toolkit
Connecting Through Time
“…Embark on a journey of personal and collective story-telling through photography by reflecting on the past, present and future as we call back the pieces of our life stories and legacies that have been erased, displaced or made invisible…”
At the onset of COVID-19, with a desire to create resources to help young people and families make the most of the time we were all spending inside our homes, Photoville invited a working group of artist-educators to collaborate and build resources for intergenerational storytelling. Kamal Badhey, Wendy Barrales, and Natalia Guerrero have each explored intergenerational storytelling with their students and in their own work. Bringing together their unique experiences as individuals, artists and educators, we explored why this work is valuable, ways to do this work, and the connecting & liberating possibilities of intergenerational storytelling.
This resource addresses three core processes in intergenerational storytelling: connecting, making, and sharing. Each section begins with guiding questions and offers activities and lessons. Also included are recorded artists talks and an inspiration bank of artists who explore archives and ancestry in a myriad of reflective, innovative ways.
This toolkit is made to be mixed and matched. Several lessons can be combined to build a longer project, or used as singular activities. The lessons are designed for use with groups of students, but can also be used with individuals of all ages in the context of your home and community. This toolkit is presented in partnership with PhotoWings, who are deeply passionate about intergenerational learning through photography.
Guiding students through intergenerational and personal storytelling requires reframing and intention setting. Before you begin, we invite you to read a note from the artist educators and to consider the guiding questions for this work.
A Note from the Artist Educators
As collaborators in this toolkit we reaffirm our role as educators of color and individuals that seek to continue to honor the long lineage of story-tellers and ancestors who have placed us as memory workers and weavers. “Connecting Through Time” calls you, your family and community to embark on a journey of personal and collective story-telling through photography by reflecting on the past, present and future as we call back the pieces of our life stories and legacies that have been erased, displaced or made invisible. How do we fill in the gaps to preserve the stories that connect us to the wisdom and knowledge that provides us with a deep sense of purpose and belonging? How can this work preserve our heritage seven generations back and honor seven generations forward? As we began writing this toolkit, we connected both our work as educators and artists within our families and communities, as well as our intersecting identities as People of Color utilizing oral story-telling and photography as a tool for liberation.
Working to fill in the gaps of history ensures that erasure does not continue for the next generations. This work ‘preserves the stories of us’, which includes knowledge that we would want many generations ahead of us to know, who we are and what we have lived through. For many people who have been deleted or not included in history books, doing this work is not always looking back and within, but also looking back in order to look forward—connecting ancestry to ideas of futurism and speculation, finding ways to define yourself so you can exist now and in the future. We are thinking of the representation of our grandmothers and mothers, constantly searching for mami, abuelita, ammamma,and grandma. The search for our family allows us to see if they are present or absent. If they are present, are they nuanced or are they a monolith?
This work sits in the space of connection as we spend time with our families within everyday life. This can include the late night kitchen table conversations, speaking of migration and remembering childhood, a home, or an ancestor. The intention behind intergenerational work is that it can live for many years, beyond us. It’s record, whether it is in the form of oral storytelling, a photograph, or song, is a legitimate form of knowledge.
Our conceptual frameworks come from our practices as people who have done family work for many years developing our lens and deeply engaging with our own autobiographies and cultures. These are connections and methods, where sometimes the camera or audio recorder is turned off, subverting structures embedded in historical practices in journalism, formal anthropology, oral history, and documentary. Working within your understanding of family allows for both healing and transformation. As stories shift, there are new realizations of who one is as you peel the many layers of your identity. While you engage in this journey, remember to take as much time needed to honor your story.
— Kamal Badhey, Wendy Barrales, and Natalia Guerrero
Guiding Questions
Connecting
How do we fill in the gaps to preserve the stories that connect us to the wisdom and knowledge that provides us with a deep sense of purpose and belonging?
How can this work preserve our heritage seven generations back and honor seven generations forward?
How does creating space for connection allow you to unearth and honor stories in your family?
What does/would intergenerational connection look like in your family? Who do you connect with in your life already?
How does your personal identity connect with your community and legacy?
Making
How is the process of making informed by ancestral, intergenerational, and familial connections you have?
How will you build on, reshape, recreate, or imagine memories and the past?
How does your work react to or interact with established narratives about your community?
How can archival photographs be used to activate your imagination when thinking about the past, present, and the future?
How can the process of re-photographing honor, subvert, or empower the person being photographed as they reflect on their position in relation to their archival photographs?
What creative work is inspired by family memories, photographs, objects, and stories?
Sharing
Who needs to know your story?
If you want to share your story, how do you envision sharing it?
How and where does your community gather to share stories?
What creative and meaningful methods of display can best reach them?
What do you take away from your project?
What do you want other people to do, think about, or reflect on with your project?
Produced and facilitated by Photoville
Presented in partnership with PhotoWings.
A note from our partner PhotoWings
Inter-generational learning through photography is a passion of ours.
We feel it’s a unique tool to learn more about the world and ourselves through meaningful conversations around our photos. In an era where people sometimes toss old photos or don’t always migrate their cellphone images, through this work we hope people will further realize the value of saving their photographic heritage, both for themselves and future generations.
We also feel there are added life and professional skills to be gained through this process such as learning to communicate more deeply and the art of storytelling. Students will become more observant and critical thinkers while learning more about their own history, considering their own legacy, and gain a better understanding of the nuances of context and perspective. Through this process they’ll learn to be more empathetic, resilient, and inspired.
We’re always honored to partner with the wonderful Photoville team to bring our shared visions out into the world and are thrilled to see this important project come to life.
PhotoWings’ mission is to highlight and help facilitate the power of photography to influence the world. We help photography to be better understood, created, utilized, seen, and saved.
Connection
Guiding Questions
How do we fill in the gaps to preserve the stories that connect us to the wisdom and knowledge that provides us with a deep sense of purpose and belonging?
How can this work preserve our heritage seven generations back and honor seven generations forward?
How does creating space for connection allow you to unearth and honor stories in your family?
What does/would intergenerational connection look like in your family? Who do you connect with in your life already?
How does your personal identity connect with your community and legacy?
Making
Guiding Questions
How is the process of making informed by ancestral, intergenerational, and familial connections you have?
How will you build on, reshape, recreate, or imagine memories and the past?
How does your work react to or interact with established narratives about your community?
How can archival photographs be used to activate your imagination when thinking about the past, present, and the future?
How can the process of re-photographing honor, subvert, or empower the person being photographed as they reflect on their position in relation to their archival photographs?
What creative work is inspired by family memories, photographs, objects, and stories?
Sharing
Guiding Questions
Who needs to know your story?
If you want to share your story, how do you envision sharing it?
How and where does your community gather to share stories?
What creative and meaningful methods of display can best reach them?
What do you take away from your project?
What do you want other people to do, think about, or reflect on with your project?
Related Videos
Please also check out the PhotoWings + Ashoka U Webinar: Legacy and Preservation, a collection of deeply personal stories about the value of photographs and ensuring their legacy.
About the Artist Educators
I am a queer nonbinary POC community educator, cultural organizer, and photographer based in New York with an M.A in Media Studies from The New School. With roots and indigenous ancestry in Colombia, I have been in service of immigrant, refugee, LGBTQIA+, Black, Indigenous, and POC youth for the past 12 years in collaboration with non-profit organizations like the United Nations, The LGBT Center in NY, the Bronx Documentary Center, among others. I focus my practice in designing and facilitating participatory community projects that center social justice and cultural organizing through memory and community work utilizing oral history, photography, and earth medicine. As an educator, I am passionate about facilitating spaces that are inclusive and affirming of everyone’s intersectional identities and that foster a sense of community. In 2018, I founded Lion’s Tooth Project, a community-led organization serving immigrant, queer, and BIPOC youth. Through photography and earth medicine, LTP inspires youth to have more agency over their own wellness, healing, and personal stories connecting in their legacy and joy.
To contact Natalia, please visit: www.lionstoothproject.org | @lionstoothproject
I am an Ethnic Studies teacher, scholar-activist, and founder of the WOCArchive. As a first-gen Xicana and daughter of formerly undocumented immigrants, I work to center my family’s stories in my research, community organizing, & classroom. I’ve spent the last 10+ years as a public school educator learning alongside young women of color & gender expansive youth in the Bronx and Brooklyn, with a focus on justice based education and the power of storytelling through art. My multimodal doctoral research explores the intersections of gender and race through visual testimonios within a WOC centered high school Ethnic Studies course. Currently, I work on telling & preserving the stories of our sisters, abuelitas & matriarchs through the Womxn of Color Archive (@wocarchive), an art-based intergenerational storytelling project centering womxn, femmes, and nonbinary folx of color. This project began in 2016 with a single interview of my abuelita Aída’s life in rural Veracruz, and has grown into a digital platform that houses multiple projects created by former students & community members of all ages. WOCArchive is a growing project and is currently accepting submissions.
To contact Wendy, please visit @wocarchive | @wendy.barrales | www.wocarchive.com
I am an artist-educator and independent curriculum designer of South Asian ancestry with an MA in Photography and Urban Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MS in Museum Education from Bank Street College. I am a member of the Urban Photographers Association and South Asian Women’s Creative Collective. My work intersects with diaspora, using photography, oral storytelling, and family history to stitch together stories. My project Portals and Passageways, traces my jeweler ancestor and great great grandfather Annam Rathnaiah from unknown origins to a former colonial bazaar in Secunderabad, India. My reflection on his journey and descendents is the basis of my practice in transforming autobiographical work into curriculum. This methodology was created for my course Family: Re-interpreting the Personal Archive at the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University and the teen class Re-Constructing the Family Album at the International Center of Photography. Beyond family work, I am passionate about the poetic narration of individuals historically underrepresented through story and photography. This work in accessibility has opened channels for teaching and mentorship with youth, teachers in training and senior citizens through the Bronx Documentary Center, LTP Tanzania, Back to the Lab, and the Parsons Scholars.
To contact Kamal, please visit: @portalsandpassageways | www.kamalbadhey.com | [email protected]
Produced and facilitated by
Photoville
Presented in partnership with
Authors:
Kamal Badhey, Wendy Barrales and Natalia Guerrero
FACILITATOR / EDITORS:
Jess Bal and Jasmin Chang (Photoville)
GRADE LEVEL:
All ages
SUBJECTS:
Visual Arts, Humanities, English Language Arts