A Clear Vision
About the Exhibit
“Flagstaff 2020 brought citizens together from across greater Flagstaff to develop a shared image of what citizens want their community to become.“
Flagstaff 2020, A Vision for our Community 1997, p.5.
Flagstaff 2020 was a community visioning project undertaken from January 1996 to June 1997. The project sought to identify existing community values and establish a shared vision for the future of Flagstaff, Arizona, as the city would be in the year 2020.
Now, in 2020, Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library, Special Collections & Archives (SCA) commemorates the original Flagstaff 2020 project with an online-only exhibit curated by NAU student Marley Oakes.
Flagstaff 2020: A Clear Vision provides a retrospective view on the Flagstaff 2020 community visioning process, drawing upon archival material from the Flagstaff 2020 Records as well as oral history interviews conducted in the year 2020 to reflect on shared community values and visions for Flagstaff—past, present, and future.
This exhibit was always intended to exist in digital space, but the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the spring of 2020 impacted the exhibit project nonetheless. In-person oral history interviews became recorded Zoom meetings. Donors scanned their own Flagstaff 2020 material and uploaded it to Dropbox or Google Drive to share with SCA staff. Event planning went virtual.
Yet despite these logistical challenges, members of the greater Flagstaff community came together to join Special Collections & Archives in sharing the vision of Flagstaff 2020 and comparing it to today’s reality.

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