The Memories of Migration- Oral History Workshop is the first collaboration project between Queens Library- Queens Memory Project and New New Yorkers Program. The participants start the first interview exercise by sharing their stories from the images of their earliest and recent home. Many of the participants also brought their own personal projects and ideas related with Oral History and had great conversations with Natalie Milbrodt, the Queens Memory Director and Yingwen Huang, the  Outreach Coordinator. Please see the below text for the feedback and notes from both Natalie and Yingwen.

“It was so inspiring to meet our workshop participants who all showed up with wonderful experience, talents and ideas to share.  I hope that the conversations and shared experiences from our workshop have a positive impact on the interviews and other creative projects they do in the coming months and years.  These opportunities to meet with other engaged and creative community members are priceless.” By Natalie Milbrodt

“Participants are immigrants as well as local residents were invited to share their stories and interview each other about their earliest home, reason for moving, when they realize their new felt like home, and their current home through the images they brought in. Many of them were starting their own family/community archiving project and looking to learn interviewing techniques to preserve their family stories. Some even brought in pictures for us to digitize. Participants also were able to grasp the deeper meaning of preserving family stories for the future. The techniques they learned during the workshop would help them in developing their own family/community archives. The Zhang Hongtu exhibition tour with NNY staff also allowed the participants to visually experience the artist’s archive of emotions during his transition from China to New York. We also asked participants to think about what they would ask if they could interview him.” By Yingwen.