HERitage
- Khayla Saunders
- Historic Preservation, Weitzman School of Design (PennDesign)
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Student Creative Production Grant
HERitage Oral History Project by Khayla Saunders.
HERitagebegins with our genealogy as Black women in America. Starting with an oral history project and then translating it into various art mediums to visually contextualize short stories rooted in first-hand interviews. The assigned HERitage of Blackness within white America only equates to our enslavement. One that often negates the individuals that came from our forced migration. Through our triumph, we learned how to express ourselves through art. With this grant, Khayla Saunders and her collaborators hope to shed light and reflect the mirror on the Black womb responsible for the creativity over generations within our nation’s southern region.
Through this grant, we plan to document our history on our terms and encourage others to do the same. This project will become a catalyst for everyone, particularly Black people in America to sit and reflect on our legacy. One that was documented for us by us. For if our past is not fully contextualized it will always impact our future understanding of who we are and where we come from. Although the women we plan to interview may not be biologically related to each person, they still represent different areas within the nation of who we all come from. This project will champion Black people contacting their roots and celebrating Black heritage from all corners of the nation, creating a boarder understanding of who we are artistically.