Collective Memory and Collage Workshop

Reneiss Ilisha Garcia leads a Collective Memory and Collage Workshop at the George Washington Carver Genealogy Center on Saturday, September 5, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM. The session is built around two things: interviewing your family members and making a collage to honor your family legacy. It's a hands-on afternoon of talking with the people who came before you and turning those stories into something you can hold.

Garcia is a Black-Mexican-American writer of Indigenous descent, an artist-scholar, a memory worker, and a community healing facilitator. She created An Ode to Our Grandmothers, an intergenerational storytelling and preservation project that documents the lives and legacies of women elders through descendant-led oral histories, poetry, and visual art. The project centers the voices and cultural contributions of women whose lives have often been overlooked. Her work is committed to preserving stories, strengthening intergenerational bonds, and cultivating spaces where memory becomes a source of belonging, healing, and liberation.

The venue is an East Austin institution that preserves and exhibits African American material culture, history, and aesthetic expression, framing the global contributions of Black people through local stories. It offers free admission, rotating art galleries, and four permanent exhibits, along with culture and arts classes. Its Genealogy Center has provided free genealogy databases and workshops for 93 years.

If you've been meaning to ask your elders about their lives but haven't found the right moment, this is a good excuse to do it. You'll spend the afternoon interviewing family and then arranging those memories into a collage. The workshop runs from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM on Saturday, September 5, at the George Washington Carver Genealogy Center, 1163 Angelina Street, Austin, TX 78702.