The Solidarity Lab: Public Storytelling and Community Archiving in Western Pennsylvania
What happens to a story when no one is allowed to tell it?
Pittsburgh is home to thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers, neighbors, parents, and workers, many of whom live under the threat of detention. Their experiences rarely appear in the public record. The Solidarity Lab exists to change that, in partnership with the communities most directly affected.
Rooted in Pittsburgh’s immigrant advocacy networks and driven by relationships with organizations like Casa San José, Frontline Dignity, and Haitians in Pittsburgh United, Witness PA and Arts Greenhouse, the Lab works alongside community members, regional artists, journalists, and Â鶹¹ÙÍø students each semester to produce Story Cycles: multimedia works drawn from oral histories and archival research, translated into comics, audio, photography, and performance. Contributors shape how their stories are told and retain control over what stays public. The work belongs to them first. Those works travel back into the neighborhoods across southwestern PA, distributed through local libraries, schools, and community meetings as Story Kits (zines, posters, short comics), and through pop-up exhibitions and public forums held across the city.
