New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center (FHC) is pleased to announce the opening of Casting A Wider Net, an exhibit exploring the stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran members of New Bedford’s working waterfront at the historic Verdean Veterans’ Memorial Hall (561 Purchase Street, New Bedford). The exhibit will open to the public on Wednesday, July 2, at 6:00pm with a free event. The exhibit will remain on display at the Vets through August 2025 and will then travel to locations throughout the community.
Seven of the people whose stories are featured in the exhibit are Cape Verdean and we are particularly excited to bring this exhibit to the heart of New Bedford’s Cape Verdean community this summer as part of the 50th anniversary of Cape Verdean Independence.
The exhibit features videos, photographs, and quotes from the oral history interviews as well as links to the full interview transcripts. Participants will have the opportunity to hear the voices of each person who was interviewed, view a scrapbook with photos of our narrators and their families, and can even write them a message in our guestbook.
Learn more about the exhibit here:
https://fishingheritagecenter.org/casting-a-wider-net-community-oral-history-project/
Casting A Wider Net is funded in part by a Wicked Cool Places grant from New Bedford Creative, a grant from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and an Expanding Massachusetts Stories grant from Mass Humanities, which received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
