Archive of Urban Futures
Lead Researcher, Photographer, Filmmaker, Co-Curator
The Archive of Urban Futures is a research and arts collective led by Dr. Brandi Summers, focused on Black histories in space as told through multimedia archival and public history methods. We are composed of a team of archivists, visual artists, and historians and work in partnership with communities to produce a variety of public history interventions and materials.
I work as a: Lead Researcher in our group, mentoring our undergraduate members in research methods and developing their original contributions; Photographer, creating portrait collections and documentary coverage of our community partnerships and work; Filmmaker, producing, directing, and shooting an original documentary short featuring our work and archival politics; and Co-Curator, curating our most recent museum exhibition feature in the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) Special Exhibition.
OMCA: Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain
Our most recent work was featured in the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) Special Exhibition Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain, named after Brandi T. Summers' scholarly work in blackness, space, and cultural power. Our group was a featured exhibitor, showing a commissioned set of public history zines, original visual art, a timeline of Oakland between the late 1800s to the 2010s, and an original short film.
As part of our museum exhibition, I co-curated our exhibition section, shaping and designing our spatial layout with our pedagogical, narrative goals. My photography was featured in the section, showcasing our community partnership with Moms4Housing. My commissioned short film formed a central part of the exhibition, featuring our Black archival politics and our ways of working in community to develop rigorous scholarship and public history interventions.
Trailer: "The Archivists" (2025)
My short film offers a window into the philosophy and process of the Archive of Urban Futures project - building out place-based Black histories by repurposing traditional tools of archiving towards the life-affirming everyday acts of place-making and community.
Archive of Urban Futures Members
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Dr. Brandi T. Summers (Principal Investigator)
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Maya Sapienza
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Clara Pérez Medina
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Bobby Ortiz Stahl
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Cat Summers Stoehr
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Mateo Villa
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Krista McAtee
Film Credits
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Director: Clara Pérez Medina
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Producer: Clara Pérez Medina
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Cinematographer: Clara Pérez Medina
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Editor: Clara Pérez Medina
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Writers: Clara Pérez Medina and Cat Summers Stoehr
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Assistant Producer: Cat Summers Stoehr
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Executive Producer: Brandi T Summers, PhD
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Sound Recorded & Mixed By: Clara Pérez Medina
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Photographer: Clara Pérez Medina
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Additional Cinematography: Meriam Salem, Krista McAtee
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Zine Illustration: Krista McAtee
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Zine Writers: Mateo Villa, Krista McAtee
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Archival Researchers: Maya Sapienza, juleon robinson, Mateo Villa
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With Special Thanks To: Angel Ross, PhD, Diana Diroy, Angela Kim, Meriam Salem
In the News
Oakland Museum of California Announces Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain
May 1, 2025 | OMCA
The Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) announces Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain, a History exhibition exploring how Black American communities in the Bay Area have resisted dispossession by carving out spaces of care, safety, and home. These stories are told through ... new commissions by artist Adrian Burrell, architect June Grant with blinkLAB architecture, and the Archive of Urban Futures and Moms 4 Housing, each offering ideas for the future of Black spaces. Read the full press release here.
UC Berkeley student collective Archive of Urban Futures shines at new OMCA exhibit
July 25, 2025 | Rosa Norton, Berkeley News
Over the course of three years, the group — composed of graduate students in geography and cultural anthropology as well as undergraduates ... conducted oral histories, led community workshops, and dug deep into the city of Oakland’s public archives.
Over time, this work resulted in a 7-minute film, “The Archivists” (2025), two richly stimulating student zines, and historical timelines of the Black experience of the city, all of which are incorporated into the museum display. Read the full feature here.
‘There are Black people in the future’: Oakland Museum exhibit documents displacement and resistance
July 18,2025 | Ashley McBride, Oaklandside
The contribution from Archive of Urban Futures, a collaboration between UC Berkeley researchers and Moms 4 Housing, documents the history of Black people and Black power in Oakland from 1950 to the present. Viewers can walk into a life-size replica of 2928 Magnolia St., a neglected investor-owned house in West Oakland that a group of homeless mothers occupied in 2019 to highlight the affordable housing crisis — eventually gaining ownership. Read the full article here.