Neighborhood Strategies and The Role of Storytelling
Neighborhoods are made up of people and characters. Each of these people have a backstory- a complex series of events, circumstances, and perspectives that coalescence to contribute to the arch of their lives and the lifeblood of the collective neighborhood.
This rings true for many of our Philadelphian residents who reside in the neighborhoods boarding the University of Pennsylvania. Oftentimes, these residents face systemic inequities that exist in stark contrast to the prestine, orderly campus.
Neighborhood Strategies Pilot Program sought to support community leaders in the neighborhoods of Kinsessing, Cobbs Creek, Mill Creek, and Mantua as the leaders endeavored to address issues that their neighbors deemed important.
Storytelling served as the bridge between the community leaders, the neighborhood residents, and the University of Pennsylvania community. These stories demonstrate the work that the leaders have done which can enhance the credibility of their initiatives and their organizations. In this way, storytelling will serve as a tool that the leaders can add to their toolkit when applying for funds from other granting institutions. These stories demonstrate the work that the leaders have done which can enhance the credibility of their initiatives and their organizations.
We met periodically with the leaders who participated in the Pilot Program for video interviews. Three interviews were conducted with each of the leaders, each took place over the course of the pilot program. These interviews tracked the evolution of the leader’s strategies as they encountered challenges, problem solved in real-time and pivoted in order to eventually launch their projects.
Over the course of filming, the leaders and their collaborators demonstrated resilience, perseverance, grit, ingenuity, and a growth mindset that enable most of them to execute their strategies. This docu-series illustrates that there is nothing easy, especially during a pandemic, about attempting to address the systemic inequities that have burdened many of West Philadelphia’s neighborhoods.
It was always the hope and vision for the Neighborhood Strategies Pilot Program that this structure would lay the foundation for sustainable efforts that would continue far beyond the year-long program that provided the leaders with seed funds and infrastructure. Community activists, advocates, artists, and collaborators often say that their work is lonely. Partially because the intensity of such work often requires long hours even though the leaders often have other full-time jobs and commitments to family that can cause this passion-driven work to limit their available time to connect outside of their efforts. Connection can offer leaders the context necessary to effectively gauge the progress and impacts of their projects.
Storytelling played a critical role in helping the leaders to connect. As a result, they gained a greater appreciation for their own efforts in relation to other projects, strategies, initiatives within the community at large. Additionally, the limitations of virtual workspaces constrained or eliminated interactions that would otherwise tend to happen spontaneously in pre-COVID times when in-person community organizing was more common. The leaders who participated in this pilot program expressed that they only recognized the depth of their loss of connection when reflecting on the contrasting support and connection they received from Penn Futures and We The People Stage while participating in the Neighborhood Strategies Pilot Program.
On the surface, it initially appeared that storytelling was simply a compliment to the Neighborhood Strategies Pilot Program but in looking back at the last couple of years socially distanced and reckoning. However, the storytelling component of this pilot program may have been the connecting tissue that played a critical role in helping these programs launch conveying a deeper understanding of the partnerships and impact of these neighborhoods’ collective efforts to build a more equitable community.
