University of Pennsylvania - Folklore and Folklife - Center for Folklore and Ethnography

For more information about the Center for Folklore & Ethnography,at UPenn, contact Professor Mary Hufford at mhufford@sas.upenn.edu.

To be added to the CFE mailing list, contact Joyce Roselle, at jroselle@sas.upenn.edu

For assistance with the Folklore and Folklife website, contact Linda Lee at lindalee@sas.upenn.edu.

A Collaborative Ethnography of Leadership for Social Change: The Village of Arts and Humanities 2004-2005

Security screen on Germantown Avenue, designed by
teens from Cookman United Methodist Church, and
painted by grafitti artist Pose II. Photo by Mary Hufford

In 2003, Philadelphia artist and activist Lily Yeh received a Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award for her work at the Village of Arts and Humanities, which she founded in North Philadelphia twenty years ago. Yeh applied to NYU for an ethnography, which the CFE conducted. Rosina Miller, then a graduate student in the Program in Folklore and Folklife, undertook fieldwork in the community with Mary Hufford during a year-long planning effort for urban renewal, entitled "Shared Prosperity." You can download the final report on the project, "Piecing Together the Fragments: An Ethnography of Leadership for Social Change in North Central Philadelphia 2004-2005" in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2. Rosina Miller's dissertation, "Performing the Urban Village: Art, Placemaking, and Cultural Politics in North Central Philadelphia," (2005) is a more in-depth study of the Village and the work of Shared Prosperity.

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