After rounds of interviews with the who’s who of downtown, extensive research in the archives at UNLV, and several days of shooting footage on East Fremont, my team and I realized that we needed a radical way to go beyond the typical “Paradise Lost” story about downtown’s history based on the way that native Las Vegans remember it, and to stimulate a sense of local ownership in the project that would allow it to transcend a mere one-directional marketing campaign.
Inspired by the story of the Las Vegas Community Healing Garden and several participatory documentary projects around the world, we proposed the creation of a community storytelling platform and a series of short documentary films that would not only capture hidden local perspectives and experiences of downtown, but that also empower Las Vegans of diverse backgrounds to craft a collective story about who they are and who they want to be.