CULTURETECHLENS
Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress
Contribute & Volunteer
CultureTechLens is a small nonprofit doing big archival work — and there's always more of it than there are hands. If you have time, skill, or care to spare, there's a place for you here.
Ways to help
Research assistance
Help track down sources, verify claims, and chase the leads our red-team audits flag as unresolved.
Transcription
Oral histories, interviews, and recordings only become citable when somebody types them out. That somebody could be you.
Photography
Chicago's Black cultural landscape, documented with a careful eye — from landmarks to everyday places that matter.
Translation
Help carry the archive across languages, starting with Spanish — the South and West Sides are Black and brown.
Community outreach
Connect us with churches, block clubs, schools, and elders whose collections and memories should be in the archive.
Technical skills
Web development, data work, design, accessibility — the machine behind the archive always needs tending.
What volunteering looks like
Remote-friendly and Chicago-rooted. Most work happens on your schedule, from wherever you are; some of it happens shoulder to shoulder in the city. We'll match the work to your availability — a few hours a month moves the needle here.
Raise your hand
Email [email protected] and tell us:
- What you're interested in
- What you're good at
- How much time you have
An honest note: we're a small nonprofit, not a corporation with a volunteer department. Roles get shaped around people's gifts, not the other way around — tell us what you bring and we'll find where it fits.
Source: CultureTechLens
From the Archive
The archive in pictures
The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.
Trust & evidence
Evidence before authority. CultureTechLens publishes its methods, its limits, and its corrections alongside its findings. Claims carry grades — VERIFIED, SUPPORTED, PROVISIONAL, DISPUTED, UNRESOLVED — and unknowns are never reported as zero.
Every claim graded. Every source named. Every correction public — none to date.