Houston Arts and Media Gets Grant For Oral History Project

Houston, TX - October 7, 2007 - Houston Arts and Media's oral history project, called Neighbor to Neighbor, has received a generous United Way of Greater Houston Community Building Grant that will take it into Phase Two of the citywide project which has been collecting the memories of longtime Houstonians. About 50 hours of digital recordings from Phase One were donated in April 2007 to the Houston Public Library's Houston Metropolitan Research Center and to Rice University's Woodson Research Center for use by future researchers.

The recording of these interviews started on a small scale in June 2006. The organizers are very pleased with the results. HAM President Mike Vance explains: "We wanted the stories of Houstonians from every walk of life, not just the best known. So far we've talked to people from all over town, East End, Heights, North Side, River Oaks, and from railroad workers, printers and teachers to doctors and lawyers. Without exception, people's eyes lit up when they shared their early memories. What we're getting surpasses my greatest expectations."

This United Way of Greater Houston Community Building Grant assures that N2N will continue to grow, gathering hundreds more hours of interviews donated to these research libraries as HAM enlists and trains even more local volunteers in the skills they use to collect oral histories from their longest tenured neighbors. The project also includes the collection and digitization of vintage and modern photographs and memorabilia, to preserve the smaller, more personal histories that are lacking in the published works on our city's past. There is a sense of urgency in the work on N2N as our neighborhood landmarks are vanishing under new development, and our oldest living witnesses are being lost to time.

The histories, to be published over the next several years in more than a dozen volumes as The Houston Neighborhoods Series, will give current and future residents of these areas the story of how their neighborhood developed; where their predecessors shopped, ate and played; what people of note lived nearby; and what businesses inhabited current buildings and sites. The material gleaned from these interviews will also lead to books such as Historic Schools of Harris County which will be the first book released in the series.

Neighborhood to Neighbor is a large undertaking, requiring the efforts of scores of Houstonians. Houston Arts and Media is looking to engage its neighbors in this undertaking, so that we can compile the necessary pictures and interviews to preserve these important stories. Parties interested in supporting these efforts through donations or volunteerism should contact Houston Arts and Media via e-mail at info@houstonartsandmedia.org.

About Houston Arts and Media:
Houston Arts and Media's purpose is to produce educational and historical film, video and books. The work will be done by members of Houston's creative, educational, research and production communities. Houston Arts and Media is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization.

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