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.

In Gratitude

During this season of reflecting on the many things that we are thankful for, HPP has been thinking about what we are grateful for in our professional lives. There are so many things that have made our jobs as history professionals much easier—books, websites, colleagues, projects that have inspired us over the years. (Click on "comments" below to see what HPP staff is grateful for.)

We'd love to hear what you're thankful for, too! What feeds your creativity in the workplace? Where (or to whom) do you look for inspiration? What helps you to do your job better or helps you regain focus when you need it?

Please reply by clicking on the "comments" link and let us know what you're grateful for. We (and your fellow history professionals) would certainly be thankful if you shared!

Performance Review: "Fatebook"

On September 16, HPP took a group of constituents to see FATEBOOK, a Philly Live Arts Festival performance written and directed by Whit McLaughlin of New Paradise Laboratories. The performance experimented with audience and new technology, exploring "what happens when our online relationships collide with our physical ones."

The show's 13 main characters had both a personal and online presence (on Facebook and Twitter); audience members were encouraged to "friend" the characters before seeing the show in order to get to know them better. At the actual show, the FATEBOOK website states:

...[A]udiences experience FATEBOOK by trailing individual characters at will. The action plays out within a labyrinth of screens displaying the shifting cityscapes and intimate spaces in which the characters live. Twelve projectors and 4 live video feeds blur the line between the digital environment and the physical one; performers seem to step in and out of a virtual world filled with pleasure and peril. Thirteen individual stories weave into one looping, shifting world; FATEBOOK allows you to follow the story from the varying perspectives and characters, until a final retelling smashes all expectations.

Click on "comments" below to read some attendees' reflections on the show itself and the application of it to their professional lives.

If you saw the show, please feel free to also submit comments. We'd love to know your thoughts!

Report from the Field: Oakland Museum of California, PART 2

Kathleen McLean, the consulting Creative Director on the Oakland Museum of California History Gallery, is a guest blogger for HPP for this week and last. She can be reached at www.ind-x.org.

Throughout the process of planning, designing, and installing Coming to California, the new Gallery of California History at the Oakland Museum of California, the museum has been committed to testing and prototyping as many exhibit elements as possible, from individual labels and images, to whole sections of the gallery. Cardboard has become one of our major design tools (see photos below), as we erect walls and rooms full-scale in the space, and test exhibit concepts with visitors.

This practice of prototyping, combined with the tight deadline and budget, and a commitment to community co-design, required us to think very differently about the overall exhibition development process. I knew that the typical linear process, which is based on an architecture/engineering model—first conceptual design, then final design, then construction documents, then fabrication and installation—would not work for this project for a number of reasons.

First of all, we didn't really have the budget for it. (What was originally perceived as a serious constraint—not enough money to do a high-quality job—became a creative challenge and liberating factor for the project.) Instead of using external design and fabrication firms, we are using that money to hire local artisans, designers, and fabricators. By bringing the work in-house, we have created a design/build situation, where the people designing the exhibits and the people making the exhibits are, if not the same people, then at least in constant communication, lessening the need for expensive and detailed construction documents. We made a commitment to hire locally, which, besides making communications easier, also reduces our carbon footprint. And, serendipitously, we now are a team of Californians creating a gallery about California.

Also because of budget constraints, we decided to reuse furniture and display elements from the old gallery. Not only is this a great example of sustainable reuse, it also provides a continuity of character and some lingering personality from the previous environment (something sorely missing these days as old exhibitions are swept out the back door like debris, while new exhibitions made of all new resources drop in from who knows where.)

In order to accommodate community participation, exhibit element reuse, and prototyping of concepts and designs, our process is anything but linear. Some elements have been built, while others are still in design, and some are still in concept. Rather than having to finish all the elements at once, regardless of how well thought out they are, we are holding off on the elements that still haven't jelled. And this will hopefully make for a richer overall visitor experience.

While some museums employ the approach of remedial summative evaluation—testing an exhibition with visitors after opening, and "fixing" the exhibition as a result of visitor research—this project takes the practice a step further. Rather than "finishing" everything before opening, and then improving or replacing elements that are not working (either conceptually or physically), we plan to leave some key elements in prototype form for the opening, with a message to visitors describing how they can help us complete the installation.

The details of this notion of a prototype history gallery are still in flux, as we try to determine which elements need to be more robust and complete upon opening, and which can remain more flexible, like labels made of paper, or easily changeable section titles projected onto exhibit walls. While we are still trying to figure out how much of the exhibitry is flexible and changeable, once the new gallery opens in 2010, it will not be considered "completed" or "permanent." Rather, it will be a full-scale 30,000 square foot prototype public space, awaiting the imprints and changes that visitors bring with them over time.


I would like to thank Oakland Museum of California Executive Director Lori Fogarty, and Chief Curator of History Louise Pubols for their assistance in writing this article.

Report from the Field: OMC Slideshow, PART 2

Gold rush tent store ready for prototyping

Paper cut-outs stand in for objects

Paper mockup of a wall layout

Rough mockup of the back of a pickup truck

Sketching out the Depression truck

Exhibit sections get prototyped in full scale

Photos courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California,
© Photographer Terry Carroll