Dismantle conducted oral history research for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Their project was part of the COVID-19 American History Project, and focused on hospitality workers in the greater New Orleans metro area.
From the fall of 2023 to spring 2024, Elise and Sara, with videographer Justin Micaroni, interviewed 20 workers including bartenders, restaurant and hotel workers, DJs and performers, tour guides and taxi drivers about their experiences of the pandemic.
Our work on this project encompassed project design, management and coordination, and participant selection that ensured our sample was representative of regional and industry demographics.
Our interviewees had the option of coming to a central field office or letting us come to them. Either way, we prepared a comfortable environment and made sure that each interviewee was prepared and informed of our process.
After the interviews we delivered high quality video, photo, and text transcriptions. We also wrote up a summary of our findings.
You can read a detailed account of the project on the American Folklife Center’s blog here.
The oral history collection can be viewed on the Library of Congress website here.
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