Create an Exhibition
Create an exhibition based on your interviews and research. Perhaps you have photographs, keepsakes, copies of old documents, tools, art work, and other visual materials that you could organize and display. Determine the important themes you would like to address, select photographs and/or objects that illustrate your themes, identify pithy quotes from your interviews that capture key ideas and experiences, then write interpretive labels and put together photo/text panels that present the information you discovered.
A fun exhibition project is to assemble a cultural treasure chest. Fill a small chest or trunk with family mementos and keepsakes that hold special meaning and express a sense of cultural identity and roots. Write a short label for each artifact that captures the meaning it holds and the memories and stories it evokes. Have fun "unpacking" the treasure chest — at home, in school, or at a community center — and artfully displaying the cultural treasures with their accompanying labels. A "docent" can give an exhibition tour of the treasures, commenting on the significance of the artifacts and the history and heritage they convey. You can expand on the project by producing an exhibition catalog that includes photographs of the objects and essays that go into more detail about the significance of each piece.
Another great idea for an exhibition project is to make a Heritage Box. Young people from the Latin American Youth Center in Washington, D.C., interviewed members of their community and then put together Heritage Boxes that were compilations of artifacts, stories, quotes, and pictures that gave insights into a particular person's life and heritage. The boxes can be made of wood, cardboard, or any available material. The dimensions should be about 18ý x 24ý to allow enough room for display. Turn the box on its side and carefully arrange the text, artifacts, and pictures in the box so that they tell a story. Display all the boxes together for a wonderful "group portrait" of a community.
Directions for making a Heritage Box are available on the Latin American Youth Center's web site at: www.layc-dc.org
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