¡Fiesta Fotográfica: El Pueblo Celebration!

When

5 p.m. May 6, 2023

Join us on Saturday, May 06, 2023, from 5PM to 7PM for the "¡Fiesta Fotográfica: El Pueblo Celebration!" at the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center Patio & Multipurpose Room. Centerpiece to the evening is an exhibition commemorating El Pueblo's past, present, and future through photography and storytelling. Join us for a reception featuring mariachi, hors d'oeuvres, aguas, and community tabling. Welcome remarks will be given at 5:45PM. Your rsvp is kindly requested, linked here.

About the Collaboration: El Pueblo Neighborhood Center is a hub for recreational and public services, neighborly exchange and community placekeeping in Tucson’s Southside. 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. Wrapped in murals and memory and traversed by families and public servants, the center is now the focus of efforts by multiple stakeholders in the city and private sector for revitalization and reinvestment. 

In the Spring of 2023,  UArizona students in Public and Applied Humanities (PAH) 200 “Introduction to Applied Humanities - the El Pueblo Urban Humanities Studio,” in partnership with the Sunnyside Foundation and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) joined these efforts by visualizing the legacy and future of the site as part of their coursework with Dr. Jacqueline Barrios. Together with teaching partners and community storytellers, they deployed an urban humanist toolkit (case-study and archival research, site-visits, spatial ethnography, interviews and photography) to bring El Pueblo’s cultural, historical and speculative imaginaries into the public eye

A selection of the images from the El Pueblo photography and storytelling project will then be exhibited within CCP's current exhibition, Sessions on Creative Photography: Hazel Larsen Archer, through August 05, 2023. 

We would like to acknowledge funding for this project from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA);  the Marshall Foundation; the UArizona Experiential Learning Design Accelerator; UArizona Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI) Faculty Seed Grant, which supported sessions with Latinx digital humanist scholar and course artist-in-resident, Dr. Leigh-Anna Hidalgo; Arts|Humanities|Resilience Grant from UArizona College of Fine Arts (CFA) Research, Innovation & Impact (RII) and the Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR), which is providing support for our newly inducted community documentarians and artists-in-residence, Luis Gonzalez and Jessica Wolff. We want to thank community and teaching partners, collaborators and storytellers from Sunnyside Foundation; the Office of Congressman Raúl Grijalva; Nuestras Raíces Pima County Public Library (PCPL) and Frank de la Cruz-El Pueblo Public Library; Raúl Council Member Lane Santa Cruz and Ward 1; Council Member Richard Fimbres and Ward 5; Supervisor Adelita S. Grijalva - Pima County Board of Supervisors, District 5; City of Tucson Parks and Recreation, UArizona, especially the College of Humanities (COH) and the Department of Public and Applied Humanities (PAH), College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture (CAPLA), Center for Creative Photography (CCP), UArizona Libraries Special Collections. 

None of this would be possible without members of our communities who participated in our Community Reinvestment Days, site visits, storytelling panels, community photo-shoots, workshops, pin-ups and reviews, who took the time to help us learn and share the story of El Pueblo. 

Community Storytellers: Jese Aguilar, Netza Aguirre, Richard Barker, Michael Barton, Cassandra Becerra, Martha Diaz, Vanessa Gallego, Mona Grijalva,  Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Sharayah ‘Shay’ Jimenez, Yolanda Herrera, Nancy Johnson, Beki Quintero, Ruben Reyes, Lupita Robles, Alfonso Romero, Anna Sanchez, Councilmember Lane Santa Cruz, Melissa Salazar, Jesse Soto, Brianna Velador,

Sunnyside Foundation Staff:  CEO Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Soltero, Director of Operations, Veronica Cruz-Mercado, Education & Community Manager, Karla Toledo, Administrative Coordinator, Laura Corrales, Community Investment Fund Coordinator, Selina Barajas 

UArizona and Guest Instructors and Reviewers:  Mireya Ballesteros, Cara Buchanan, Michelle Nicole Boyer Kelley, Denisse Brito, Lisa Duncan, Federicco Fabbri, Dr. Leigh-Anna Hidalgo, Stephanie Husman, Dr. Meg Jackson Fox, Ashley Swinford, Juliana Tobar, Emily Weirich, Kenny H. Wong, and all the UArizona students and members of our communities who made this project come to life. 

The program for the event can be found here:
 
Media coverage of the event can be found here: 

(Left) “Photo of El Pueblo” is a photo of a historic snapshot of the El Pueblo patio found at Congressman Raύl Grijalva’s office, and is produced by PAH 200 student Neylan Jeffreyes for his final project about capturing the traces of time passing within El Pueblo. Photo Neylan Jeffreyes

(Right) “Future” is a photo capturing PAH 200 students at work conducting their community photo-shoot  at El Pueblo, produced by PAH 200 student Riley Swindall for her final project documenting the coming together this semester of two communities,  El Pueblo and her class. Photo by Riley Swindall.