The Fight for Knowledge

Since 2011 Laura Browder and Patricia Herrera have been teaching community-based courses, using theater and museum studies to teach our students about the rich and complex history of Richmond’s fraught legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

They began by studying the educational inequities, past and present, and their work has expanded to focus on gentrification, health disparities, and the lives of civil rights activists.

About the Project —

The Fight for Knowledge focuses on living history. In partnership with students and community members, they create performances, exhibitions, and experiences to foster difficult conversations about lived inequities. Our goal is to expand the possibilities for social change through collaborative art making.

About the Collaborators —

Laura and Patricia met at the University of Richmond in 2010 and quickly realized they were destined to collaborate.

Together, they seek to bridge the gap between public histories and personal memories, to create civil rights-focused art for community audiences. Their collaboration has led to many exhibitions at The Valentine museum and a series of docudramas about gentrification, educational disparities, HIV/AIDS, segregation, a historic Black high school, and court-ordered busing.