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8/4/2019 Civic Situation

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exhibits to leverage the connections between historic places and civic life. All these examples use place-basedexperiential learning to draw users into historic places and then pull out contemporary lessons from them.

Technique 1 Stakeholder Oral History in The City without a Ghetto

The framework described above emphasizes how both historical and contemporary understandings of place are

the result of interactions between different actors with various points of view. Last spring, CUP conducted aprogram called The City without a Ghetto in partnership with City-as-School High School, an alternativepublic high school in New York City. The 15-week, 90-hour program examined public housing in New YorkCity its history, present, and possible futures. The program engaged learning standards from three curricularareas: local history, media/design literacy and production, and civics. Taken together, these three establishedcurricular areas form the basis for what may be called the New Civics.

One challenge for the CUP facilitators was encouraging students to consider the connections between theireveryday assumptions and beliefs about the projects and the history and development of public housing overthe last seven decades. For example, at the beginning of the program, most students, some of whom were publichousing residents, had a hard time believing that anyone could ever have hoped that the construction of theiconic public housing towers of New York City was a way to combat poverty and social inequality. In short, itwas tough for them to understand that prevalent views on public housing had changed over time in response tospecific political discussions and debates. One of the most successful techniques we used to catalyze thisunderstanding was what we call Stakeholder Oral History.

Stakeholder Oral History is the simple and low-budget technique of conducting video interviews with a widerange of people who are involved in a decision-making process. In the case of this project, the class as a groupconducted videotaped interviews with around twenty people involved in decisions that impact public housing,including community organizers, architects, urban historians, elected officials, policy advocates, HousingAuthority employees, and others (Figure 1). The interviews focused on a number of areas: among others, therelationship of the interviewee to public housing, their account of the history of public housing, and their beliefsabout its future. Students worked in facilitated groups to develop the questions, and conducted the interviewsand operated the video equipment with minimal teacher help. In post-interview discussions and later classroomsessions where the class could juxtapose different interviews, hearing varied perspectives gave students avisceral understanding of how history is told differently by different people, and how different understandingsof history lead to different beliefs about the present. In this case, the history of public housing sites served as a

gateway to achieve goals across curricular areas, a clear benefit for educators. The interviewees, willing todonate their time in order to contribute to an educational project and express their views, supply a valuableresource for both the historic site and the educator. And of course the historic site, in its physicality, is aninvaluable resource for students and teachers and reference for the interviewees. The site, the stakeholders, andthe educational institution all are able to benefit from such a partnership.

Technique 2 Design education activities for Good Neighborhood, Bad Neighborhood

This section presents some further low-budget activities that can be supported by mutually beneficialrelationships between schools, historic sites, and possibly community-based organizations. These examples aredrawn from a 10-week, 15-hour afterschool program, conducted with 5th and 6th graders in the South Bronx incollaboration with the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment. Although for younger students in a lessformal environment, this program shared with The City without a Ghetto the goal of increasing student

knowledge of the history of their local environment. Likewise, it aimed to give students a sense of howhistorical discussions and debates shaped the world we live in today. The focus of this program, as indicated byits title, was the meaning of our everyday judgments about urban neighborhoods. What makes a neighborhoodgood or bad?

A few blocks away from the school stood the now-vacant Bronx County Courthouse, completed in 1915. Thebuilding, architecturally distinct and occupying a prominent site in the neighborhood, posed a built environmentmystery for the students: what was this strange, boarded-up place? The most common student theory,understandably enough, was that the building was haunted. Here, the challenge was to encourage students to


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imagine both the past and the possible future of the building. One technique to do this is Xerox Adaptive Reuse.Here, students are given photocopies of pictures of the building, taken from different angles, and asked to drawover the building, showing either the way it might have been in the past, or how it might have be in the future(Figure 2). In both cases, the focus is not on the absolute feasibility or accuracy of the students ideas, but ontheir ability to present a rationale for their projections. When their designs are complete, students are asked toanswer questions about how their vision is different from the buildings current state, and why they believe it isa good idea. Using design to imagine the past and future of a single building brought the concept historicalneighborhood change to a clearly physical level for the students. Such an activity could be strengthened by apartnership with local preservationist or community development groups, where students could talk to peopleabout the building, perhaps take a tour, or see actual proposals.

Another technique to introduce students to the historical role of discussion and debate in forming the builtenvironment is role-playing; in honor of the popularity of professional wrestling, we called our version UrbanPlanning Smackdown. While not indispensable, this activity is most fun when used with a student-built model.For this program, we asked students to bring in shoeboxes, toilet paper tubes, and other materials, which wesupplemented with poster board, markers, and foamcore to serve as a base (Figure 3). However, this activity canwork well even without a model for reference. The essence of the game is that students are divided into roles:factory owners, parents, kids, environmental activists, deli owners, police, real estate developers, etc. Threestudents were asked to serve as a mayoral council. To help students dramatically step into their roles, wedistributed some rudimentary props: neckties for the businesspeople, berets for the police, and capes for

whoever wanted them. In our version, we made cards to explain the basic activities and interests of each role,and then distributed them to the students (Figure 4). Each group is then asked to come up with a set of writtenrecommendations suggesting specific changes in the neighborhood to present to the mayoral council. Theactivity concludes with each role/group presenting their ideas to the mayoral council, discussing and debatingwith other groups, and then hearing the final compromises agreed to by the mayors. Again, such an activitycould easily be adapted to focus on a specific historic site if done in partnership with a local preservationist oreconomic development organization.

Technique 3 Multimedia investigation-based exhibits inBuilding Codes

For my last example, I will present how exhibitions and related programming, held either on- or off-site, canbring together local advocacy groups, educational institutions, artists and designers, and historic places.

2001 was the centennial of the Tenement House Act of 1901, arguably New York Citys first building code. Forthis occasion, CUP organized a series of exhibitions, educational programs, and public events in partnershipwith the Storefront for Art and Architecture, a nonprofit gallery space in New York, the Lower East SideTenement Museum, and over twenty local organizations whose work connects to building codes in somefashion: architects, tenant groups, policy think tanks, nonprofit law firms, real estate brokers, municipalbureaucrats, artists, community developers, and more.

While the exhibits included many elements, including a version of Stakeholder Oral History as described above(Figure 5), here I will describe two techniques that focus directly on developing synergy among the partnerslisted above with minimal investment.

The first technique was used for a medium-sized exhibition titledBuilding Codes: The Programmable City,held in a nonprofit gallery space (Figures 6 and 7). While some elements of this exhibition were not exactly on

a shoestring (the overall budget was around $10,000), these two modules were cheap because they tookadvantage of what people and organizations were interested in doing anyway without financial incentive. First,in keeping with the framework described at the beginning of this paper, we had identified an issue buildingcodes that linked historical issues of place with contemporary political activity. This issue created aconnection between the story told at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum how political reform resulted inindoor bathrooms and the stories told by advocacy organizations working on contemporary building codesreform from rent laws to zoning to safety requirements. Because one of the core missions of such advocacyorganizations is public outreach, we invited a number of these organizations to contribute 18 by 24 inchpresentation boards describing their organization or one of its current initiatives (Figure 8). These low-cost


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materials provided exhibition visitors with a clear connection between the partnering historic site andcontemporary civic life, making a case for the continuing relevance of historic places. For the contributingorganizations, it provided an opportunity to get their message out to a public that they might not otherwisereach. Finally, by allowing groups to host networking nights at the exhibit, personal contacts could be madeboth between the contributing organizations and other partners.

The second technique involved inviting local artists to create work that would bring together the partners. In thegallery show mentioned above, documentary photographers exhibited documentary images of events and placesdirectly connected to the issue of building codes. For example, Tamara Sussman contributed photographs takenin the New York City Department of Buildings (Figure 9). The juxtaposition of these contemporary images withhistorical images taken from Jacob RiissHow the Other Half Lives created an exciting connection between thepast and the present, highlighting the historical roots of contemporary experience and the everyday quality ofhistorical places. At another site, this time the windows of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, a number ofCUP volunteers created a lit display describing the political story behind the 1901 Tenement House Act inChinese, Spanish, and English, accompanied by a fantastical pro-toilet poster (Figure 10). The goal of thisdisplay was to highlight once again how historical places show us physical evidence of the outcomes ofdiscussions and debates. Finally, the window installation also included a Simulated Public Forum, includingphotographs and quotations from six of the interviewees from the Stakeholder Oral History project (Figure 11).As long as artists are willing to work with affordable materials, their work can provide excellent catalysts forconnecting historic places and civic life.

Conclusion

All of the techniques presented in this paper attempt to orchestrate activities that various communityorganizations primarily educational institutions and local advocacy groups do all the time as part of theircore missions. In each case, I have tried to suggest how these activities that go on all the time for example,policy discussions and local history education can be brought into a productive and activating relationshipwith minimal additional resources and clearly delimited obligations. Beyond these suggestions, many of thesetechniques themselves can be productively combined; for example, the student work created by StakeholderOral Histories and design-based activities can provide stimulating material for multimedia exhibits.

Acknowledgements

Support for the CUP projects mentioned in this paper was provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, theCenter for Arts Education, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, theBrooklyn Arts Council, and the Rooftop Films Filmmakers Fund.


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Figures

Figure 1. Stakeholder Oral History from The City without a Ghetto (2003)


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Figure 2 Fill-in-the-blank buildings from Good Neighborhood, Bad Neighborhood(2002)

Figure 3 & 4. Model and card from Good Neighborhood, Bad Neighborhood(2002)


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Figure 5, 6, & 7 Installation views of Building Codes: The Programmable City (2001)


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Figure 8. Stakeholder display boards fromBuilding Codes (2001)

Figure 9. Documentary photography inBuilding Codes (2001)


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Figures 10 & 11 Installation views ofBuilding Codes, Coding Communities at the Lower East Side TenementMuseum (2001)

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