Mama Joy's Walk is an interactive experience created with the Abolitionist Heritage Center for Abolitionist Place in Downtown Brooklyn. It brings visitors closer to Henry Highland Garnet, Sarah Smith Garnet, and the free Black community who shaped Abolitionist Place, returning their stories to the streets where this history unfolded.

Archive to Animation

The experience recreates a 19th century African-American-owned neighborhood in Brooklyn. Drawing on archival material and research from the Abolitionist Heritage Center, we recreated a street scene shaped by the everyday life of the community that lived there.

AI-generated cinematic reconstruction of a lively 19th-century Brooklyn street scene, with African-American families, children, and community members on a cobblestone-lined dirt road

A reconstructed street scene for the AR experience, placing homes, churches, families, students, and passing carriages back into the neighbourhood around Abolitionist Place.

Archival black-and-white photograph of wooden clapboard row houses on a Brooklyn street

Archival street reference showing the timber buildings and domestic scale used to shape the reconstructed neighbourhood.

Sepia-toned archival photograph of a Brooklyn street with wooden buildings and children in the foreground

Street reference for the ground surface, building texture, children and cars.

From the street, the experience moves towards Henry and Sarah's wedding. We recreated the scene as a gathering of church leaders, educators, abolitionists, suffragists, students, family members, and Brooklyn's free Black community. Details such as Plymouth Church, its pipe organ, formal clothing, and civic gatherings helped shape a moment that feels crowded, celebratory, and publicly significant.

AI-generated cinematic reconstruction of Henry and Sarah Garnet's wedding ceremony inside a grand 19th-century Brooklyn church, with African-American guests filling the pews

The wedding ceremony sequence brings Henry and Sarah Garnet into a shared public moment, surrounded by the community that shaped and supported their work.

Interior of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn - a grand domed nave with twin pipe organs flanking the sanctuary

Plymouth Church reference used to establish the scale and spatial arrangement of the ceremony setting.

Historical black-and-white photograph of an ornate church pipe organ with carved woodwork balcony

Pipe organ reference used to anchor the interior detail and visual focus of the church scene.

Victorian-era oil painting of a formal evening social gathering, figures in ball gowns and suits

Formal gathering reference used to help interpret clothing, posture, density, and the social atmosphere of a major occasion.

Walking With History

Through augmented reality, life-size figures of Henry Highland Garnet and Sarah Smith Garnet appear within the present-day streetscape, alongside biographical panels, interpretive animation, and narration. Each layer is designed to serve the story, helping visitors connect the pavement beneath their feet with the abolitionists, educators, families, and community leaders whose histories are still held in the neighbourhood.

In-experience AR view, with two life-size historic figures standing either side of an embedded archival film of the original streetscape

Friends of Abolitionist Place 227 introduction screen, inviting visitors to step into the story of Brooklyn's abolitionist movement through immersive AR

Mama Joys Walk launch screen on mobile, showing the title treatment and tagline "Come curious, leave changed" over a sepia streetscape

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