Heat Stories: Memory, Place, and a Changing Climate

How do we tell stories about extreme heat and climate change in New York City? And who tells these stories?

Join Queens Memory and community partners from the Melting Meltropolis project to learn more about how communities are documenting local climate impacts related to urban heat. Listen to  stories from across the boroughs about how our neighborhoods are changing and adapting to longer and hotter summers, share your own experiences, and reflect on how these everyday stories enter our collective memory.

The evening will begin with a tour of the boathouse (weather permitting, we may go outside!), followed by a writing prompt and time to explore pop-up stations focusing on oral histories, archival photographs and snapshots, and art-making hosted by the Melting Metropolis NYC partners, including Queens College, CUNY, Urban Archive, King Manor Museum, Newtown Creek Alliance, and resident partners from the Lower East Side.

Melting Metropolis is a Wellcome-funded project exploring how Londoners, New Yorkers and Parisians have thought and felt about heat and its impact on their health. 

This event is part of a year-long public programming series with the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University, exploring the relationships between place, memory, and oral history through a series of site-specific oral history events. From the Lower East Side to Long Island City, from the domino table to the community center meeting room, we will experience how oral histories live in places and communities. 

Beverages and light bites will be served.

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Host or Publisher Oral History Master of Arts at Columbia University