Participants of the Museum of Memory project

Museum of Memory Initiative

Museum of Memory is a public history initiative that works together with Colorado residents to co-author a shared history. We collaboratively work to reanimate, center and amplify the histories that have long existed only in the margins and create the opportunity for the community to decide how to remember its collective past.

History Colorado has assisted in nine Museum of Memory projects to date, some of which are still in progress and with more to come.

Neighborhood Memory Projects Youth Memory Projects History in the Making

 

What happens in a MoM Project?

In MoM projects community members gather to explore together the shared memories of their neighborhoods and communities through:

  • Memory sharing workshops
  • Storytelling
  • Grassroots collecting efforts
  •  Art-based community sharebacks


Who Museum of Memory partners with:

  • Community-based organizations
  • Resident teams
  • Schools
  • Community members 


Museum of Memory improves participation in civic life by building more inclusive narratives of all the many people and ways that contribute to the fabric of a community. This initiative is based on the ideal that when people see themselves as the creators and makers of their own history, they also come to see themselves as the writers of their own destinies. It gathers community together and creates space for residents to actively and energetically participate in crafting a shared historic record.

Project Phases

Remembering

Communities engage in collective memory workshops, guided by History Colorado staff. The workshops employ a variety of strategies to jog memories and facilitate storytelling within a group. While Memory Projects vary, there are generally five to eight hosted community museum workshops.
 

Collecting

History Colorado with the help of Community Historians work together to collect stories, oral histories, writing, documents, and photographs during the collecting phase of the project.
 

Sharing

The sharing phase can take a variety of forms, including museum exhibit, mural, teatro, music and song, photography, digital forms, SoundCloud, podcast, conference presentations, etc. This aspect of the project is designed to share the stories and histories of the neighborhood or community with a larger audience. It is also designed for longevity within the neighborhood or community.
 

Below is a map of every Museum of Memory project. Click on the yellow icons to learn more about that memory project, and click on the purple icons to learn more about the nearest History Colorado museum.
 

Neighborhood Memory Projects

These memory projects highlight neighborhoods and local communities around Colorado, from historic areas of the capitol to rural communities on the prairie.

Youth Memory Projects

Youth Memory Projects are youth-centered writing and storytelling programs geared towards elevating young voices within their communities and neighborhoods. These projects use community narrative, writing, storytelling, and art to create oral history projects through which the young of a community reanimate their local history. Youth serve as community historians, developing project objectives, designing oral history protocol, interviewing their community members, and creating a final project to share with the community.

The youth leading these projects gain experience collaborating with peers and interacting with the larger community--while engaging the past as a way to move their community forward.

History in the Making

History in the Making projects are community-led oral history projects for community members and groups to document their stories from the recent past or present-day events.

See Also

Memory in Bloom

"Memory in Bloom" is a public art display by Angela Fraleigh and Josh Miller. The project will be projected  every night during the month of August 2022 and embraces the rich stories of the Globeville neighborhood, transforming their words into brilliant floral bouquets.

Fraleigh & Miller are two artists with very different skill sets but one common goal–to make work that recontextualizes overlooked narratives, objects and spaces. 

Their first iteration of the "Memory in Bloom" project was an interactive Victorian Flower Language dictionary that invited visitors to submit secret messages using an onsite tablet. Everything from love letters and prose to slogans and inside jokes then manifested as bold, larger than life flowers associated with their meaning.

“Memory in Bloom” highlights stories shared as part of the Globeville and Elyria/Swansea Neighborhood Memory Project conducted in 2018 with residents of the neighborhood.

The project is part of Night Lights Denver, a project that turns the Daniels & Fisher tower into “the people’s projector” and encourages commissioned artists and the community to enliven the Denver Theatre District. The installation will be free and open to the public at 1601 Arapahoe St. on the 16th Street Mall throughout the month of August 2022.

Learn more about Night Lights Denver.

 

Museum of Memory sponsors