The "Voces" Project Amplifies Latina/x Girls' Voices in Museums
Project Co-Directors: Catherine Dornfeld Tissenbaum, Idalia Nuñez , and Mónica González Ybarra
In Summer 2021, we began a partnership with the Krannert Art Museum, Girls Go For It, and Urbana Middle School to develop an after-school program for middle-school Latina/x girls about exhibit design. We co-designed the exhibit with participating girls to center their identities, communities, and experiences in daily life. The multimodal exhibit included music, video, an interactive community map, and hand-drawn words in English, Spanish, Q'anjob'al and K'iche'. After 10 sessions in Fall 2021, we prepared the exhibit for display from April - July 2022. An archive of all exhibit components is available here: https://catdoti.github.io/latina-community-voices/.
This pilot program and exhibit was funded by a Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice Research Program grant from UIUC's Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
We are continuing this project for three more years (Summer 2022 - Summer 2025) thanks to generous funding from the Spencer Foundation through a Racial Equity Research Grant. The project is titled, "Our Lives, Our Dreams, Our 'Voces': Leveraging Community-Based Collaborations to Increase Representation of Latina/x Girls’ Narratives in Museums."
