Past Events

Check out past workshops, presentations, lectures, and community conversations below. To stay up-to-date on Future Histories Lab events, partnerships, and workshops, subscribe to our newsletter.

All event recordings can be found on our YouTube channel here.


November 8, 2021
Walking in Place:Using AR to Recover Fillmore’s Redevelopment Histories | Michael Epstein and Tianna Bratcher 

Michael Epstein a screenwriter, journalist and pioneer in interactive documentaries. Tianna is a Black, queer, genderfluid poet, performance and teaching artist. Watch the recording here and read more about the speakers here.

November 1, 2021
Eye Zen Presents: Performing Queer History | Seth Eisen



Seth Eisen is a San Francisco-based artist creating a hybrid of live performance and visual media. He engages LGBTQ history as a living, breathing dialogue by researching lost legacies and reflecting his findings on stage. Watch the recording here and read more about the speakers here.

October 25, 2021
Marksearch: Social Practice Art | Sue Mark

Oakland-based cultural researcher Sue Mark will unpack strategies and questions surrounding Commons Archive, a creative grassroots history project she launched in 2015. Watch the recording here and read more about the speakers here.

October 11, 2021
National Parks and Regional Parks: Telling History in Parks | Kelli English and Brian Holt

Thurgood Marshall Regional Park – Home of the Port Chicago 50: Converting a Former Military Base into Public Parkland and Celebrating African-American History. Watch the recording here and read more about the speakers here.

October 4, 2021
Exploratorium: Making Exhibitions |
Sarah Seiter

How are museum exhibitions made? What are the constraints and advantages to storytelling in an institutional environment? How does something go from a big idea to a multi-part exhibit that visitors can interact with and learn from together? This week we are very lucky to have Sarah Seiter join us to share her applied approaches in the curatorial process. Watch the recording here and read more about the speaker here.

September 27, 2021 
Afro Newspaper Archive and Prelinger Archive: Making and Using Archives | Savannah Wood & Rick Prelinger

Most of the projects we will hear about throughout the colloquium takes place on-site, utilizing features of the landscape. What are other digital spaces and archives that facilitate our ability to tell stories about a particular geography? Watch the recording here and read more about the speaker here.

September 20, 2021
Future Histories Lab: Augmented Reality and Audio Tours | Susan Moffat

What resources are necessary to assemble for strong storytelling? For example, what role does archival research play in composing a story about place? Outside of the archive, what other tools of the landscape are at our disposal when working on site to tell stories about a place? How should a producer handle temporality in a dynamically changing environment or capture the attention of visitors among pre-existing installations? Watch the recording here and read more about the speaker here.

September 13, 2021
Black Liberation Walking Tour: Live and Recorded Tours | David Peters

On Juneteenth of this year, the Black Liberation Walking Tour launched in West Oakland. The project is a new walking tour, or community-led cultural asset map, of the Hoover Durant neighborhood that celebrates its multi-generational Black history and culture. David shares his experiences in curating and producing the tour and his current efforts to use the tour as part of a public mobilization strategy towards the reestablishment of the Hoover-Durant Public Library branch. Watch the recording here and read more about the speaker here.

August 30, 2021
The Story Center: Storytelling Techniques | Joe Lambert

On Monday, August 30, StoryCenter Executive Director Joe Lambert and Media Artist Brooke Hessler joins Future Histories Lab to launch our fall 2021 Colloquium: Techniques and Technologies of Place-Based Storytelling. Brooke and Joe presents from their well of experience in teaching storytelling and creating space for others to articulate stories, as well as ground us in elements of story and authorship that will serve as a foundation for the rest of the semester. Watch the recording and read more about the speakers here.

August 20, 2021
Porch Stories: Conversations About Urban Change

An architect, two theater directors, a scholar of displacement, and two Oakland community leaders joined Future Histories Lab Creative Director Susan Moffat for a wide-ranging conversation about gentrification, community agency, municipal reparations, and the power dynamics of the transitional spaces known as porches. Listen to architect June Grant; Aurora Theater Associate Artistic Director Dawn Monique Williams; Aurora Theater Artistic Director Josh Costello; University of Toronto Professor Karen Chapple; CEO of the Black Cultural Zone CDC Carolyn Johnson; Founder of the Black Liberation Walking Tour David Peters. Co-sponsored by Future Histories Lab and Aurora Theater. In association with the Aurora Theater production of Dael Orlandersmiths’ Stoop Stories. Watch the recording here.

February, 2021
Recorded Info Sessions:
2021 Summer Courses

Missed our info sessions? Watch all our summer courses info session recordings here.

January 29, 2021
From Haight to Love: Renaming an Alameda Elementary School in an Era of Racial Reckoning

On Dec. 5, 1867, California Governor Henry Huntly Haight used his inaugural speech to rail against the citizenship and voting rights of formerly enslaved Africans, Native Americans, and to oppose immigration from Asia. On December 5, 2017, 150 years later, Rasheed Shabazz contacted the Haight Elementary School PTA and encouraged them to initiate the process to rename Haight School. A year and a half later, the Alameda school board voted unanimously to adopt the name: Love Elementary School.  Watch the event recording here.

NOV 6, 2020
Looking Back, Seeing the Future: Photographer Janet Delaney’s Eye on South of Market

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In conversation with Future Histories Lab creative director Susan Moffat, Delaney talks about the meaning of a personal archive, the nature of time and seeing, and the history of a neighborhood that has become a Bay Area icon of gentrification and displacement. Learn More.

OCT 23, 2020
Displacement Stories: Lessons from a Community History Harvest

In this discussion, Dr. Rebecca S. Wingo (Director of Public History, University of Cincinnati) “lift the hood” on the Remembering Rondo History Harvest, outline key components to successful community-led engagement, and reveal the lessons she learned from missteps and planning errors. Watch the recording here.


View other past events here.