Creating and Sustaining Community Partnerships in Public History: The Neighborhood History Center Model

Our poster will present the goals, challenges, and outcomes of History Cambridge's first two years of our Neighborhood History Center model, in which we selected one of Cambridge's thirteen neighborhoods to focus on each year. As our programming was upended during the COVID pandemic, we shifted our focus to better meet the needs of the Cambridge community - an effort which took on even greater importance in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the increased awareness of the Black Lives Matter Movement. One of the ways in which we chose to meet these challenges and connect to the city's diverse residents was through the creation of a Neighborhood History Center model of programming. Focusing on one neighborhood per year has resulted in new ways of viewing (hyper)local history, and has changed the way we approach both the framing of the city's history and the documentation and communication of the stories we collect. In particular, we have worked to strengthen our relationships with community groups - both historical organizations and those doing work on broader neighborhood issues. We have learned the importance of gaining the trust of individuals and organizations within a neighborhood, particularly those whose members are part of marginalized groups whose stories have not been valued by historical organizations in the past, including our own. And, as we transition from one neighborhood to the next, we have navigated the work of maintaining those relationships and preserving the stories we have collected, seeking ways to both continue our own role as memory keepers and empower the residents of those neighborhoods to carry on the work of exploring and sharing their own histories. Our Neighborhood History Center model is a work in progress, but we have learned many lessons in its first two years that we would love to share with Annual Meeting participants through a poster session.