Perhaps the residency by Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu best exemplifies how enabling an artist to undertake research key to her own work can simultaneously allow the Walker to more deeply engage new populations in our community while developing educational strategies that can be applied to a broader audience. Inspired by her interest in map-making and urban planning as well as the recent increase of Somali immigrants to the Twin Cities, Mehretu shaped a yearlong interactive project involving 30 teens of East African descent. The students received tools such as cameras, journal books, audio recorders, and maps to help them chronicle and reflect upon this place they now call home. The poster announcing the project and calling for participants stated in three languages: “Minneapolis and St. Paul are East African cities. Today, more than 50,000 East Africans live in the Twin Cities. You are not an immigration statistic; you have a unique point of view . . . would you like to tell your story?” More than 600 photographs and many hours of recorded stories detailing these young people’s experiences as immigrants, refugees, and survivors of war are now part of the permanent collection of the Hennepin History Center. The curator there said this was the best collection of material about new immigrants’ lives that the museum has received. Clearly, storytelling is a natural link to the communities we wish to serve.

In addition, we shared Mehretu’s project with 80 teachers in a recent conference—organized in partnership with the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Global Studies and the Perpich Center for Arts Education—called Connecting Stories: Globalism and Interdisciplinary Education. We discovered that many teachers are eager to adapt the students’ process of self-ethnography for their classrooms. One wrote, “The concept of the conference was so refreshing since we were able to explore what is beyond the traditional boundaries of formal education. This is a topic that desperately needs to be revisited again and again.”