This exhibition is made possible in part thanks to the generous support of ArtsWave and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Illustrated Memoir Project: This is How I Know the World

Maketank Inc’s Illustrated Memoir Project engages young English Language Learners to tell true stories from their lives in words and images. This work centers the lived experience and unique ways of knowing the world of immigrant and refugee youth as well as young people born in the US to parents who had recently immigrated here. The aim of the Illustrated Memoir Project is to increase intellectual self-trust, multi-modal literacies, critical thinking, and social emotional learning in the participants and through sharing these stories to increase empathy and understanding of immigrant experience and foster a more welcoming global community. The images in this exhibit are original paintings and drawings from project participants in the Cincinnati area from the past five years.

Dr. Kate Carlier Currie is the executive director of Maketank Inc. and leads the Illustrated Memoir Project. She spent many years as a working artist, pastry chef, and small business owner before shifting her focus to working with young people. Kate co-founded Maketank Inc in 2013 to support the Oxford Kinetics Festival and associated out-of-school time programming using art and creative making to engage students with STEM and STEAM concepts. She currently leads the Illustrated Memoir Project, working with English Language Learner high school students to facilitate their creation of illustrated memoirs. Kate’s past research has focused on memoir as a means to increase intellectual self-trust and self-efficacy for new arrival students. In 2023 Kate was honored to be named Community Ally of the Year by the ELL Foundation and to be named a finalist for the Upstander Award by the Nancy and David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center. She is a current fellow with the Hello Neighbor Network.