Once upon a time, stories about our families, their adventures, our origins, and history would be passed down at the family dinner table. It was pleasant and, although memorable, it wasn’t a perfect system.
When elders die, they take an enormous amount of family, community, and institutional memories and information with them. There’s an African proverb that says when an elder passes away, an entire library burns down.
Their death leaves more than a hole in hearts and lives. It also leaves gaps in our knowledge of our collective past, our understanding of the present, and sometimes, some vital information we need to move forward into the future.
Their knowledge and memories, combined with ours, are a part of what is needed to create a well-rounded picture of our communities. Take New Bedford and its surrounding communities for example.
It, according to the New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Curator of Social History, Dr. Akeia de Barros Gomes, “is an extraordinary place of infinite possibilities where different paths from around the world have intersected and defined the city’s character.” Dr. Gomes heads up the Museum’s Common Ground: A Community Mosaic project.
The project’s goal is to collect and share the stories of those who live or have lived in the Greater New Bedford community – in their own words. Now is a great time for current residents, transplants, and anyone with ties to the area to “lend their voice to the collective story” through this project!
The New Bedford Whaling Museum’s Common Ground: A Community Mosaic project is easily accessible online and allows you to contribute information, stories, memories, and history whether submitted in writing or audio or video recording.
The project is also a great opportunity for participants to share their photos. The photos could be of people, such as family and friends, or of places or objects such as possessions from personal items to automobiles!
And the best part, it’s easy to get involved, participate, and share both direct and passed down memories. Visit CommonGroundMosaic.org and participate from the comfort of your own home, or contact Dr. Gomes at stories@whalingmuseum.org to set up an interview to share your story.
Generational Knowledge
Get your older family members involved. This is a great opportunity for individuals and families to communicate, collaborate, and contribute to this initiative, which will culminate in an exhibition to share these lived experiences.
There’s a lot of history to cover, from the area’s “beginnings as a part of Wampanoag territory to its early Azorean and Cape Verdean immigrants, and more recent Central American and Caribbean immigrants.” What stories of migration, ethnic traditions, and history can you share?
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Dr. Gomes says, “Like a mosaic, this upcoming exhibition will highlight how the diverse identities and individual stories intersect to create a common ground.”
Here are some of topics to help guide you.
Share neighborhood stories about where you now or once called home and what’s special about it. Try telling a story as told to you by your elders. Everyone’s family histories and stories are relevant and should be told for the record of their migration to the city, for example, and their family’s experiences over the years. Or what about how you or how your life has been influenced by the arts, food, and culture?
The project has been underway since 2019 with an exhibit planned for 2022. Even though 2022 seems so far away, the pandemic has offered us the gift of time. In our confinement, we have had more time to review our lives, to invest in sharing our memories and information, and to reminisce on our past and collective history.
This opportunity is now made more poignant by loss and offers us a chance to memorialize and archive the stories of those we’ve lost to Covid-19. The project will continue to collect these collective stories to tell and share when Common Ground wraps up the project with an exhibition in 2022 at the Museum.
