Faces of Fox Point

Originating as a project in a Brown University course, Oral History and Community Memory, Faces of Fox Point focuses on the historic Fox Point neighborhood, home to many students and professors of the University. Traditionally an ethnically diverse neighborhood housing first-and-second-generation Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants, Fox Point now hosts primarily young, college-educated families.

To understand these social changes and uncover the rich history of the neighborhood, students embarked on the Faces of Fox Point project, interviewing current and past residents, uncovering historical photographs, and collecting memories from those who lived and worked in Fox Point during their lifetime.

Graduate students then took on the task of sharing the findings:

• The “Faces of Fox Point” photograph and story exhibit was installed in the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School to share findings with community members.
• Brown students led a workshop for six graders at Vartan Gregorian.  Students added to the exhibit with their own photographs and learned to docent the exhibit, providing tours for other students and community members.
• After exploring the extensive photo collection of local historian Lou Costa, students helped the historian make a Flickr site to share his work with the public, where  ommunity members can “tag” photos with their own memories and add photos.
• Students also created an interactive mapping website to share  the interviews, photo discovery, and memory collection. The students created “Memory Maps” from five of the interviews, including a short biography of the interviews, including a short biography of the interviewee and a map displaying locations tagged with several stories and photos.