Liberation Labyrinth
In 2024, The Descendants Project, in partnership with the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies and Design Jones, received a Re:Generation grant through Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio dedicated to advancing justice by reimagining monuments as places for belonging, learning, and healing.
Sites across southern Louisiana feature the glorified remains of slavery and plantation economy through tourist destinations and the petrochemical plants along River Road. However, few public spaces are dedicated to the stories of descendants’ stories of freedom, resistance, and resilience spanning many generations.
The Liberation Labyrinth will serve as a reimagined physical space that uplifts and celebrates liberation efforts, struggles, and victories of the Black communities of Southern Louisiana. It will serve as a meditation ground, that focuses on Black joy and healing amidst historical and contemporary trauma faced by local residents and descendant communities.
Most importantly, the Liberation Labyrinth will be co-created with descendant communities to emphasize Black agency through storytelling, featuring collective memory, history, and folklore.
The Descendants Project asks for your creativity and input by participating in the Liberation Labyrinth Community Days which provide spaces to design layouts of the Labyrinth and gardens, tell your story through oral history sessions, and work alongside archeologists and historians to piece together historical narratives across centuries. The ideas generated from both in-person and digital events will provide a holistic blueprint for a space of freedom, agency, and remembrance.
Want to Help Design the Liberation Labyrinth?
The Descendants Project would like you to share your ideas, hopes, and dreams for the Liberation Labyrinth. We will host a series of design workshops both virtually and in person in the near future. In the meantime, click the button below to create and design your vision for the Labyrinth.
