From Which We Descend: An Archival and Oral History Workshop

Join Djali Brown-Cepeda, Cultural Preservationist and Founder/Curator of NuevaYorkinos, for a day of oral history and archiving.

What does home mean? What does it look like? When was the last time you looked through photo albums with your loved ones? Spoke with your families about your personal histories?

In this workshop, Djali Brown-Cepeda walks us through her process of listening, sharing, and archiving as a cultural preservationist and community archivist. Bridging oral history and personal family photographs and ephemera, we ensure the survival of our lineages and legacies.

In this workshop, we'll:

• discuss the importance of oral history
• pen our own stories
• scan and digitize photos and ephemera
• walk away with tools on how to be our family's archivists

Please bring:

• family photo albums
• a notebook, or laptop
• an external hard drive (USB/thumb drives are great!)

How can we honor our pasts by using the tools we have access to today? How can we reframe the way we look at our day-to-day lives as budding archivists? How can we begin cultivating memory? And from this cultivation, how can we begin to activate our relationships to memory as a vehicle for grounding, self-preservation, and understanding?

Djali Brown-Cepeda is a Capricornian cultural preservationist and visual storyteller. Rooted in the tenets of reclamation and rematriation, her work as a film and television producer centers oral tradition and lived experiences as a tool of cultural restoration. The founder of NuevaYorkinos, an oral history archive dedicated to documenting and preserving NYC's Latine and Caribbean culture and history through family photos, oral history, and ephemera, she is a book worm and self-taught public historian, with a penchant for all things red, black, and green. An Olorisha Yemayá, memory worker, alchemist. A steward of remembrance. A Mother to a Sun. An eldest daughter and vinyl collector of Caribbean, Afro Native, and Southern heritage. Fifth generation Gullah Geechee from unceded Wecquaesgeek territory in Lenapehoking (Upper Manhattan, New York City). She enjoys tending to her altars and conspiring with the Universe for all good things. You can find her annotating her books sipping on wine she usually can’t afford, or any pilsner or lager. Prefers a cup of dark roast coffee, speaking to spirit, and being barefoot on the grass. Wherever she goes, so do her ancestors.

(This is held in conjunction with , which is exhibited in the same location. You are encouraged to come and view the exhibition before or after the workshop!)

Image caption: Djali’s hands sorting through images for her show, Aquí Me Quedo. Brooklyn, 2021. By Djali Brown-Cepeda.

Host or Publisher The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural &Education Center