this region.
This project will help illuminate the lived experience of immigrants in the region and elevate the work being done to support and advocate for them. This exhibit will inform the targeted population (residents, council members, legislators) and will be used by as a tool for community connection as well as organizing and policy work. It will also serve as an experience by community members of giving voice and exposure to their own lived experience as an immigrant in this region, the experience of students to participate in a public arts and community awareness project focused on immigration; to educate the general public on immigration and issues related to that lived experience through the arts; to ignite public dialogue and advocacy around the related topics, and to increase awareness of/engagement with ICIJ and IEIYC.
Project History
Pitzer's PLACE leadership team consists of Pitzer undergraduate students Amanda Gomez and Ray Hill-Cristol, and alum, Christian Cabunag, and CASA faculty director, Tessa Hicks Peterson alongside community partners from Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (Lyzzeth Mendoza, community engagement and policy director; Jessica Hernandez, digital media coordinator, and Ramon Morales, community leader) and from the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Collective, (Najayra Valdovinosoto, youth programs coordinator).
This leadership team facilitated many community-arts events November-March, 2019-20, leading up to the launch of a collaborative community photography art project on April 14, 2020 that involved ten community artist participants from ICIJ and IEIYC. These artists are primarily undocumented immigrants, ranging from teenagers to grandmothers, brand new artists to seasoned ones, community activists to street vendors, who all dedicated themselves to two months of documenting their lived experiences as immigrants in the inland region.
Project Launch
The PLACE leadership team and community artists engaged in weekly check-in digital gatherings where participants and team leaders continued conversations to build community, discuss how the photo-taking process was going, shared photography tips and suggested themes, and demonstrated mutual support for this budding community. At the close of June, we formally ended the photo-taking portion and engaged in a process for collective editing and curation of photos. Each participant curated their own selection of top ten photos, provided descriptions of each and a biography about themselves. We met to look at and provide feedback on the photos and debrief about the process of taking them, writing and reflecting on them, and thinking together what shape the public exhibit should take. This final conversation resulted in a number of ideas, including using the photos online in photo galleries of our participating organizations' websites, creating our own website to highlight all photos and the artists, and eventually printing them on large banners so they can be used for in-person events, advocacy efforts, gallery viewing, and perhaps eventually translating them into a digital or print book or zine to be used for educational, promotional and personal uses.
December 5, 2020 the group will host both a digital launch party, inviting friends, families, participants, team leaders and the public to view the photos and discuss with the artists the process and what it meant to them in meaningmaking around their lived experiences of immigration in our region. The gallery website will launch publicly on this date; the other modalities and platforms (banners and books) will be designed and printed in Spring 2021.
Our Partners
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