PAH 420: Southside Stories of Environmental Resilience and El Pueblo
In this iteration of PAH 420, students applied a suite of innovative design strategies to prototype projects connecting users to the stories of environmental resilience we encountered in and through Southside communities at El Pueblo and beyond. Using multimedia spatial research and storytelling, students designed publicly-engaged projects amplifying how Southside communities’ preserve and imagine their relationships to the environment, especially its historic journey to care for their water.
Media Coverage:
Swedlund, Eric. “Public & Applied Humanities Students Relate Southside Stories of Environmental Resilience | College of Humanities | University of Arizona.” Accessed June 4, 2025. https://humanities.arizona.edu/news/public-applied-humanities-students-relate-southside-stories-environmental-resilience. Acknowledgements:
Campus and community partners for PAH 420 include the Department of Public and Applied Humanities (PAH), UArizona Libraries (UAL) Special Collections & CATalyst Studio; College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA), Center for Creative Photography, College of FIne Arts (CFA), Arizona Institute of Resilience (AIR) as well as Sunnyside Foundation, Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva, the Unified Community Advisory Board (UCAB), Tucson Water, Frank de la Cruz Library, the El Pueblo Senior Center, City of Tucson Parks and Recreation, with special thanks to the offices of Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva & Tucson Council Member Lane Santa Cruz for visiting our class. The instructors would especially like to thank reviewers, speakers, site-/archive- visit experts and consultants who accompanied us along the way including in Spring of 2025 the following: Paulina Aguirre-Clinch, Selina Barajas, Cassandra Becerra, Dr. Paloma Beamer, Becca Cammack, Marcos and Nicki Cardenas and the seniors of the El Pueblo Senior Center Art Class, Jasmin Chan, John Choi, Rachel Castro, Sharon Collinge, Laura Corrales, Hilda Cortez, Veronica Cruz-Mercado, Bob Diaz, Sophie Didier, Alba Fernandez-Keys, Sara Fraker, Sofia Forier-Montes, Heather Froehlich, Julissa Galindo, Yolanda Herrera and the members of UCAB, Christine Hoekanga, Cynthia Leo, Cynthia Lopez, Dr. Denise Moreno-Ramírez, Ellen McMahon, Nicholas McCullough, Jennifer Nichols, Chairman Ned Norris, Perri Pyle, Beki Quintero, Niko Sanchez, Elizabth Soltero, Liz Petterson, Alana Varner, Alysha Vasquez and the Mexican-American Museum/Los Descendientes Survival & Resistance: Remembering the Southside Environmental Justice Movement team, Dr. Monica Ramírez-Andreotta, Mia Ruiz, Elliott Welch, Jessica Wolff, Kenny Wong. A warm thank you to Angus Leydic, our PAH 420 Graduate Teaching Assistant, and Jasmin Lopez & Sarah Snyder, who expanded our study of Southside’s stories of environmental resilience through their internships this semester. We also would like to acknowledge support for this course from the UA Library Digital Borderlands Fellowship as well as Arts Research + Resilience Grants programs, enabling instructors to bring new tools and resources for teaching and learning interdisciplinary storytelling to Southern Arizona communities. We also want to acknowledge support from PAH, Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI) Initiatives, Design Accelerator, Marshall Foundation, American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Arts|Humanities|Resilience (AHR) grant program, administered by AIR and the College of Fine Arts. Thank you for seeding our educational investment in Southside communities in partnership with the Sunnyside Foundation, that has laid the foundation for this iteration of PAH 420.
PAH 420+ART 343A Final Collaborative Review Program Booklet - Spring 2025
Arts & Culture Research Exhibition Jacqueline Barrios
This booklet was created for final collaborative reviews held April 29, 2025 hosted at CATalyst Studios The event featured a gallery walk of ten student projects with projected slideshows and table displays, and two sets of lightning talks. On display were prints by students from our collaborator course, Professor Martina Shenal’s ART 343 Traditional Photographic Techniques course of the Santa Cruz River, as well as prints of selected polaroids of the key locations in the Three Hangars and shut down Southside wells — altogether providing a visual narrative of the complicated histories of the watershed — from contamination to remediation, from depletion to recharge. Close to a hundred attendees including students, community and campus guests, who all interacted with the work with probing questions and insights connecting their lived experiences and professions, as activists fighting for clean safe water or as public servants enlivening communities with more just, more vibrant improvements. Students’ designs prototyping engagement strategies served as a basis to connect such diverse approaches to environmental care, from arts research to chemistry curricula, from design from a scavenger hunt to map key locations of the Superfund story to a time capsule collecting artifacts for the future, from TikTok campaigns to a graphic novel animating the perspectives of human and non-human characters of the story. for activating stories of environment resilience and care in Tucson’s Southside. Alongside projects, on display included Little Known (2025) a digital slideshow documenting a shared semester investigating water advocacy on the Santa Cruz river, featuring polaroids, prints, frottage, sketches and photographs of panels, archival work and site-visits conducted throughout the semester. Also on display were related work, including selections Viva El Pueblo! a nine-image photographic exhibition by local artist and UA College of Fine Arts alumni, Jessica Wolff, and the film O’odham Su:ḍag- The People’s Water (2023) by Jasmin Lopez. A full gallery of our key engagements by local photographer Hilda Cortez can be viewed here.
Tucson’s Southside & Water Justice Glossary & Timeline
Arts & Culture Research Exhibition Jacqueline Barrios
This resource was created from selected keywords and dates compiled from the multiple published glossaries, factsheets, publications and websites to accompany an introductory lecture on the story of Tucson’s Southside’s journey in defending and caring for their water. As you preview this information, pause for a moment and consider what emotions, concepts, emerge as important to this information? What questions arise?
Drawn to the Southside: A Comic About TCE
Arts & Culture Research Exhibition Ella Cantu, Halia Johnson, Jack Downing, Nick King, Tyler Green Drawn to the Southside: A Comic About TCE is a comic-style zine featuring visuals of significant landmarks and locations in Tucson connected to the concept of TCE and this contaminant’s infiltration into the city. The zine features timelines and interviews with influential environmentalists in the Tucson community. The goal of the zine is to tell a story that is both informative and symbolic, connecting the reader to the story of contamination and clean-up with a more emotional, yet urgent approach.
Water Whispers
Arts & Culture Research Exhibition Zoe Gyuro, Marty Weich, Megan Tierney, and Jack Carpenter Water Whispers is a digital photo collection that aims to highlight areas that caused, were impacted by, and that inspire activism for Tucson’s Southside TCE contamination. Specifically, the collection features photos demonstrating the traces of the story uncovered at Three Hangars and Southside neighborhood water wells. This photo collection will act as a visual map, using a website to create a living archive and invite viewers to engage in deeper community understanding. Water Whispers hope to contribute to ongoing efforts to rewrite narratives of the Southside as more than a site of environmental upset, but a place of deep culture, resilience, and creative expression.
Why Three Hangars?
We chose Three Hangars as one of our photography sites because not only is this where it all began but also Yolanda Herrera feels that “Students need to see where it all began”.This is also a site that can be converted into a museum or some sort of remembrance site to better tell the history of TCE water issue however, in recent years they have sealed it up which leads to the site being more contaminated because no one is able to work there. In the end this site is extremely relevant when it comes to TCE and more people should be aware of not only it’s existence but also the fact that the more this site is left to rot away and not be maintained the worse it will get.
Why Well C-078A?
We chose these neighborhood wells on West Santa Maria Street because they are in the heart of a residential area deeply impacted by the TCE contamination, originating from the Three Hangers. The wells are now inoperable and guarded by chain link fences, but the impact had on those who once depended on them and their stories remain.
River Sky is a 360° photo taken in the dry Santa Cruz River bed, a historically and environmentally significant site in Southside Tucson. A harsh desert landscape surrounds us, contrasted by a vibrant, open blue sky stretching above. Though the land appears barren, green patches of life emerge, symbolizing resilience & quiet growth. The spherical framing of the photo places our group in a circle, equally spaced, reminding us of community, connection, and shared experience. The sky dominates the frame, reinforcing the idea that we are just a small part of a much larger story- a long history of environmental, social, and cultural challenges in this area. This image reflects how standing together in a place with a difficult past can be a symbol of solidarity, awareness, and hope. Like the community of Tucson’s Southside, we are surrounded by history, hardship, and beauty, yet still looking upward and outward with purpose.
Dry Springs, Megan Tierney,2025, digital. Well C-078A, Tucson.Gated History, Marty Weich, 2025, digital. Three Hangars,Tucson.
Pollutions Gateway, Marty Weich, 2025, digital. Three Hangars,Tucson.Industrial Scars, Marty Weich, 2025, digital. Three Hangars,Tucson.
Tucson Remembers, Marty Weich, 2025, digital. Three Hangars,Tucson.
Ground Zero, Marty Weich, Marty Weich, 2025, digital. Three Hangars,Tucson.
Behind the Fence, Megan Tierney 2025, digital collage, Three Hangars, Tucson.
Echoes of the Past, Megan Tierney 2025, digital collage. Three Hangars, Tucson.
Western Water Racing, Marty Weich, 2025, polaroid. Santa Cruz River, Tucson.
West Santa Maria, Jack Carpenter2025, digital. Well C-078A, Tucson.