California Migration Museum

The California Migration Museum is a new virtual museum (established 2021) that creates immersive experiences and exhibits that tell the stories of immigrants and refugees in California. Our work explores the complex history of welcome, exclusion, displacement and resistance that has shaped California. It questions who “we” are—and who we want to become.

Migrant Footsteps is our series of immersive audio walks and 360 videos that invite you into the center of California’s migration stories. Each tour combines music, oral history, archival research and augmented reality to take you on a multi-sensory walk through five neighborhoods in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Tours are self-guided and free to download in the CalMigration App.

The CalMigration app was released in February 2024. Users enter the app and can then choose between "San Francisco" and "Los Angeles" tour sites, selecting the neighborhood they wish to visit and downloading the tour they wish to take. Before beginning the tour, all users are provided with important practical tips, such as where to find restrooms and guidance on accessibility (length and gradient of each walk). There is also an opportunity to visit the California Migration Museum's website to learn more about the research behind the tour.

Once the tour begins, prompts encourage users to activate augmented reality scenes and photo galleries in each story arc to add additional context to a story that weaves contemporary and historical narratives together, for instance by superimposing photos from the early 1920s onto modern-day Olvera Street. Maps and photo prompts provide directions for users through the walk. Options exist to listen at 1.25x or 1.5x speed. Remote users can access the 360 video version of the tour.