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Artist Liz Miller lived and worked in Parkville with the Parkville Senior Center from May to September 2000 as a part of a national program, "Artists and Communities: America Creates for the New Millenium." Together Liz and the seniors used new technologies to reconstruct and describe how Parkville, an industrial neighborhood, has changed over the last one hundred years. They created this web-site, a quilt, a video to accompany the quilt and a series of 3-minute portraits that were screened at outdoor projections throughout the community as well as before feature films in the Real Art Ways Cinema. The millennium quilt was hand sewn by master quilters at the Parkville Senior Center and the video was produced with the help of community members who contributed stories, photographs, and technical assistance. As an additional component of the project, seniors have guided students through the neighborhood using the black and white photographs selected for the quilt, as a reference to document Parkville 2000. The process has fostered inter-generational and inter-ethnic dialogues. In coordination with the Hartford Public Library, a video screening with members of the Hispanic and Parkville Senior Centers has resulted in a rich exchange of stories about ethnic origins and ongoing challenges for the community. The project has become a vehicle to collect stories and to foster a rich dialogue about what we can learn from the past and how we might construct our future. |