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This Saturday, April 19 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. in the Cultural House (37 Macalester St.), the semester-long work of the Department of Multicultural Life’s Cultural House Staff culminates with the exhibition of “Home is Where the HeArt Is,” a collection of collaborative arts projects that explores what home and family mean for members of the Macalester Community.

“The first Sunday back from break we all gathered for dinner in the C-House and did some hardcore brainstorming,” said Cultural House staff member Kelsey Larson ’16. “As we explored the topics and ideas we were all interested in, we identified some main themes and decided on home and family as our theme for the semester.”

Demetrius Colvin, Assistant Director of the Lealtad-Suzuki Center, helped the entire staff develop ideas for the event. They broke into four teams to work on four individual projects within the larger exhibit.

Elise Ong ’16 and Abaki Beck ’15 worked on “Pass it On!,” a community sketchbook project that asked participants to “reflect on meanings of family and home through visual arts or written word.” The project aims to engage the campus community and encourage spaces where people can share stories that may go unheard.

Emily Walls ’16 and Anna Nassiff ’14 developed an audio stories project to illustrate how the different families of Macalester students, staff and professors exist in our world. They hope that “these stories remind you of the many different ways you engage with family and home and your own personal story.”

Larson and Steven Sha ’14 asked Macalester community members to submit photos of who they consider to be their family. Captions of these photos respond to, among other prompts, “What is your idea of family?” and “In what ways does society consider your family ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal?’”

Finally, Aparna Mazumdar ‘16 and Charlie Birge ‘15 collected wipe board snapshots, some of which you see here. They asked the students holding the wipe boards, “What does family mean to you?” Some participants also wrote about how they differed from their family.

You don’t want to miss this eye-opening exhibit about the often untold stories of Macalester.

Photos courtesy Charlie Birge.