What does it mean to care for a place? Stories South of 22nd SS22.ST is a digital hub featuring an ongoing collaboration between Sunnyside Foundation (SF), whose mission centers on service to Tucson’s Southside and the University of Arizona, working to bring the Southside’s cultural, historical and speculative imaginaries into the public eye.
This site hopes to showcase what re-investment by and for the community looks like on the ground. Together with stakeholders, the collaboration results in an ongoing portfolio of exchanges that SS22.ST documents, including site-specific courses, community storytelling, arts and culture activations and creative making projects that narrate the treasures Southside holds, the caretaking its residents embody and the changes they seek to manifest. Drawing from a blended “urban humanities” research toolkit from urban planning, design and the humanities, these project build on case studies, visual literacy, archival research, mapping/site plans, site visits, community storytelling, spatial ethnography, pin-ups, community photo-shoots, image co-creation, co-curation, modeling, and other methods to bring the stories South of 22nd to life.
The heart of the Southside. Beginning in 2023, Sunnyside Foundation (SF), began directing reinvestment energies toward reactivating El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, a Southside hub for public services, neighborly exchange and community place-keeping in the area and beyond. Located at the intersection of Irvington & Sixth, it is adjacent to the Laos Transit center and the Tucson Rodeo Grounds, houses such key Tucson Chicano cultural landmarks as the Frank De La Cruz Public Library and the headquarters of US Congressman Raúl Grijalva.
A native Tucsonese, Liz Soltero has decades of experience serving local communities through city governance, academia, and public library administration. Liz is the CEO of Sunnyside Foundation. Sunnyside Foundation is committed to investing in projects rooted in courage, community, equity and imagination in Tucson's southside. Throughout her professional career and community leadership, she has dedicated her time to co-developing community-centered projects and relations to promote broad educational opportunities. Liz holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mexican American Studies and a Master’s of Library Science, MLS, from the University of Arizona. She serves on local boards attending to the needs of libraries, students, & families and advocating for mobility justice. Liz believes in public service, shared leadership, and in the power of community. She is an ardent community advocate who is dedicated to cultivating and sustaining strong community relations and to working from community strengths to meet community needs.
Selina Barajas
Selina Barajas is a fourth-generation Tucsonan and a proud graduate of the University of Arizona and UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning master’s program. She is deeply committed to environmental justice, working to ensure that historically disadvantaged groups have equitable access to healthy environments and green spaces. Selina is the founder of Reinas Who Hike, a collective based in Southern Arizona that promotes outdoor activities, particularly hiking, among women of color. This group focuses on creating safe, inclusive spaces for women to re:connect with nature, enhance their physical and mental well-being, and foster empowerment through outdoor adventures. Through organized hikes and free events, Reinas Who Hike encourages participants to reclaim their relationship with nature and challenge the historical underrepresentation of people of color in outdoor recreation.
Kenny Wong
Kenny Wong is a lecturer in the University of Arizona School of Landscape Architecture and Planning. He carries experience in the diverse facets of housing design and policy, with a concentration on affordable housing and community development. Driven by commitments to spatial and social justice, he has practiced as a housing advocate, multifamily designer, nonprofit developer, financial consultant, policy analyst and academic researcher between Southern California and the Oakland-East Bay Area. He was most recently the assistant director of design research at cityLAB, where his research explored connecting schools with housing development in the School Lands for Housing project and envisioned future scenarios of housing for the California 100. Creative design research and collaborative multidisciplinary approaches are crucial to his investigative and problem-solving methods as a teaching collaborator and former student in the Urban Humanities Initiative.
Jacqueline Barrios
Jacqueline Barrios is an assistant professor of Public and Applied Humanities at the University of Arizona. Her scholarship focuses on urbanism and narrative, with concentrations in the global 19th century, the contemporary Southwest city, and literature. Dr. Barrios specializes in the emerging field of urban humanities, activating stories of place and culture in interdisciplinary, socially engaged projects through a wide array of partnerships within the public humanities. She has curated and implemented multi-format exhibitions on urban histories, literature and experimental spatial design methods at multiple sites (public schools, galleries, universities, community centers) and across multiple platforms (installations, film festivals, sonic archives). She co-leads the inaugural Urban Humanities Network for global scholars and practitioners engaged in spatial transdisciplinary research, co-founded the DIGITAL SALON with UCLA’s Urban Humanities Initiative, and most recently, is involved in creative place-keeping initiatives centered around the historic El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and Tucson’s Southside.
Website design: Josh Nelson
Josh Nelson is an interdisciplinary designer working across web design, printmaking, jewelry, and spatial systems. With a background in architecture and urban design from UCLA, he was influenced by cross-disciplinary collaboration through the Urban Humanities Initiative. His practice takes a systemic approach, designing the platforms and processes that enable ongoing experimentation, research, and development. A central focus of his work is the relationship between materiality, light, and perception. This plays out in projects such as a dynamic billboard structure for West Hollywood, an all-clear mobile greenhouse cabinet for tropical plants, and an exhibition of glowing inflatable wells exploring urban design responses to natural disasters. His current studio, worksheet.xyz, serves as a platform for this evolving work—developing mica-based inks that shift color with light angle, investigating the contradictions between infrastructure and nature in the California landscape with the aim of making it visible in order to invite critique and reimagination.
Videographer: Raúl Netza Aguirre
Netza Aguirre is a multimedia producer for the Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva. He is born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, a University of Arizona graduate, with a passion for agriculture and videography
Artist Collaboration: Jessica Wolff
Jessica Wolff is a Mexican-American artist, born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. She is interested in exploring family, community, and culture, especially regarding the ways in which they can become complicated when mixed. Jessica creates work primarily through photography, often changing techniques and exploring non-traditional approaches or mixed-media, reflecting the constant change and evolution that a community experiences. Jessica is an alum of the Sunnyside Unified School District (SUSD) and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in May 2023. Jessica was introduced to photography from her mother and took her first course while a student at Desert View High School. She recently accepted a position as an art teacher at Los Ninos Elementary School and intends to continue her practice in Tucson.