A Call to Action: Documenting Santa Barbara’s Art & Activism

Since March of 2020, we have been challenged and reshaped — as a community and individuals — by our experiences living through the COVID-19 pandemic and renewal of abolitionist and anti-racist activist movements. Amidst the shift to remote learning and working, UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections initiated two ongoing projects: the Santa Barbara Black Lives Matter Community Archives and the COVID-19 Community Archives.

UCSB Library is proud to present a new exhibition consisting of works donated to these community archives. Our collective and individual voices are powerful artifacts that represent the perspectives of people who have lived through these experiences.

This exhibit provides a space to document, preserve, and amplify the voices of our community; it is also an opportunity for us to connect with one another. The curation team of two librarians and one archivist selected items that represent individual stories, voices, and artworks created during and in response to our collective experiences during quarantine.

A companion exhibit, Documenting Chicana/o and Latinx Art & Activism in Los Angeles will be on display in the Learning Commons (First Floor, Mountain Side).

Submissions to these archives are ongoing, and UCSB Library invites Santa Barbara community members and UCSB students, faculty, and staff to submit original works that address how the pandemics of racial injustice and coronavirus have shaped their lives. For more information, please visit:

UCSB COVID-19 Community Archives project

Black Lives Matter Community Archives project

The curation team welcomes questions, comments, and suggestions about integrating this project into your course, campus, and local projects. Please write to us at: outreach@library.ucsb.edu .