Documenting Resilience
(AHR I & II)
Founded in 1975, El Pueblo Center is a hub for recreational and public services, neighborly exchange and community placekeeping in Tucson’s Southside. Wrapped in murals and memory and traversed by families and public servants, the center, located at the intersection of Irvington Road & South Sixth Avenue, is now the focus of efforts by numerous stakeholders in the city and private sector for revitalization and reinvestment. With the generous support of the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant, the team established residencies for local artists to work with community advisors, archivists, and scholars to document, explore, and manifest a “living” archive of El Pueblo Center and the communities that surround it.
Blending engaged visual and spatial research and contemporary image-making, the project fuses public archival efforts with university resources to translate privately held memories and experiences into a collective narrative of place. Its process, products and iterative display in celebrations, viewing sessions and salons across sites highlight the arts and humanities dimensions of Southside resilience. Taken together, they show what a future “living” archival infrastructure for Southside communities might support—the means for community members to continue adding their own multimedia histories and stories made at and with the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Sunnyside Foundation. An ongoing project, the Arts|Humanities|Resilience grant funded activities between April 2023 to Summer 2024.