CATALYST INITIATIVE ROUND 2
Yolanda Wisher, poet and educator, worked with Trapeta Mayson of Historic Germantown in Philadelphia, a partnership organization of sixteen historical houses, destinations and museums in Northwest Philadelphia’s Old German Township that works collaboratively to preserve its extraordinary historic assets, increase access, interpret them to the public and raise their visibility. Their work together focused on Yolanda’s artistic practice and innovative project design to create an educational program that brings Germantown youth into active dialogue with historic sites and residents, inviting them to be leaders and co-creators. Their story over a year of collaboration is one of experimentation and testing, balancing vision with resources, combining art and technology to activate historic places, and creating a model that invites and empowers young people to build a relationship with and become stewards of their neighborhood.
Philadelphia, PA Center for Performance and Civic Practice PHILADELPHIA - i
The Question
How might an artist work with a partnership organization focused on preserving historic sites to create an invitation for youth to discover a personal connection with place and a complex past?
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Contents The Partners
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The Impulse
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The Belief
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The Project
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We 10 Impact 12 Challenges 16 Next Steps
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Forum 18 PHILADELPHIA - 1
THE PARTNERS
Yolanda Wisher
Trapeta Mayson 2 - PHILADELPHIA
The Partners
Yolanda Wisher is a multidisciplinary poet and educator and is currently the third Poet Laureate of the City of Philadelphia. The author of Monk Eats an Afro and the co-editor of Peace is a Haiku Song, Wisher was born in the historic Germantown section of Philadelphia, where she founded and directed the Germantown Poetry Festival (2006-2010). She has also served as the Director of Art Education for the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (2010-2015). Wisher is a Pew Fellow and the first Montgomery County Pennsylvania Poet Laureate.
Germantown, a partnership of 16 extraordinary Philadelphia houses, destinations and museums. A seasoned senior administrator and clinical social worker, Trapeta is also an acclaimed poet and teaching artist who has read and led workshops extensively in educational, artistic and institutional settings. Her literary awards include a Pew Fellowship, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grants, a Leeway Transformation Award and a 2014 Leeway Art and Change Grant. Trapeta is a Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow. She is the author of She Was Once Herself and Mocha Melodies. Her other publications include submissions in The American Poetry Review and Lavanderia, Anthology of Women Writing, to name a few. She is a native of Liberia and a resident of Germantown.
Both Yolanda and Trapeta are well-known figures in the community. As poets, they have shared the stage and supported each other’s work.
Trapeta B. Mayson is the Executive Director of Historic PHILADELPHIA - 3
Historic Germantown (HG) is a partnership organization of sixteen historical houses, destinations, and museums in Northwest Philadelphia’s Old German Township. Members of the partnership are ACES Museum, Awbury Arboretum, Cliveden of the National Trust, Concord School, Deshler-Morris House, Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, Germantown Mennonite Historic Trust, Germantown Historical Society, Grumblethorpe, Historic Fairhill, Historic RittenhouseTown, Hood Cemetery, Johnson House, La Salle Art Museum, Stenton, and Wyck House and Gardens. Location Historic Germantown is where: •One of Philadelphia's Revolutionary War battles was fought •The first-ever American protest against slavery was written •One of the few remaining houses on the Underground Railroad still stands. Vision Historic Germantown will be a leader in enhancing the economic and cultural development of our community through the collective voice of its member sites. Mission Historic Germantown is a partnership organization serving historic sites in Philadelphia’s Old German Township that works collaboratively to preserve its extraordinary historic assets, increase access, interpret them to the public and raise their visibility.
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How it Started Germantown is one of Philadelphia’s most under-resourced neighborhoods, but one of its most thriving artist communities. Trapeta, as the first African American Executive Director of Historic Germantown, seeks to bridge the gap between Germantown’s predominantly African American working class community, their youth, and the hundreds year old sites of HG that often represent a painful or forgotten past.
"Germantown is probably one of the most significant neighborhoods in Philadelphia African American history. African-Americans were confined to specific neighborhoods in Philadelphia. This began to change after WW2. I grew up in West Philadelphia where all the black veterans and all the black blue collar people and working people were channeled to that neighborhood in strict segregation terms. And one of the first neighborhoods that would allow African Americans to move out of those neighborhoods was Germantown.” — GERMANTOWN RESIDENT AND ELDER
“It has played a great part in shaping Philadelphia. When somebody said, ‘We’re going to Germantown,’ people still felt like it was a great place to go to, the parks. Germantown represented Philadelphia.” — GERMANTOWN RESIDENT AND ELDER
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“I grew up in the south, Alabama. I left at 14 to come to Philadelphia - me and my brother and my grandmother. We moved to Germantown about 50 years ago. I’ve been in my house now for 50 years. I love Germantown. I love the people. My neighbors are nice, they’ve been in their house for more than 50 years.” — GERMANTOWN RESIDENT AND ELDER
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Historic Germantown desperately seeks to engage teens, who make up of a large percentage of the population in Germantown and are deeply important to the future of its sites. The organization wants and needs to be relevant to youth and dreams of having a group of young docents who can lead community tours using art and technology to activate each site.
“You need to appreciate how important Germantown is and was to the African American community.” — GERMANTOWN RESIDENT AND ELDER
“My question is – how do I make this walking tour exciting?” — YOLANDA WISHER
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THE PLAN 10 - PHILADELPHIA
The Plan How to get young people involved? Create a pilot to test ideas for youth to engage with a historic site Identify a high school as a partner Design an expanding model using artistic process tools to encourage youth leadership
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THE PROJECT 12 - PHILADELPHIA
The Project N OV E M B E R 2 0 1 5
“I've taken a tour of a lot of the historic sites and I’ve gotten familiar with the history, have been doing a lot of reading and have had the benefit of being able to be in the room with other artists and historians who have also been thinking a lot about activating these spaces with the arts. And I got obsessed with the idea of geocaching, as a way to have youth actively explore the neighborhood but also to leave their mark.” – YOL ANDA In November 2015, Yolanda tested out a series of activities that led families through an artistic and historic exploration of the oldest paper mill in the country, located in RittenhouseTown. The project employed geocaching and geo capsules hidden throughout the site connected to arts-based writing activities. Geocaching: an outdoor treasure hunt using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache container hidden at that location. Geo capsule finders are encouraged to leave something behind for the next hunter.
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"It was a great way to explore, but a lot of work. I got a better understanding of technology and how to incorporate it with art. I’m trying to get a sense of the best way to engage the students in doing. I’ve been connecting a lot with storytelling and the notion that I want the young people to have an experience but also to lead this project.” -YOLANDA
After the pilot project, which was successful, both Yolanda and Trapeta agreed that they wanted to take a step back and evaluate.
“We initially jumped in thinking about this walking tour that we thought young people might lead, and we thought we’d be able to get to that in this first phase, but the bit of scaling we did, we backed up and thought, ‘What do they have to know, how do we build their basic knowledge in order to be these leaders?’” -YOLANDA
Yolanda and Trapeta took some time to assess personal capacity and resources, and decided to scale the activities back to focus on skill building for the youth participants. This pilot would be phase one of a larger project.
“A big part of that scaling was conversations with Yolanda and us reflecting back on the goals and the mission of the organization, particularly in our new strategic plan, we really wanted to make history relevant in this community, but not only that, we wanted the community to become more engaged in our organization.” -TRAPETA
Yolanda planned five sessions, five points of connection with youth that would include training in art and technology. Time was allotted for the students to build a personal and creative relationship to the neighborhood and to encourage them to be stewards of historical information, but also to reimagine and reinvent it for themselves and audiences.
“We were less project-thinking and more about ‘let’s come up with a bigger vision.’ And then it was almost as if a light bulb had gone off and it was like, 'Okay, we don't have to do all these things,' but what we have to do well is make sure we’re preparing and instructing and training. And not just trying to have a program in a school.” -TRAPETA
The program was named Culture Keepers. “These young people will be our culture keepers.” -YOLANDA
“We’ve had to scale things down even from our original conversations, and it’s developed into something very rich.” -TRAPETA
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THE SCHOOL PARTNER A small, select group of students were invited from Parkway Northwest High School for Peace and Social Justice to participate in Culture Keepers. Mission: The school’s mission is to prepare students to face a complex world with the skills necessary to institute positive change locally and globally. The school offers a rigorous college preparatory program designed to promote peace and social justice through the use of critical thinking, problem solving, cooperative learning, and research.
THE FIVE POINTS OF CONNECTION DIVE IN
Participants were trained in audio recording, impactful photography, and leading story circles
DIG IN
Students toured and geocached at Germantown sites, met local historians, photographed sites and uploaded photos to Instagram with poetic captions, and recorded interviews with elders at Center in the Park, an education and resource center for senior adults.
D I A L OG UE
Students led and recorded story circles with their peers and elders of Germantown.
DISTILL
Students met with local writers for guidance on how to create poems based on the story circles they led.
DA Z Z LE
Students shared their poems at the Historic Germantown season opening event.
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RIPPLES 18 - PHILADELPHIA
“We needed an artist that can adapt to our needs. You can’t bring in an artist with very little knowledge of the community to do this kind of work.” “We’ve decided that we at Historic Germantown want Culture Keepers to be a really big part of our organization, this isn’t something that we wanted to do just one time.” “I don’t know how this would have been possible without the type of artist that Yolanda is. We made a decision that we wanted her to be a part of the board. The board is committed to this work.” “We’re doing phase one and there’s already a lot of buzz about re-launching this program in September, having it go year-long, looking for funding to support that and to support a role for Yolanda and other artists that we might be bringing in. Now we have an artist that we’re looking at as a partner, not just someone we’re hiring to come in and do something. This is someone who helped us shape a program that will be a recurring program, probably one of our biggest youth initiatives for high school aged kids.” – TR A P E TA
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“I am excited about what we were able to do with the 5 points of contact with students. And our collaboration, we’ve worked together before, but not developing a program before. I’m more convinced now that we’re great partners.” “The students really responded to a lot of what we did with Instagram, using their phones for photography and audio recording. The response we got from both the youth and elders we interviewed at a senior center – that gave me a glimpse of the work that we could continue to focus on, that intergenerational dialogue seemed to be welcomed by both sides. It was a highlight of the program. There were only 5 interactions, if it was longer, the neighborhood could really be impacted by extending the length of the program. In terms of a pilot, it was perfect for giving us the feedback we needed.” “Hopeful is how I would reference this pilot. From start to finish - it’s rare that you can – just being able to conceive of something from the beginning, pause, reevaluate, but then adapt and see the program come through.” – YO L A N DA
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The Catalyst Initiative is an action research initiative — a model for supporting, advancing, and learning from innovative artist and community partner collaborations in order to reveal new possibilities for artistic contributions to community problem-solving and growth.
CENTER FOR PERFORMANCE + CIVIC PRACTICE © 2017 T H E C P C P. O R G THE ANDREW W.
MELLON FOUNDATION
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