Home Sweet Home

With so many people losing their homes during the Great Depression, many were forced to create temporary shelter to protect themselves from the elements, using whatever materials they could find.

"Shelters were made of almost every conceivable thing - burlap, canvas, palm branches." - a California minister's report of a labor camp in the Imperial Valley. We have seen photographs of shacks made from cardboard, framed paintings on canvas, crate boxes, doors...

Unfortunately, this kind of housing was the norm for the migrant labor camps where itinerant farm workers lived, from one farm to the next. For more information, read: Picture This: The Depression Era, published the by the Oakland Museum of California.

These shacks have served as the inspiration for our scenic design by Drew Foster; they are sad images of poverty and yet resourceful testaments to the will to survive.