Editor’s Note: The name of this project has been updated from “Mapping Living Heritage: Many Stories, One Utah” to “Multicultural Placemaking & Mapping Community Belonging | Many Stories, One Utah”. This has been done to better reflect the goals of the project to elevate stories, histories, and values as they relate to creating places of belonging for diverse communities.
The Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs is invested in promoting greater understanding of equity, access, and inclusion so that we can support diverse populations who meaningfully impact Utah’s educational system, growing workforce, economy, and quality of life. Through dynamic partnerships that are committed to cultivating communities that celebrate connections, we believe we can all do our part to ensure people feel like they belong and that Utah is their home—a place to invest in.
Currently, we are engaged in a project titled, “Multicultural Placemaking & Mapping Community Belonging | Many Stories, One Utah” which will be a comprehensive online tool to capture, elevate, and build visibility for multicultural spaces, stories, and people. This is a collaborative project led by the Utah Division of Multicultural Affairs in partnership with the University of Utah – Department of City & Metropolitan Planning, the Utah Division of State History, and Salt Lake County Mayor’s Office of Diversity & Inclusion. The end result will essentially be a website with a collection of interactive maps that can be used as educational, civic engagement, and community awareness tools.
This extensive community asset mapping project will be done in phases, with the project set to be launched by May of 2022. To start, Salt Lake County will be the focus and eventually, extension into other counties is expected.
Potential Impacts of this Project
- Serve as a learning tool for educators to incorporate into lesson plans.
- Help elected officials and policy makers better understand and learn about their constituents’ needs.
- Amplify and elevate existing efforts of community-based organizations that are working in asset mapping.
- Retain and attract diverse businesses, companies, and talent.
- Centralize information on Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) services and organizations for streamlined access.
- Facilitate localized community partnerships between public, private, and community groups.
The Multicultural Placemaking & Mapping Community Belonging Project will be a comprehensive online tool to capture, elevate, and build visibility for multicultural spaces, stories, and people.
Affirm Permanence, Elevate Stories, Celebrate Culture
How You Can Get Involved
Share your favorite multicultural places in Salt Lake County and help us define “community”!
If you reside in Salt Lake County, we invite you to take our short survey by Friday, November 12th (deadline recently extended) to help us learn more about where community members are experiencing, creating, and placing value in multicultural spaces.
- Take the English Survey: arcg.is/0HOiLi
- Responde a la encuesta en español: arcg.is/1f5rGn
Have ideas on topics or current projects that we should be connected to? Email project manager, Claudia Loayza at cloayza@utah.gov.
We hope this project will go far in helping elevate multicultural communities as an integral to the fabric of Utah. By amplifying community presence, we can better guide policy, decisions and foster constructive conversations on the intersections of race, place, and justice.
Questions? Email Claudia Loayza, cloayza@utah.gov.