TASTE BUD MEMORIES, a film by Özlem Ayse Özgür | 2018 The social act of eating is part of how we become human. If learning to eat is learning to become a human being, perhaps learning to eat together is learning to become a community. “Taste Bud Memories” is a documentary film focusing on local … Read more
Confianza en la Frontera: A Cultural Glimpse at the Nogales Produce Industry, Nicholas Hartmann (January 2019) The study looks at the produce industry in Nogales, Arizona, where generations of families have passed on knowledge and practices about transporting, storing, and marketing Mexican-grown vegetables in the United States. An occupational folklore, the study uses interviews with … Read more
(2022-2023) In Spring 2022 the City of Tucson’s Mayor and City Council adopted the Thrive in the ’05 Transformation Plan, the culmination of a three-year effort to engage a 2.3-square mile subregion of the 85705 zip code in a place-based, community centered collaboration of businesses, community organizations, and residents. SFA was one of many partners … Read more
(2020-2023)A three-year effort initiated by the Ford Foundation in partnership with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, Borealis Philanthropy, and the Center for Cultural Power, this Initiative is supporting storytelling efforts along the US-Mexico border into to penetrate attentions and expand perceptions about the border region and migration, … Read more
SFA worked with Yaqui and Yoeme communities in Sonora and Arizona to explore connections between the cultivation and preparation of wheat and the tribe’s resiliency and cultural preservation. We assisted communities in developing a strategic plan for its economic recovery using oral histories, test planting sites, and artisanal cooking workshops.
La Doce Barrio Foodways Project was yearlong project along the food corridor of Tucson’s South 12th Ave—known as “La Doce.” It revealed the importance of local knowledge and food heritage to community cohesion and health and the potential for future community-based economic development and local governance.
BorderLore is SFA’s free online journal dedicated to documenting, sharing, and elevating folklife in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Published six times per year and reaching more than 9,000 subscribers, the journal covers the full range of living cultural practice in our region: foodways, music and dance, visual and verbal arts, ceremony, occupational traditions, ecology, and the borderlands experience in all its complexity.
BorderLore articles have been assigned as classroom reading at the University of Arizona and cited by journalists, researchers, artists, and policy advocates as a trusted record of regional culture.
The End of Life: Continuum (EOL) projects share cultural knowledge about traditions, expressions, and practices associated with end of life, grief, mourning and death in Southern Arizona’s folk, ethnic, occupational, faith-based and alternative communities.