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DOWNTOWN AUSTIN ALLIANCE: OUR FUTURE 35

In the midst of the pandemic and in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, I was approached to work on an animated piece for Our Future 35—a community-centered initiative to build new city infrastructure and co-create public spaces over the I-35 highway in Downtown Austin. The initial phase of the project was to gather community feedback regarding the project. Also key to the initiative was to educate the public about the history of segregation in Austin, and how the construction of i35 was a key part of that shameful part of our city’s history.

I initially worked with animation studio Shiny Object Studio and consultancy Public City to create the animated piece. Throughout the process I learned a lot about the rich cultural history as well as the history of organized segregation, raising my personal awareness and becoming vested in the initiative to right some historic wrongs.

In August 2022 I was excited to engage with the initiative again at a community information and input event held at Native Hostel. In addition to capturing the speakers, I ran a station where I captured, in real-time, the ideas that Austinites had around the use of the reclaimed Cap and Stitch land. For inspiration, poet Zai Sadler gave us some poetry and community leader Kenneth Thompson gave us some historical and social context. We were super excited to see how our partners and clients used our drawings across the media landscape.

The images captured in our brainstorming session.

The 2020 animation used to introduce the initiative at the Native Hostel.

Still from the animation used as backgrounds on the website.

Using images generated at the community feedback meeting used for polls in social media.