Annunciating a Community Cultural Platform with Holistic Preservation for The Henry Ossawa Tanner House

upcoming

BUILDING BLOCKS FOR BLACK HERITAGE PRESERVATION

April 27, 2024 | Presented by the Friends of the Tanner House, Community Design Collaborative, and the Center for Preservation of Civil Rights Sites.

Utilizing the Henry Ossawa Tanner House as a reflective case study, Building Blocks for Black Heritage Preservation will be a half-day workshop that brings together Greater Philadelphia area Black heritage advocates and projects to: (1) exploring preservation project storytelling that articulates cultural and/or architectural significance; (2) forming tactics/ideas for envisioning community-driven function/re-use, and; (3) strategizing preservation project planning and design to inform fundraising and resource development.

Project Overview

The Friends of the Tanner House (FOTH) and its project partners are leading an arts-rich participatory planning and preservation visioning process that invites community voices to provide input into the rehabilitation and proposed re-use of the Henry Ossawa Tanner House. This project centers the specific ways Black folks have shaped Philadelphia. The FOTH intends to grow and sustain a transformative community cultural platform for and by the heart, hands, and imagination of Black folk’s everyday lives.

Supported by the Mellon Foundation, FOTH, Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS), and local partners will create a community-centered platform for a collective vision for the Tanner House. FOTH will assemble 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. FOTH and partners plan to host five (5) artist-led creative community events around Tanner family themes and additional community workshop sessions (estimated for early 2024) that are more directly tied to larger preservation outcome goals informed by the neighborhood engagement process.

Our Inspiration from June Jordan:

What kind of community invitations (to collectively gather) and what kind of heritage preservation practices (to collectively reflect) and what kind of educational spaces (to collectively study) and what kind of healing narratives (to collectively spread) and what kind of beautiful experiments (to collectively organize) make love an easy, reasonable public response?
— Friends of the Tanner House

FOTH has drawn inspiration from poet and activist June Jordan’s process for a Harlem housing and community redesign project in the 1960s. As a way of eliciting community opinion, she asked: “What kind of schools and what kind of streets and what kind of parks and what kind of privacy and what kind of beauty and what kind of music and what kind of options would make love a reasonable, easy response?” We’ve remixed this insightful inquiry to reflect our contemporary desires for community cultural organizing in North Philadelphia:

A year-long joint effort between The Friends of the Tanner House & The Center for Preservation of Civil Rights Sites to uplift the Henry Ossawa Tanner House

Artist Partnership Event Series

Friends of the Tanner House partners with Qiaira Riley to lead a series of multigenerational, interactive, arts and culture activities that uplift Tanner family legacies, spread awareness of our preservation goals, and invite rich community wisdom to inform the ongoing revitalization of the Tanner House.

Community Collaboration Event Series

Supporting collaborations from community-centered groups, organizations, and collectives across themes of faith, family, freedom, health, arts, and education in the 19121 + 19132 zip codes to cultivate an integrated, expansive vision for Tanner House programming.

Design & Preservation Workshop Series

A workshop series led by architecture, design, and preservation professionals exploring concepts, ideas, and experiments to further Black heritage preservation and outline a preservation philosophy and design approach for the Tanner House.

2023-24 Community Collaboration Series Partners

Introducing our 2023-24 Artist Partner: Qiaira Riley

Qiaira Riley is a community-based artist, educator, guerilla theorist, and event curator, raised on Chicago’s south-side and based in Philadelphia. She holds a dual B.A. in Black Studies and Studio Art from Lake Forest College, as well as an M.F.A in Socially Engaged Studio Art from Moore College of Art and Design. She is a founding member of 2.0, a collective that collaborates with artists and organizations to curate free, experimental offerings that are exclusive to or center Black femmes, women, and genderqueer folks. She is also the host of “Something You Can Feel”, a Black art history podcast. Her arts practice work shifts between painting, ceramics, and video, and transfer techniques. Her work explores and is inspired by Black American memorabilia , food-ways and vernacular interiors, collective memory, and reality television.

Friends of the Tanner House Community Partner Network

PREVIOUSLY IN THE ARTIST PARTNERSHIP SERIES:

Join The Friends of the Tanner House on March 17th from noon til 3PM at 2908 W. Diamond St. for the final event in our Artist Partnership Series!

Civic Inspirations is a social-justice printmaking workshop inspired by the work of Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, a Civil Rights activist and the first Black woman to graduate from PennLaw. The day will include an opportunity for participants to screenprint their own totes and tshirts uplifting contemporary political campaigns, as well as free food and activities from the Abolition School and Decolonize Philly

Join The Friends of the Tanner House for A House is Not a Home: A Family Portrait and Oral Histories Day.

Portraits will be led by photographer Cassidy Arrington, tintypes by artist Elizabeth Kelly, and an opportunity for North Philadelphia families to orally document the stories of their homes and families with our Media Artist in Residence and audio producer Danya AbdelHamied.

Participants will also have the opportunity to view our community artist partner, Qiaira Riley's Beauty of the Week exhibition, an exploration of collective and individual Black aesthetic memory and familial heritage.

Join The Friends of the Tanner House on October 8th at the Hatfield House for “The People's Dispensary” from Noon til 5PM!

The People’s Dispensary, inspired by the life of Dr. Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, is a multi-generational, communal care event centering art + holistic care, while honoring black femme health care workers. Offerings include workshops exploring family genealogy, farming, birthwork, herbal medicine, and more; as well as resources to free or low-cost health resources. There will also be a range of art experiences, including floral arrangement and aromatherapy activities, as well as FREE food. People are encouraged to register for individual workshops, as they each have a max capacity of 20 participants!

This event is in partnership with the Strawberry Mansion Civic Association, Fairmount Park Conservancy, and the Center for Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the University of Pennsylvania.

Join us on December 15th from 3PM-5PM, as The Friends of the Tanner House hosts a free family-oriented ceramics workshop intertwining Black liberation and spirituality, inspired by the lives of Sarah Elizabeth and Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner!

Participants will meet us at the Cecil B Moore Library to engage in a conversation centering the role of Black religious and spirituality practices across the diaspora in fights for freedom, before creating hand-built ceramic altars. We'll also have free food, and a chance to learn more about the future of the Tanner Family House.

Join The Friends of the Tanner House on October 14th at TreeHouse Books for “Plastic on the Sofa” from 1 - 3pm!

Plastic on the Sofa is an artist talk + collage workshop, honoring and exploring the role of the Black home in contemporary art. This event is inspired by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first black painter to gain international recognition. Join collage artists and cultural workers: Doriana DiazDestiny Crockett and founder of the Colored Girls Musuem, Vashti DuBois, as they discuss how Black domesticity influences their creative practices. Following the conversation, there will be a workshop where participants will create their own collages inspired by Henry O. Tanner’s depiction of Black vernacular interiors, as seen in The Banjo Lesson. We'll also have some free treats from Down North Pizza, including vegan and vegetarian items!