Supported by the Mellon Foundation, The Friends of the Tanner House, The Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS), and a growing set of neighborhood partners embarked upon a community-centered platform for a collective vision for the Henry Ossawa Tanner House, a 2023 America's 11 Most Endangered Places designee.

The Friends of the Tanner House assembled a cohort of Philadelphia cultural workers and community partners to participate in the art-centered participatory planning process, emphasizing design justice principles and community-centered inquiries in its execution. We drew inspiration from poet and activist June Jordan’s inquiry process for a Harlem housing and community redesign project in the 1960s, remixed for a contemporary North Central Philadelphia audience. We began with: “What kind of community invitations (to collectively gather), what kind of heritage preservation practices (to collectively reflect), what kind of educational spaces (to collectively study), what kind of healing narratives (to collectively spread), and what kind of beautiful experiments (to collectively organize) to make love an easy, reasonable public response?”

Through this session, participants will be invited to imagine and realize strategies for multigenerational, arts-rich opportunities for residents to become ambassadors for neighborhood heritage preservation, calling forward underrepresented audiences to see themselves at the center of sustaining the beauty and brilliance of their communities.