Since 2003, my husband Rob and I have gathered, shared, and preserved stories of neighbors creating community through our project Voices of the Violet Crown.

Read about the project and its impact, as published in the Texas Oral History Association Sound Historian in 2023, here.

For us, community is a continuum of past, present, and future. We believe that being a good neighbor is a creative process—one that matters. Our project includes:

• Our blog, augmenting the website’s regularly updated features, films, photos, and community resources (right) and more information about our project (top).

• Our community/history exhibits, described by a Violet Crown Festival corporate sponsor as “the event’s centerpiece” and by neighbors as “the heart of the festival.”

• Our oral histories of neighbors ages 6 through 90, incorporated into our website and films through video clips, quotes, stills, and transcripts from the interviews.

We’re grateful for good friends of the project and honored to have received the Mary Faye Barnes Award for Excellence in Community History Projects. Our project papers and recordings are archived at the Austin History Center.

NEWEST HISTORY  —  2024  •  2023  •  2022  •  2021  •  2020

LATEST FEATURE UPDATES

• Just What Is a Violet Crown?
• Domino & The Little Red Hen
• Some Good Neighbors Remembered—Kathey Ferland and Kay Swenson Ramsey
• Neighbors-in-History, Part 2—Hancock•Wicks and St. Paul Baptist Church and Cemetery
• Neighbors-in-History, Part 3—Koenig•McCullough and McCandless
• A Green History of Brentwood & Crestview

HOW OUR PROJECT BEGAN

Rob and I were inspired to create and sustain Voices of the Violet Crown as we worked alongside neighbors to raise funds for the mosaic Wall of Welcome in Austin, beginning in 2003. VVC aims to foster understanding and participation, right where we live, by showing how community and history are interwoven.

In 2003, a group of us in Brentwood and Crestview created the Violet Crown Festival and nonprofit Violet Crown Community Works to help build and sustain community by supporting neighborhood enhancement projects, beginning with the Wall of Welcome on Woodrow Avenue. Rob and I volunteered at the festival for the first seven years; I served on the VCCW board for its first four years. Like other neighbors, Rob and I created a mosaic for the Wall of Welcome (right), and he created one for the popular restaurant Little Deli.

Another inspiration for Voices of the Violet Crown is visionary writer, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry. We feature his wise words in the right sidebar.

And, we continue to be inspired by our neighbors, in all the ways they make a difference, right where we live.

Thanks for visiting our website!

—Susan & Rob Burneson, Crestview neighbors since 1985