Islands of the Past: Digitizing Memories at Orange County Historical Parks

FAIN: PY-234572-16

County of Orange-Orange County Community Resources/ OC Parks (Irvine, CA 92602-2304)
Justin Sikora (Project Director: June 2015 to February 2018)

A series of public programs and digitization workshops staged across four historical parks in Orange County, California: Yorba Cemetery, Old Orange County Courthouse, Heritage Hill Historical Park, and Arden: Helena Modjeska Historic House and Gardens. Utilizing the entire Orange County park network as a platform for outreach, the applicant would team with independent consultant Justin Sikora and his staff to collect and digitize material gathered from participants for storage and online access at the Online Archive of California. Public displays of collected artifacts would be presented at selected sites across the Orange County park system. Programs would include training workshops, an exhibit of photographs from the Orange County Register, a lecture by historian Ann Forsyth, and two concluding events at Yorba Cemetery that would feature slideshows of the community’s digital heritage.

The project will explore a part of Orange County communities' history by hosting historical events at OC Parks historical facilities to gather historical photos, documents, oral histories and artifacts for digitizing. Event programming will include workshops, lectures, exhibits and community conversations to bring to life Orange County's history during the height of suburban development.