{"id":4459,"date":"2016-03-09T02:00:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T07:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=4459"},"modified":"2016-03-07T20:52:02","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T01:52:02","slug":"orange-mound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2016\/03\/orange-mound\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange Mound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4468 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound-copy.jpg\" alt=\"ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound copy\" width=\"202\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound-copy.jpg 202w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound-copy-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound-copy-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px\" \/>Last year ArtsMemphis invited me to speak and do a little consulting work. In the process I learned about their Community Engagement Fellows program and that program&#8217;s focus on the Orange Mound neighborhood in Memphis. (According to Wikipedia\u2013former academic colleagues, forgive me\u2013Orange Mound was the first African-American neighborhood in the United States to be built by African-Americans, dating back to the 1890&#8217;s.) I was deeply impressed both by the Fellows program and its work in Orange Mound. (At one point an older resident of the neighborhood said in a Q&amp;A session that they had been so impressed by the work of the Fellows that they asked the Fellows to help put together a celebration of Orange Mound&#8217;s 125th anniversary.)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Last month Memphis&#8217; Rhodes College sponsored a conference called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rhodes.edu\/content\/memphis-center-conferences?mc_cid=448bd22e25&amp;mc_eid=5bc35cf4ec\" target=\"_blank\">Memphis Art and Place<\/a> to consider the role of culture in local placemaking. The Orange Mound work was featured as one of the key examples and I thought it would be valuable to highlight this interesting work.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">ArtsMemphis&#8217;s Community Engagement Fellows are aspiring and early career arts managers with a passion for connecting the arts and communities. Here is the overview of the program, taken from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsmemphis.org\/our-stories\/community-engagement-fellows-program\/engagement-transforms-communities-grants\/\" target=\"_blank\">ArtsMemphis website<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; text-align: justify;\"><em>We launched this program in 2014 in order to train emerging leaders in the nascent field of arts-driven social change. Each Fellowship award comes with a stipend to participate in a six-month, hands-on curriculum under scholar-practitioner Linda Steele. So far, we\u2019ve trained 30 Fellows from a host of different nonprofits throughout Memphis.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Three projects featured on their website are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p style=\"padding-right: 30px; text-align: justify;\">A Cross-Generational Storytelling Project bringing youth and senior citizens together to share stories. From this\u00a0 emerged a play about Orange Mound&#8217;s past and future;<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p style=\"padding-right: 30px; text-align: justify;\">A Family Resource Center at Dunbar Elementary School, a community center which offers dance classes and arts-based learning opportunities for strengthening families; and<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p style=\"padding-right: 30px; text-align: justify;\">\u201cO-MUSIC\u201d After-School Music-Instruction Program which connected Orange Mound Outreach Ministries (that had musical instruments but no instructors) with music instructors. One result is peer-based instruction in which older youth teach younger ones.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are many other exciting projects including a community center\/library\/cafe with which the Fellows partner. The most significant aspect of the work to me is the way they go about developing projects. &#8220;They worked hand-in-hand with Orange Mound residents to <strong>design arts-based projects to address the neighborhood\u2019s <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">self-identified needs<\/span><\/strong>.&#8221; [Emphasis mine.]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">To close, I&#8217;d like to give a personal shout-out to Linda Steele, ArtsMemphis&#8217;s Chief Engagement Officer, who has done extraordinary work in developing and managing these programs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Engage!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Doug<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exceptionally good examples of community engagement from ArtsMemphis&#8217;s Community Engagement Fellows Program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Exceptionally good examples of community engagement from ArtsMemphis's Community Engagement Fellows Program.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[12,13,39],"class_list":["post-4459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-examples","tag-arts","tag-community-engagement","tag-relationships","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1G6h9-19V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ArtsMemphisCE_Fellows-OrangeMound-copy.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4486,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions\/4486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}