Staying Power

The Village of Arts and Humanities

2019
$300,000

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Ebony G. Patterson, ...called up, 2018, installation in abandoned pool, part of Open Spaces festival in Kansas City. Photo courtesy of The Village of Arts and Humanities.

The Village of Arts and Humanities (the Village) will lead a collaboration among artists and residents of the Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood of Philadelphia to create a multi-site exhibition that reflects on the notion of community “staying power.” Fairhill-Hartranft is a historically Black neighborhood and currently one of the city’s most economically and socially vulnerable areas. Working with Monument Lab, a national public art and history studio based in Philadelphia that originated in a project supported by the Center, the Village will create a neighborhood-based curatorial platform that centers the leadership of community residents as curators, advisors, and makers who will articulate their collective vision for the neighborhood’s future. The project will invite residents to engage with artists based both in North Philadelphia and elsewhere whose work explores questions of power, place, and memory in a collaborative process resulting in monumental sculpture, indoor installations, and storefront activations. Invited artists include Pew Fellows Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips (working as the collective Black Quantum Futurism), Ebony G. Patterson, Deborah Willis, and the art collective People's Paper Co-Op.

Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.