New Technology Opens Doors to Meet People and Places of Our Past

In 2017, Bill de Blasio, then New York City’s mayor, floated the idea of removing a statue of Christopher Columbus—the divisive Italian explorer alternately revered for “discovering” the Americas or derided for ushering in a genocidal era of colonialism.

He “was putting it up to the city. And the people, quote unquote,” recalls idris Brewster, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Kinfolk, an education and tech nonprofit dedicated to creating monuments and education materials that celebrate underrepresented historical events and figures. At the time, Brewster—who previously spearheaded Google’s efforts to get more students of color into STEM and co-starred in the documentary American Promise—was part of a collective of fellow artists and activists compelled by the questions of who is publicly celebrated and who is forgotten. It was and remains a pressing question nationwide, as communities wrestle with the legacies of racism in public spaces.

Drawing on their skills as organizers and technologists, the collective undertook a campaign of “teach-ins, demonstrations, public performance pieces about the true history of Christopher Columbus and the founding of this nation,” Brewster explains. “The idea was to bring in augmented reality as a way to tell our own story.” 

Back then, Kinfolk as an organization was not a reality—augmented or otherwise. The collective was its precursor, and the debate over Christopher Columbus invigorated its members, spurring them to grow it into a nonprofit they called Movers & Shakers. Later renamed as Kinfolk, the organization straddles technology, political activism, and the arts in engaging local communities to determine whom its members want to honor, and then proceeding to do so unhindered by the limitations of traditional marble or bronze statuary.  

"Our mission is to uproot oppressive systems and reimagine public spaces through art, emerging technology, and storytelling,” Brewster says. “Building a physical monument costs a lot of money, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of red tape. With AR [augmented reality], you can just build your own monuments and place them wherever you want.” 

That, in a nutshell, is what Kinfolk does through the downloadable app it rolled out in 2021. It currently includes a selection of twenty monuments featuring historical figures such as Gaspar Yanga, Fannie Lou Hamer, and other vital history-makers with whom users can engage from their living rooms, classrooms, parks, and any other venue. Beyond an AR image of each figure, the app offers related biographical information users access on their phones. Kinfolk’s app, available for free download on iOS or Android, is akin to ones you might encounter at a museum to learn more about works in a gallery.  

Users who want to dig deeper on the life and legacy of, say, Toussaint L’Ouverture can look to Kinfolk’s website, which houses supplemental curricular materials, including primary source documents that round out an understanding of each individual.  

“You can bring in those narratives and stories around those monuments and make it a learning lesson,” says Ingrid LaFleur, an Afrofuturist who is part of a group of artists, historians, and other culture makers enlisted by Kinfolk to brainstorm which underrepresented icons and historical movements Kinfolk depicts through its technology. 

“This is more engaging and fascinating, and you can walk away feeling like you’ve gained some knowledge so it integrates into your life in a helpful way. We need those positive touchpoints in our public spaces,” LeFleur adds. “What we’ve done with previous monuments is just walk by.” 

Moreover, Brewster points out, younger users are already experiencing AR in video games like the popular Niantic/Nintendo offering Pokemon Go, which invited players to interact with real-life environments to collect characters. By leveraging this type of player engagement, Kinfolk is meeting people where they are—on their phones—using tech they are savvy about to inspire them about histories seldom celebrated. 

Now, the Kinfolk team has started to expand its offerings thanks in part to a $1.8M Mellon grant. It will add one hundred more AR figures and biographies to its cache and has launched a tour, visiting cities to demonstrate its capabilities in partnership with local organizations. In Los Angeles, California, for example, Kinfolk joined with the Los Angeles Music Center and For Freedoms to produce a day-long celebration of communities that are home to Black, Brown, and indigenous residents. In Brooklyn, New York, Kinfolk contributed to a neighborhood walking tour led by Growhouse NYC and the Flatbush African Burial Ground Coalition. 

“There’s everything built on top of the bones of enslaved Africans,” Brewster says. Kinfolk’s involvement meant visitors could then see and learn about the mostly forgotten people who lived in the area. Moreover, they could return to the site and engage with the virtual monuments again and again via the app.

“Folks like Samuel Anderson, who was one of the early in investors in Weeksville, which was a free Black community [in Brooklyn],” he adds. “That was one of the first monuments that we created.”

Kinfolk’s Chief Strategy Officer Micah Milner adds, “We’re bringing the app to the community in the places where they’re already attending, where they’re looking to learn, and we’re trying to enrich that experience.” 

Kinfolk’s monuments humanize the history—they make it more concrete, “so you can really empathize,” Milner says. “That’s a huge hurdle for community organizations who are trying to talk about history that a lot of people feel detached from, just by time itself.” 

Recent projects include digital monuments that celebrate Seneca Village, the Young Lords, and the early Black abolitionist David Ruggles. Going forward, Kinfolk is lining up more collaborations with museums, historical sites, and schools and is laying the groundwork for community partnerships and monuments in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Alabama, and New Orleans. In the first half of 2023 it will also have the singular honor of being the only digital tech company to be included in “Architecture Now: New York, New Publics,” an exhibition on reimagining public space, taking place at the Museum of Modern Art.

The team recognizes that while physical monuments may possess a gravitas that AR monuments may lack, virtual commemorations have the benefit of adaptability—information can be added to them as knowledge bases grow. Their mobility is also a plus: Kinfolk and its technology can go to and be present in the sites where conversations about American history are most vital.

“The news of the current events is really just providing us a roadmap onto where we really are needed the most,” he says. “That’s why we want to look at other places in the South, like New Orleans and Richmond, cause that’s where a lot of these conversations are happening, and that’s where people are actively looking and advocating for solutions to their spaces of being cluttered with Confederate monuments.” 

“Augmented reality is not a replacement for physical monuments,” reflects Milner. “It’s an extension of that. It’s a playground for the imagination to see what could exist in physical space.” 

Download Kinfolk’s app on iOS or Google Play to explore their work.