The Penn School for Culture and Community is in the first instance a partnership between the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District and the University of Georgia’s Willson Center for Humanities & Arts. This partnership has led to a series of other collaborations, with other institutions, communities, and foundations. These have intersected in turn with a growing national and international interest in the Penn Center and in the island of St. Helena, including the recognition of the Penn Center as one of only four places nationally in the new UNESCO network of global sites of the memory of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. Along with Atlanta’s “Sweet Auburn” (Auburn Avenue) National Historic Landmark District, Penn Center is also one of only two National Historic Landmark Districts in the entire country that center the history and heritage of African American communities. Uniquely as a project connected to the diasporic power of Gullah Geechee communities, all our programming is tied to this singularly important space and the history and legacies that have emanated from it since its founding in 1862 as one of the first schools in the South by and for formerly enslaved Black communities. What began four years ago as a project to create student residencies to conduct research, engage in hands-on workshops and community service, and learn in place at the Penn Center has become a model and a movement. Our focus on critically (re)examining the complex histories of slavery, Reconstruction, and Gullah Geechee culture is not just important, it’s crucial for renewing democracy. We have learned a great deal together about the culture, history, art, architecture, music, foodways, conservation, and literature of coastal and island Gullah Geechee communities and about the relationships between these Gullah Geechee communities and the mainland. Our proposal for a second phase of funding is focused on institutionalizing our evolving relationships, which are now national and international in scope, into a defined program that other institutions, communities, and foundations can access and contribute to sustainably and equitably. This work grows organically. During the past three years of these residencies, in addition to attracting humanities, arts, media, and social sciences students and faculty from our official partner colleges and universities, including HBCUs in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, we have welcomed two hundred and fifty students from eighteen higher learning institutions. Many of these students and faculty are now engaging in ongoing initiatives outside of the spring residency week. For instance, Architecture and Design students from the Georgia Institute of Technology are assisting Penn Center in modeling and mapping projects to develop sustainability planning, while University of Georgia Art, Public History, and African American Studies students have participated in independent study projects on St. Helena Island, such as creating a digital inventory and co-composing exhibition booklets connected to the holdings of Penn Center’s York W. Bailey Museum and Penn Center’s archives in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Southern Historical Collection. The dynamic collaborations between Penn Center and these wide-ranging programs have established a foundation for cultivating diverse, interdisciplinary, and cross-institutional projects in future years. By modeling the next phase of the student residencies on the idea of a school, we are responding to and advancing Penn Center’s original, unbroken mission to focus on education, civic engagement, the protection of land and water, and the preservation of Gullah Geechee history and culture. The Penn School for Culture and Community is modeled on Penn Center’s ongoing and unwavering emphasis, as it enters its 163rd year, on framing education as a process that is multigenerational, multidisciplinary, cross-institutional, and joy-filled. It is in keeping with this spirit that we have begun to call students who attend each residency ‘Penn Scholars’ (which the students love). This naming will instill them with a sense of purpose and achievement, as well as connect them directly to former graduates of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who were addressed as such by the teachers and staff during the eighty-six years that Penn Center was known as Penn School. Our proposed naming therefore speaks to our commitment to sustainability and continuity, in that we will undertake to build a sense of the students as being Penn Center alumni with lifelong contributions to make to this place, especially since so many of them have returned voluntarily after their first spring residency to work on capstone research, thesis, or service projects at other times during the calendar year.
Funder: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Amount: $1 million
PI: Nicholas Allen, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Department of English; Willson Center for Humanities & Arts