Public History of the Twin Cities: shadow puppets, zines, mobile museums, storymaps, oral histories and more
Cover of the Cedar-Riverside history zine, part 1, 2023
West Bank Community Archive: mobile museums, zines, and more
I work with the West Bank Community Archive project (through the West Bank Business Association) and have also worked with the Heritage Studies and Public History program at the University of Minnesota and with Our Streets MN on Cedar Riverside history and celebration. With Our Streets MN I created a mobile museum for Cedar Fest in 2023, and a history zine based on oral history interviews and archival research. I continue to work on the archive as a contract public historian through 2026. Click below to see the zine and archive in progress.
Cedar Cultural Center theater with Jessie in front of an overhead projector with a shadow puppet of north america in the ice age on the screen: Cedar Riverside Time Machine Part 1, 2024
Time Machines: neighborhood history variety shows
Seeking a more engaging form of public history storytelling, I created my first shadow puppet history show at the Cedar Cultural Center in March 2024, opening for Morgan Adamson’s “Brutal Utopias” about the Riverside Plaza towers. This series has continued in North Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Dinkytown, and has returned to Cedar Riverside. In 2026 I am collaborating with Kim Boustead to create a beaver history shadow puppet show.
Interviewing a participant at the “Creatures of the Night” about her memories of night moves in the I-94 corridor, an event at the Bell Museum Star Party, September 2025. (We are in the “Climate Chaser” interview booth, a little boler trailer used by Backyard Phenology)
Oral History
Oral history interviews are the backbone of my work with multiple Twin Cities history projects, including:
-94 Stories (the history of people living along the I-94 corridor)
-Bring Back 6th (the history of Olson Memorial Highway and the Black and Jewish neighborhood it displaced)
-West Bank Community Archive
-Backyard Phenology