Mapping Prejudice

Grantor: 
Minnesota State Network Fund of The Minneapolis Foundation.
Grantee: 
Denise Pike and Maggie Mills
Project Leader: 
Denise Pike
Project Duration: 
May 20 2019 to Mar 3 2020
Project Description: 
Development of Displaced--a multimedia installation on the history racial exclusion in Southwest Minneapolis--into a traveling exhibit with a wraparound curriculum that could engage K-12 students and community groups. The exhibit will use traditional exhibit panels and an interactive digital story map to illuminate how the southwest corner of Minneapolis was transformed into an all-white enclave.

The exhibit will use visuals and interactive digital resources to show how Dakota lands were acquired by the federal government, settled by a racially-diverse group of newcomers and ultimately re-constituted as a space for white people by the middle of the twentieth century.

The exhibit, digital story map and curriculum will be designed to catalyze community conversations that can lead the community in the process of remembering and reckoning with our collective past. To address contemporary injustice, we need --in the words of the author Edgar Villaneuva--to use history to address “the dark realities of what led us to this imbalance in the first place.”
 
The foundation for this work has been laid, thanks to the Linden Hills Library, which commissioned the four panels at the core of Displaced. The funds from the Minnesota Independent Scholars Forum would allow the Pike and Mills to research and fabricate the panel that will make this installation into a traveling exhibit; to research and build the digital map; develop the community learning simulation that can be used in conjunction with the exhibit and write the curriculum resources for K-12 educators.