Neighborhoods and Shared Memories

C&G Partners was commissioned by the El Paso Museum of History to help create a unique, constantly changing and adaptable exhibition that explores the evolution of the city’s communities and culture.

In a way, the object collection here is “community-sourced:” the objects come directly from the members of the communities being celebrated. Neighborhoods and Shared Memories uses a constantly growing archive of oral histories, artifacts, images and other memorabilia, all sourced from the communities of El Paso itself. The exhibit is a fluid, interactive ‘building block’ environment, dedicated to two of the city’s 200 neighborhoods at a time, and changing out every year until all the communities are featured. (The first two neighborhoods, Chihuahuita and El Segundo Barrio, were the first two neighborhoods of the city, chronologically speaking.) In this way, the exhibit is more than a museum project: it becomes a way to bring communities together and increase civic engagement. The project includes multiple digital screens with photographic slideshows, each curated by neighborhood residents; a reconfigurable, large-scale system of interlocking frames that create moveable, modular audio theaters for groups of visitors; and an interactive map that lets users watch El Paso evolve over time. Web-based interactive stations let visitors browse the entire community-sourced collection and provides a place for ongoing donations to this “community-sourced” exhibit.