Co-LAB: The Place of Stories: Burnet Woods

In this oral history session, Co-LAB artist Julia Orquera Bianco opened up the space for locals and enjoyers of Burnet Woods to create a collective history through storytelling. We learned about Burnet Woods from the perspectives of those who build relationships with it, and invited each other to imagine what kinds of relationships we would like to craft moving forward.
This program was the third session in a four-part CoLAB series titled Burnet Woods: Our Shared Space, hosted by multimedia migrant artist and UC professor Julia Orquera Bianco. One of the oldest and largest parks of Cincinnati, this 90-acre wooded land is one of the city’s green hearts and has gained national designation as an important biodiversity and wildlife area. However, urban mythology, a rise of crime on site and the fight between economic and cultural interests have transformed Burnet Woods into a contested territory, where the societal, historical, and political sometimes converge, but most times overlap and conflict with each other.
Listening to the current need for reconnecting with nature, Bianco offered a CoLAB Series that crafted a space for learning about this land from different perspectives. The goal was to bring the stories, the science, and the magic of Burnet Woods closer to the general public through conversation and artmaking, in the hopes of expanding our understanding of this place and rekindling our relationship with it.