Kuwentong Pamamahay

Contents: About the Project | Project Team | Partners and Sponsors | Image Credits | Tech

About the Project

“Kuwentong Pamamahay” is a collaborative project between Heritage Vancouver Society (HVS), Sliced Mango Collective (SMC), UBC Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies (ACAM) and the UBC Public Humanities Hub (PHH). The project aims to create an accessible and resilient digital resource of stories representing an intersectional Filipino Canadian community approaching place and culture and working through the realities of what it means to make a home.

The project is funded by the Province of British Columbia through the 150 Time Immemorial Grant Program administered by Heritage BC, and the City of Vancouver Cultural Grants Program under the Communities and Artists Shifting Culture stream. We are also indebted to UBC ACAM for their generous support. Alyssa Sy de Jesus is also a very important supporter and collaborator on this project, especially in the early days when we were applying for funding.

A basic translation of “Kuwentong Pamamahay” is “Stories of Home-Making”.

“Kuwento” is the Tagalog word for stories and also the act of verbal storytelling. Kuwento not only describes a project of stories from a community as its heritage but also the act of exchanging these stories in the oral history tradition of the Philippines. These oral histories communicate how the immigrant experience and search for identity across generations shape place.

“Pamamahay” is a Tagalog word for making both a physical and social space feel like home. Pamamahay also arises from the need to adapt space and place to a kind of home because one is away from home. Our project presents unique Filipino Canadian modes of community-building around Pamamahay through cultural experience, social histories, expressions of national and bi-cultural identity, and social conditions of members of Vancouver’s Filipino Canadian community.

The initial relationships for this project were formed when we partnered to deliver public programming about a cluster of food businesses near Joyce-Collingwood station important to the Filipino Canadian community. This programming was intended to present the differing relationships to place -often very intertwined with the basic needs of daily life- that are not the usual with the type of heritage that is focused on the aesthetics of architecture. Through listening to people speak about that food hub, it was very evident how unsanctioned places important for Filipino Canadians and how they understand and practice their heritage are. It also grew a desire by Sliced Mango Collective for an intergenerational and multigenerational record of these relationships to place and cultural practices.

Through the project, we want to frame stories and identities, connection to cultures and cultural practices, attachment to places -especially of marginalized communities- as legitimate heritage. This concept is still relatively unknown, or considered unorthodox as the prevailing idea of heritage in the public imagination is the preservation of architecturally significant buildings. This is despite how emotional, complex and intertwined we intuitively know it is to feel a sense of attachment and identity to the very different places that all of us have a relationship with.

Within the scope possible given the limits of the resources we have, the project is designed to give agency to members of the Filipino Canadian community in collecting, communicating, and presenting their stories and the stories of their community members so that they can voice their heritage themselves. But importantly, a fundamental purpose is also to resource them. Community members do not usually receive much in terms of resources for their time, energy, effort, and knowledge under traditional heritage programs and structures. Those programs and structures do not tend to place community members in the foreground in the traditional approach to heritage because they are not regarded as heritage experts or professionals.

Our concept and philosophy behind the project:

• Centres partnership in all decision making, design, and execution
• Puts members from the community in charge of gathering and presenting their own stories and those of their peers and elders so that they have control in expressing and determining what heritage is
• Resources them to do it
• Features the perspectives that are interconnected and intergenerational, from youth to elders
• Highlights how significant and intertwined culture, ways of living, social histories and social conditions are to place
• Provide opportunity for youth to develop skills and experience in cultural work that expresses their own heritage
• Have a permanent record available of these stories accessible free of charge to the public

We were fortunate that an opportunity came up with the one time Provincial 150 Time Immemorial Grant Program that would substantially fund a project with these objectives, philosophy and vision. This grant allowed us to get things off the ground. The City of Vancouver CASC grant gave us additional funding. Both are important to mention not just because they funded the project but because entities with significant power and financial resources recognize an approach to heritage that is different and support a broader expression of what it is.

Project Team

Sliced Mango Collective

• Anne Claire Baguio
• Jasper Mallonga
• Jocelle Refol
• Kathleen Zaragosa

University of British Columbia

Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies

• Dr. JP Catungal
• Szu Shen
• amanda wan

Public Humanities Hub & PhD Arts Co-op Placement

• Sydney Lines, Digital Developer

Heritage Vancouver Society

• Bill Yuen

Community Consultants

• Alyssa Sy de Jesus

Partners and Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia through the 150 Time Immemorial Grant Program, the City of Vancouver Cultural Grants Program, the Mitacs Business Strategy Internship, and the Quan Lee Excellence Fund in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. In kind support provided by the UBC Public Humanities Hub.

Image Credits

The site header image is by Cris Tagupa on Unsplash.