Research-Creation in Action: Building a Community Roadmap for Memory, Education, and Digital Access

Over the past year, research activities with the Santa Marta (in Cabañas, El Salvador) community have focused on strengthening community-led memory work through collaborative research-creation. This has included documenting priorities for a Casa de la Memoria [Memory House] that is both physical and digital, advancing the organization of testimonies, photographs, and music for long-term preservation, and identifying opportunities for youth involvement in documentation and digital skills. Community discussions also highlighted the importance of mapping and caring for sites of memory, rivers, hills, caves, paths, and community spaces, so future generations can connect landscape to testimony through commemorations, plaques, and digital routes or maps. Across these activities, the work emphasizes intergenerational learning and participatory cultural practices (theater, music, embroidery, storytelling) as essential ways memory remains alive and accessible within and beyond Santa Marta, including for diaspora communities.

The Surviving Memory in Postwar El Salvador research initiative is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Western University,  Ferris State University, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Research Fund.