(NewsNation) — The city of Seattle has rapidly transformed over the past few decades, as gentrification has altered the character of neighborhoods and communities, alike.

Amidst this rapid change, Yolanda Barton has found an innovative way to preserve the history of the local African American community. She created a virtual reality experience that allows Seattle residents to walk around Seattle’s Central District, which was a historic gathering place for African American music and culture.

Barton was raised in Seattle and witnessed the neighborhoods changing first-hand when she returned to attend graduate school.

“I went back to the area that I grew up in and there really wasn’t a trace of what was once there — which was the music history,” she said. “The fact that Quincy Jones was raised there and learned music theory there, and that Jimi Hendrix was born there. Kurt Cobain was from that neighborhood, Sir Mix A Lot was from that neighborhood.”

She was worried that history was being lost amidst the city’s transformation.

“My biggest concern was if this entire neighborhood has been transformed, the upscaling of communities isn’t the problem, it’s what are we doing with the history that’s associated with that geographic space?” she said.

So Barton helped design the virtual reality experience and has been beta-testing it in the local library system. Visitors can see spots like the Black and Tan club, a historic jazz club where greats like Aretha Franklin and Duke Ellington once performed.

Participants in the VR experience are presented history through a combination of photos, video interviews and a narrator.

One local Seattle resident told the press that the experience was “amazing,” saying “you can experience what was, what is, and what will be the future.”

Through her company RevereXR (where XR stands for extended reality, a term that refers to virtual reality and other similar technologies) and its six-person team, Barton plans to expand these experiences to other historical offerings as well.

“You’re going to be teleported to moments that you no longer can experience in real life but that already took place,” she said. “I think some of history’s most amazing moments are in an archive or in a cloud somewhere. We need people to be experiencing this in their daily lives.”

She noted that one challenge in doing this kind of work is that people from underrepresented backgrounds often lack the funding to get projects like these off the ground.

“And so we always are being creative in looking for philanthropists and angel investors and people who want to see the future of really high futuristic tech and amazing historic moments. And that gives people a chance to really see what we can do to preserve the past for the future,” she said.

Barton is hearted, however, by the strong response from the general public.

“You hear people say, oh we need this right here. We need this. My kids need this. My grandparents experienced this I want them to see this,” she said.