Creative Knowledge Makers: Lessons From High Iron on Participatory Methods for Community Memory

This article introduces High Iron, a mobile monument and participatory research project that honors the immigrant laborers who built Wyoming’s segment of the transcontinental railroad — among them Chinese, Japanese, Mexican American, and other workers whose contributions remain largely unacknowledged in the state’s official memory landscape. Through Arts-Based Research (ABR) and Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR), High Iron positions community members as Creative Knowledge Makers — co-producers of knowledge whose creative practices generate new forms of public memory. The project’s cyclical methodology of engagement, participatory inquiry, reflection, and return demonstrates how art can operate as a rigorous form of research, not merely as expressive output. Descendant storytellers, elders, students, and community members contributed oral histories, collaborative maps, archival materials, and artworks that collectively reshaped how labor history is publicly remembered. By integrating story circles and artmaking workshops into public humanities practice, High Iron provides a replicable toolkit for scholars and practitioners seeking ethical, community-centered approaches to cultural memory work. This model advances participatory methods that value creativity as epistemology, foreground community authority over shared histories, and foster reciprocal relationships between research, community, and public space — demonstrating that participatory public humanities can function as a practice of repair, visibility, and belonging.