For years, TAVP has been at the forefront of a growing movement to document, archive, and share the stories of people that have been directly impacted by state violence. This work is more important than ever. This year, in Texas, 385 people have died in prisons. 60 people have died in jails. 14 people have died in for-profit private prisons. 88 people have been killed in officer-involved shootings. 10 people have been executed by the state.
Beginning on #GivingTuesday, we hope to raise $5,000 in end-of-year donations to continue our work documenting the impacts of police violence, in-custody deaths, and the death penalty on individuals, families, and communities. This money will all go towards our core programmatic areas: memory work, narrative research, multimedia storytelling, and trainings and education.
MEMORY WORK
As a community-based archive, we preserve the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people directly impacted by violence in Texas. In addition to our digital archive of stories, we preserve photographs, artwork, correspondence, case files, and other ephemera. We collaborate with our record creators to ensure this memory work is done responsibly and inclusively. Our collection is housed at the Human Rights Documentation Initiative, a post-custodial archive at the University of Texas at Austin.
NARRATIVE RESEARCH
Through our Life and Death in a Carceral State: Narratives of Loss and Survivaldocumentation project, we have conducted hundreds of hours of oral history interviews with people directly impacted by murder, police shootings, in-custody deaths, mass incarceration and the death penalty. We encourage narrators to share their stories in their own words and in their own way, without fear of judgement or reprisal. If you are interested in sharing your story, please contact us.
MULTIMEDIA STORYTELLING
We collaborate with artists, activists, narrators, and writers to share compelling narratives from our archive through publications, podcasts, documentaries, and public art projects. Last year, we published the first volume in our Life and Death in a Carceral State booklet series. This year, we will publish the second and third volumes, which focus on death penalty stories and prisoner art, essays, and poetry.
TRAININGS AND EDUCATION
We regularly lead trainings on conducting oral history interviews in the aftermath of violence and trauma; planning community oral history projects; operating audio-visual equipment; and creating digital multimedia for social change. We also work with educators across the US to teach students about documenting violence; public history; community archival practice; and trauma-centered narrative research.
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