Barnes West / LoLa38

Everyday Places Artist Partnerships

Barnes West presented five Everyday Places Artist Partnerships - pairing a social-impact artist with an “everyday” location.
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These artists created participatory and interactive artistic projects by, with, and for the West Philadelphia community. 

Jahwula Seapoe & Clara Muhammad Square and Imperial Caribbean & Seafood

Seapoe partnered with Clara Muhammad Square and Imperial Caribbean & Seafood to offer in-person yoga workshops that pair movement with creative writing.  These offerings will invited participants to think about their own approach to self-care. Seapoe’s project was hybrid, virtual and in-person, and the only artist project that spanned the full six months.
 
Karen Smith & the Silk Tent

Smith, a member of Sistahs Laying Down Hands, worked with Philly Jawns and Tomorrow’s Girls to offer sustainable art-making workshops in partnership with the Silk Tent. Activities included percussion, poetry, and crafts that speak to the theme of “Heartbeat & Healing: Public Heart in Public Spaces.” Community members had opportunities to perform, present, or curate additional artistic work.

Keyonna Butler & Kanvas Event Center

Butler partnered with Kanvas Event Center to host sustainable fashion workshops on upcycling old clothes. For these workshops, participants brought clothes they no longer had use for to the center to learn skills like embroidery, hand sewing, and machine sewing to transform the clothes into new pieces of art. 

Andrea Walls & the Center for Carceral Communities

Walls  partnered with the Center for Carceral Communities to expand her ongoing project, Museum of Black Joy (TM) guided community members who participated in the center’s programs through a collaborative process to create original works that would be exhibited in the museum. 

Marshall James Kavanaugh & La Pearl Beauty Emporium

Kavanaugh partnered with La Pearl Beauty Emporium to set up typewriters and invite patrons and passersby to type responses to prompts or create original poetry. The resulting writings was exhibited on long scrolls attached to the typewriters during a performance event and converted into community poetry zines.

PRESS RELEASE

Barnes West Everyday Places
West Philadelphia Community Poem

Barnes West is supported by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.

The above image is of the Barnes Presents! Juneteenth Lantern Making Party.