Threads of History
June 11th -
The big day. Here is the intro text for the museum:
El Centro de Estudiantes Kensington Art of History Project presents:
Threads of History – A Living Museum of Kensington’s Past and Present
Over the course of the last three months, El Centro students from Mr. Kareem and Mr. Andrew’s advisories have worked with teaching artists to explore the history of the Norris Square neighborhood of Kensington, itself a former city, but, since 1848, a neighborhood of Philadelphia. This exploration has focused been focused on three pursuits:
-Observing, researching, and documenting the physical landscape to reveal how clues from the past can be observed in the houses, factory buildings, and roadways of the present.
-Discovering the different groups and cultures that have inhabited the neighborhood and understanding what brought them to this place.
-Comparing and contrasting the differences in life and livelihood between the young people of today and the young people of the industrial revolution, primarily between the years of 1890-1915.
With the goal of displaying research through art making, students have also been looking critically at photography, painting, dance, and theater, and improving skills in making their own work. What you see here today is the culmination of this experience. We hope you enjoy it!
The title “Threads of History” invokes a time when Kensington was one of the textile manufacturing powerhouses of the world. Over the course of this project, I have been repeatedly reminded of how stories are like single threads in a large and variegated tapestry that forms the local history of the places we inhabit. Be it the story of a person, a building, a park, or a road, each story contributes a texture or a color to the whole.
The textile mills in this part of Philadelphia employed tens of thousands of people (many of them children) at the turn of the 20th century. The thread and yarn you see in this exhibit has been borrowed from the Thomas Buck Hosiery Factory, bordered by York, Emerald, Front, and Jasper Streets, just a few blocks from here. The factory was in operation until the mid 1970s, when a fire destroyed the punch-card knitting machines that were invented in the early 1900s.
As the lead project coordinator, I would like to thank Mr. Kareem and Mr. Andrew for approaching this project with such openness and enthusiasm. It’s been good to see you practice your craft and to learn from you. I would like to thank the teaching artists for bringing the love of your art to this intersection of history and creativity.
But most of all, I would like to thank the students. You are all brave young people, first and foremost, for overcoming life’s challenges and obstacles to come to school and take care of business by completing your education. But beyond the basics, you talented folks have displayed a tremendous amount of creativity, curiosity, insight, humor, tenacity, and strength through the course of a project that was at times confusing, untraditional, and difficult. We asked a lot of you, and you delivered. I am so honored and proud to have had the chance to work with all of you.
-Jebney Lewis
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And here’s the video of the final performance, intercut with the video team’s film of interviews and a final photo slideshow of project documentation.
