Stories of Mera Kitchen Collective – November 2022
Mera Kitchen Collective brings people together through food and offers an opportunity to take the Baltimore community on a culinary adventure around the world. Mera strives to create inviting environments characterized by the spirit of abundance and collectivism. The stories show how the people of Mera make that happen. This project was done as part of Baltimore Field School 2.0 and in collaboration with Professor Fouts’s Introduction to Public Humanities students at UMBC in November 2022. Link to Story map is here.
Youtube Channel of the November 2022 Mera Event
Sabor de Highlandtown – May 2022
Sabor de Highlandtown is an ongoing public humanities project by Professor Sarah Fouts and her Food Ethnography course and community partners in East Baltimore.
A walk down Highlandtown’s Eastern and Highland Avenues reveals a range of Central American, Caribbean, and Mexican-owned businesses. Smells emanate from rotisserie chickens and menus boast of Latin American specialties like pupusas, pan dulces, mariscadas, menudos, baleadas, and of course, more legible classics like tacos, burritos, and birrias. What can the stories behind these foods tell us about how neighborhoods change? A collaboration between UMBC American Studies students, Southeast CDC, and Highlandtown restaurateurs attempt to tell a part of this history by featuring this first of a series of “Sabor de Highlandtown” from 1980 to the 2000s.
—-
Un paseo por Eastern y Highland Avenue de Highlandtown revela una variedad de negocios centroamericanos, caribeños y mexicanos. Los olores emanan de los pollos rostizados y los menús cuentan con especialidades latinoamericanas como pupusas, pan dulces, mariscadas, menudos, baleadas y, por supuesto, clásicos más legibles como tacos, burritos y birrias. ?Qué puede decirnos las historias detrás de estas comidas acerca de cómo cambian los vecindarios? Una colaboración entre los estudiantes de “American Studies” de la UMBC, la Southeast CDC y los restauradores de Highlandtown intenta contar una parte de esta historia presentando la primera serie de “Sabor de Highlandtown” desde 1980 hasta la década de 2000.
The Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition project was funded by an internal Hrabowski Innovation grant and debuted in 2015 as a collaborative teaching endeavor to document and create media focused on Baltimore neighborhoods. Baltimore Traces courses expanded research on history and deindustrialization to connect to redevelopment initiatives such as the emergence of arts districts and the redevelopment of the city’s public markets. Students grappled with how cities change over time and the complexities of gentrification. Through the project, students produced numerous podcasts that aired on The Marc Steiner Show: Stories of Deindustrialized Baltimore (spring 2014), Downtown Stories (fall 2014), Station North Voices (spring 2015), Greektown Voices (spring 2015), Bromo Speaks (fall 2015), Downtown Voices (spring 2016), The World That Brought Us Freddie Gray (spring 2016) and Learning from Lexington (fall 2017). In addition to airing on local public radio, students also hosted public listening events. All of the project’s media, which also includes digital maps, films, and zines, are archived on the Baltimore Traces website: https://baltimoretraces.umbc.edu/.
In 2018, Traces began a longterm collaboration in Southwest Baltimore. We worked with the Southwest Partnership on A Journey Through Hollins (spring 2018) and A Walk Down West Baltimore Street (spring 2019).
A Place Called Poppleton – 2020 to 2022
A Place Called Poppleton Project (2021 -2023) is a collaboration between Nicole King’s Preserving Places, Making Spaces in Baltimore course and Bill Shewbridge’s MCS Media Production fellows. King’s American Studies students researched the history of Poppleton and Shewbridge’s students produced short films from interviews in the field on the history of Poppleton and how local stakeholders feel about the neighborhood’s changes related to redevelopment. We moved from cultural documentation to community organizing as a successful project to SAVE OUR BLOCK in Poppleton. For media coverage click here.
The Baltimore Uprising – 2016
Preserve the Baltimore Uprising is a digital repository that seeks to preserve and make accessible original content that was captured and created by individual community members, grassroots organizations, and witnesses to the protests that followed the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015. Gray died from injuries sustained while in police custody in Baltimore, Maryland. A freely available resource for students, scholars, teachers, and the greater community, Preserve the Baltimore Uprising seeks to ensure that the historical record of these events will include diverse perspectives from people whose lives have been directly impacted by the complex events surrounding the conflicts in Baltimore.
Mapping Dialogue 2015 – 2016
“Mapping Dialogues” This project focuses on history and culture of industrial neighborhoods in Baltimore.
Mapping Baybrook & Mapping Dialogues are projects that focus on cultural documentation projects and issues of deindustrialization in the Baltimore region. Mapping Dialogues was funded in part by Maryland Humanities.