From the Field: First Person Festival’s Depression-era Stories

Anne Burnett, Program Director at Historic Germantown, shares her reflections on a recent HPP field trip.

On Wednesday, November 4^th, I joined a group of museum professionals as HPP’s guests at the 8^th Annual First Person Arts Festival, held at the Painted Bride Art Center. The focus of the evening’s festivities, the first Festival events I’d attended, was billed as a combination of history, storytelling, song and food; or put another way, an evening that’s both entertaining and delicious—What’s not to like?

Upon arrival at the Painted Bride, our group was ushered into a corner gallery space in the Center, transformed through the creative use of lighting, music, and documentary images projected on the wall, into a Depression-era Speakeasy, featuring tasty hors d’oeuvres and some very brightly-colored gin drinks. From there, we moved to a small meeting space to talk with Festival Director Vicki Solot about how the focus of Depression-era stories came into being from their HPP-funded Discovery Grant. We heard from historian and faculty member at The New School Julia Foulkes as well, as she shared more about the ways in which the project set out to weave art and history together.

We headed next to a dining area where Jack’s Firehouse staff served up an incredible buffet of traditional regional cuisine in a family-style setting. I tried it all, even the booya – a mysterious stew-like dish that smelled delicious. Author Pat Willard’s fascinating talk during dinner,—in which the secrets of making booya and other regional culinary dishes were revealed,—was one of the real highlights of the evening for me. Pat shared her experiences in researching the work of WPA writers assigned to document America’s culinary heritage, for her book America Eats!. I gained a whole new appreciation for the thinking that went into this WPA project: here were writers setting out to document not so much a list of ingredients, or recipes, but the people and stories behind them. Pat’s own stories, collected while retracing the travels of those writers, added a wonderful dimension to the program, carrying America Eats! full circle. Rarely do I leave a book talk and signing without a copy in my bag, and this evening was no exception.

The final program of our evening , “Songs for Any Depression,” highlighted the Depression era’s musical legacy. In their informal introductory discussion, scholars/authors Julia Foulkes and Morris Dickstein did a wonderful job setting the stage for the musical performances that followed, placing the spoken word pieces, musicians and songs in historical and cultural context. For me, the size of the theater made for a very special, intimate experience as Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter Sarah Lee Guthrie and her husband Johnny Irion performed some of Woody’s and their own songs next, followed by equally inspiring sets by Kim and Reggie Harris. [To view these performances, see post below.] It seemed only fitting that the voice of folk music on my radio for so many years now, Gene Shay, would host this portion of the festival.

Overall, I was struck by the creative ways in which the Festival was able to mine the richness of material recorded and documented by the WPA, offering a choice sampling of the many, many personal stories that connect with all of us in some way, as we navigate through similar hard times today.

From the Field: First Person Festival’s "Songs for Any Depression"

Woody Guthrie, an icon of folk music who lived through the Great Depression, came to life through his granddaughter's performance of one of his songs, "Worried Man Blues." This performance was part of the First Person Festival's "Songs for Any Depression."

Philadelphia's own storytellers and folk duo Kim and Reggie Harris also performed at the Festival.

Any Depression."

Reports From the Field: "Germantown Works" Update

David Young, Executive Director of Cliveden of the National Trust, has agreed to share more about his HPP-funded grant.

With funding from the Heritage Philadelphia Program, Historic Germantown Preserved, a consortium of 15 historic sites in one Philadelphia neighborhood, has launched a program initiative to forge new partnerships in the community. The effort, Germantown Works, implements marketing and community engagement strategies first articulated in a year-plus planning process that outlined ways to address the sustainability of small historic sites and house museums.

The initiative is meant to address three “live issues”:

• Germantown as a community at risk with over a quarter of its 46,000 residents living at or below the poverty line;
• Historic sites are struggling to be economically sustainable all over the nation; and
• Engaging new audiences in the work of historic sites and small museums is critical to ensuring their viability.

Strategies
Germantown Works uses several strategies to meet these issues. First, coordinated programs on the common theme of “An Industrious Heritage building Commerce and Culture,” are bringing the sites—known largely for connections to colonial, revolutionary, and Victorian history—into greater relevance in the community.

To implement these goals, each site offers programs on the coordinated theme throughout the calendar year showing how each site interpreted programs relating to “work.” This includes farm programs at Wyck and Grumblethorpe and a victory garden run by the World War II-era, ACES Museum. Cliveden has produced a “Careers in Culture” program to have high school students learn about work at the historic site while also learning about resume-writing and interviewing skills. The video below is an example of one of the projects the students dreamed up from their research into Cliveden history.

A second strategy has involved more recent history, with public events exploring little-known 20^th century topics, like the Harlem Renaissance in Germantown and the events of the Civil Rights era. Coverage of one of the conversations with some of the participants can be seen here.

The third strategy has involved live partnerships with Temple University and Germantown High School to introduce young people into history projects that benefit the sites of the consortium. Temple’s American Studies and Public History classes have sent students to Germantown for discussions with sites’ staffs about the work we do, and student projects explore the students’ responses to the issues we face—most the projects will be uploaded to the consortium’s website. This aspect is meant to provide training opportunities for young people in the work of historic sites, through exposure to archival, archaeological, and oral history projects.

Germantown High School students from journalism and history classes have engaged long-time Germantown residents in small-group conversations in historic churches. Each conversation has been videotaped for use on the website.

These conversations, a partnership with area churches called Germantown Speaks, has been very compelling. Fourteen students have been trained in interviewing techniques and developed a set of questions about daily life in the recent past. Students have learned where the dances, concerts, and movie houses were, and how life at the high school was different in the 1930s through the 1960s. Residents have brought their own pictures to scan—and one even brought a lobby sign from an old movie house to stir some memories.

Common Threads
Two common threads have emerged. The conversations have addressed difficult issues in forthright ways. Students have learned about the segregation present in the community, where the tough neighborhoods were, and how the community has coped with violence and racism in telling detail. One interview session involved all women, and each of the women (two of whom brought their daughters) was eager to share a sense of their own journey in life with stories of accomplishment and milestones along the way.

Another common thread was that at some point in each of the four conversations, the student interviewers became the subjects of questions by the seniors. “What are your goals?” “When you are interviewed 40 years from now, how will you characterize your neighborhood?” The senior citizens were as eager to learn about the students’ lives and their sense of place as the students were about the seniors.

The students have commented that “the history was a lot more interesting than they realized” (a real compliment from a teenager!). And they have been surprised at how much the community had similar “live issues” way back when. The result has been that we have all left these conversations a slightly closer community—it is clear, even with so many difficult issues, that people really love Germantown.

And when the 15 historic sites of the community can be seen as relevant and as an advocate for our historic neighborhood and its shared history, then Germantown Works can be considered a success.