Yesterday our Honors Seminar sponsored an “Extra Perk”—on-the-go breakfast—for Honors College students who live in or frequent Assumption Hall. The purpose? To explain our project to students who may well have a role in implementing the strategic plan our Honors Seminar has developed this semester.
I made sourdough pancakes—LOTS of sourdough pancakes, which seemed to be well received. (At least they were eaten!)
Meanwhile, students in the class explained the strategic plan to those who came for breakfast.
Everybody seemed to have a good time.
Next Tuesday, May 1, at 12 noon seminar members will make their official presentation of the strategic plan in the August Wilson room of the Hill District Carnegie Library at 2177 Centre Avenue (corner of Kirkpatrick). Then they hand off their plan to those who can take it to the next stage—implementation—over the coming years, Duquesne University’s Honors College and the Daisy Wilson Artist Community.
Our part will be done; theirs will begin in earnest. I am pleased and excited by what my students have accomplished this semester. May the execution be as successful as the planning!
As our class winds down the semester, putting the finishing touches on the plan and preparing to share it with others, I’m feeling the familiar flutter of mixed emotions that I usually feel as things come to a close. I’m excited at the prospect of having something tangible to show for the work we’ve put in this semester and proud of what we’ve accomplished. I’m hopeful for the future of the partnership and for the things that the August Wilson Home the potential to do, for the Hill District community and for Duquesne. And yes, I’m even a little sad to be leaving the project behind and having to pass the torch to others who will be responsible for putting the plan into action and making our vision for the partnership a reality.
Perhaps more than anything else, what I’m really feeling as we conclude the semester is gratitude. In taking time to consider all of the people we want to acknowledge in our plan and invite to our presentation, I’m realizing just how many people we’ve come in contact with who have helped us along the way. In big ways and small, so many people have had a hand in guiding our planning process, from the residents of the Hill District and members of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community, to individuals at Duquesne who, at the beginning of the semester, I’d never imagined would be involved. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to meet and talk with them, for the support they’ve shown, and the insights they’ve shared.
I’m also incredibly grateful to have gotten to learn and work alongside the people in this class (both my peers and my professor). I’ll be honest and admit that normally working in groups is something that I struggle with and approach with a certain amount of cynicism, if not with dread. But I can safely say that working on this strategic plan was not only the most significant project I’ve ever worked on in a group, but it’s also the most fun I’ve ever had doing it. It was so cool to see how the different talents and backgrounds that everyone contributed came together in the work we did. Throughout the semester, our tongue-in-cheek tagline has been, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” I’m thankful to have been part of the team and part of the dream.
Finally, I’m grateful for the small role I was able to play in what I feel is an incredibly meaningful endeavor that has the potential to become something much greater. I’d love to think that our plan and this partnership are simply the first ripples of a project that will someday be making waves in the Hill District community and the Duquesne community, as well as in the wider Pittsburgh community and beyond.
-Alyson
(P.S. One final thank you: to anyone who made it all the way through this post, for your patience!)
As my final semester of college winds to a close, I find myself looking back on the last four years and wondering what I could have done differently. Did I take all the opportunities I should have taken? Did I miss out on making memories along the way? I certainly hope not. That said, I entered this last semester of my senior year ready to coast on through, and simply finish. I never expected, though, to take part in something like the Signature Partnership.
The class started largely as a study on August Wilson’s life, and the Hill District in its prime. But then the class took a trip to the Hill, and we experienced it, many of us for the first time. We continued learning about just how magical and unique the Hill is, and began understanding why so many people care about revitalizing it. Somewhere along the way, I realized I cared too. What started as a requirement to graduate… just another class… became more. The plan which we set out to make evolved from a class project to more of a personal one, something I want to be proud of when it is finished.
I don’t know exactly how my personal transition occured, but I think I may speak for everyone when I say that I care greatly about this plan and the Hill District. I want to see August Wilson’s boyhood home repaired and used to teach a new generation about arts and the history of the Hill. I am proud to be a Pittsburgher, and the Hill is a wonderful part of our city’s past, present, and future. It is my most sincere hope that between Duquesne and the Daisy Wilson Artist Community, the plan we are working on will be achieved. Personally, I cannot wait to have a cup of coffee and read one of August Wilson’s works under the roof of his former home. I think it will be a beautiful thing.
We have finalized a date for our Strategic Plan reveal, and simultaneously we could not be more excited and more nervous.We have a very good start on the plan’s final form, and a great time line laid out before us, but one cannot help but get nervous when a baby is getting ready to leave the nest!
However, I am proud to announce we have secured a great location for our “release.”A few weeks ago our professor, Dr. Stoddard, and Joyce Broadus, managerat the Hill District Carnegie Library, introduced us to the beautiful “Front Room” space at Joyce’s library.The room is like a front porch for the library, jutting out towards the intersection of Centre Avenue and Kirkpatrick Street the panoramic windows give you the ability to just sit, breathe, and watch the world move by.There are no books in this section of the library; instead modern armchairs focus upon an old map of Pittsburgh and a stool from a popular lunch spot that is now gone.The map has markers for the location of each of the August Wilson’s “Pittsburgh Cycle” plays.Here we will be able to present our strategic plan for August Wilson’s boyhood home.I can’t wait.
-Lauren Boehm
*Image features the Hill District Front Room meeting space
*For more information on the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Hill District, please visit this website.Upcoming programming is listed right on the front page!
Before Easter break, our class worked together to formulate ideas for the writing of our strategic plan. After drafting some sections in class, we delegated the writing of certain sections to each student. I was in charge of writing the introduction, which I chose because while the nuances of our plan are still being worked out, I feel as if I have been submerged in this project long enough to know what we are trying to do. As a class we are always looking at the bigger picture and trying to create a partnership that will benefit the most people.
As we look toward and plan for the presenting of our project, it is exciting that what we have been working on all semester will finally be complete. However, what I am really looking forward to is sharing all the information and ideas we have gathered with both our “clients” and our fellow students. I can only hope more success will follow the completion of our strategic plan.
Why does the Honors College want to build a signature partnership with the Daisy Wilson Artist Community? Since I don’t know, I’ll speculate.
Duquesne University and the Hill District are neighbors, but though we are physically so close by experience we are worlds apart. Speaking of his people—the people of the Hill—August Wilson said, “We have a culture that is separate and distinct from the mainstream white America’s culture,” from which most Duquesne students come.
At Duquesne we aspire to serve our communities and the world. However, we cannot serve without first understanding. We must first learn to see and feel with those who are different from ourselves, to love them as our brothers and sisters indeed, of the same species as ourselves. We would love our neighbor as ourselves. Without love, our service is either mechanical or patronizing.
I speculate that the leaders of the Honors College hope that Honors students will learn to move beyond the confines of their native culture to love and serve people who are quite different from themselves, thereby setting a pattern they will follow for the rest of their lives. August Wilson and the collaboration with the Artist Community help them do this.
Through his plays Wilson distills the experience our Hill District neighbors have lived and still carry with them. It differs radically from the experience of most Duquesne University students, and the culture it has produced is very different from their own. It is perplexing because it is both American and alien, and often threatening.
The Daisy Wilson Artist Community is both a purveyor and a reflection of Wilson’s legacy. The activities it plans to undertake will build on Wilson’s dreams for his people, and it is his people first and foremost who will work to realize those dreams—the dreams of the people of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Gem of the Ocean and the rest.
Hopefully, through their signature partnership with the people of the Daisy Wilson Artist Community, students in the Honors College will imbibe the spirit of August Wilson. They will come to feel sympathy for Wilson’s characters and for our neighbors whom they represent. They will accept their idiosyncracies, knowing that each of us has our own. They will feel with the people of the Hill in their aspirations, their disappointments, their anger, their faith, their doubts, their grief, their successes. Though our cultures may differ, we are all human, and neighbors. Wilson and the Artist Community let us into our neighbors’ world.
There was an interesting article in thePittsburgh Post-Gazette today regarding the Hill District. Now that the civic arena has left a gaping hole in the Pittsburgh skyline, many discussions and plans have been implemented regarding the space. When the arena was built in the ‘50s, many families, including August Wilson’s, were displaced. At the time, the community had been promised the benefits of a lively cultural district. Except for the arenas, that has yet to be seen.
With the destruction of the civic arena, the community has again been promised they will receive something valuable in the space. Plans for the lot, though, remain up in the air. Some ideas have been made by landscape architect Walter hood, and can be seen here: http://www.pittsburghparks.org/greenprint. Until a final decision has been made, the space will function as a parking lot.
City councilman, R. Daniel Lavelle, proposed legislation that would give part of the parking tax revenue to the Urban Redevelopment Authority for Hill District redevelopment efforts. Carl Redwood of the Hill District Consensus Group estimated that roughly allocating $1 per vehicle toward the Hill redevelopment would generate hundreds of thousands annually.
If this proposed bill goes through, it would be a great opportunity for the Daisy Wilson Artist Community. This would be an excellent source of funding, which is a prominent concern. The article also mentioned a $1 million investment going towards a grocery store in the Hill, promised after the construction of Consol Energy Center.
It is great to see a growing commitment to the community, and I think this positive attention will be very beneficial. Furthermore, this is a perfect and timely opportunity for our strategic partnership to take initial form. To read to full article, click here: http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/12094/1221298-53.stm.
Over the weekend, like Sean, I visited the Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Although I’ve seen and enjoyed a few of Teenie Harris’ photos before, this exhibit was a chance to experience the photographs and the history behind them in a way that I never have. Because he’s one of the famous figures in Hill District history (and someone who appears in Wylie Avenue Days, which we just watched as a class), I thought it would be appropriate to blog a little bit about the exhibit here.
Even though I’m far from being expert on photography, I can tell that there is something about Teenie Harris photographs that’s just special. Whether they are the professional photographs that were taken during his career as a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier or the deeply personal portraits of people and places in the Hill, his photos are, in a word, poignant. Harris seems to have photographed everything, from intimate family scenes to professional portraits, from important events to simple, everyday life. No matter what his subject is, it arrests the viewer, inviting us into the story that each picture seems to promise and in the same moment, inviting us to experience a piece of Hill District history.
As I wandered along the walls featuring almost 1,000 of Teenie Harris’ photographs , I couldn’t help but think about some of the striking similarities between his work and August Wilson’s. August Wilson chronicled the history of African American life and immortalized the spirit of African American culture in the twentieth century in his plays; Teenie Harries did it in his photographs. In a particular way, both brought African American culture as it existed in Pittsburgh and in the Hill to life in a way that it was recognized as something of inimitable value, something to be cherished.
As another one of the great artists that the Hill District has given the world, I think that there’s room for Teenie Harris and for photography to become a part of the artistic events and programming that happen at the August Wilson Home in the future. I hope that the Home and some of the artists who come out of it are able to emulate August Wilson and Teenie Harris in bringing the history and culture of the Hill to life for the rest of world.
Throughout the semester, our class has been discovering the Hill District and all it has to offer. The Hill has turned from a geographic location to a community. Last week we watched the documentary Wylie Avenue Days, which gave the class a look at what life in the Hill was like when it was a lively and thriving community. Rich in arts and culture, the Hill was often referred to as the Harlem of Pittsburgh.
Thursday evening, I made an excursion to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland with my sister who had to visit an exhibit for a class. The exhibit featured photographs taken by Hill District native, Teenie Harris. The subject matter of most of his work was the Hill. When I was there, it was very crowded. There were projectors showing slides in one room and another area has photographs mounted on the wall. In the center of the same room were computers where people could look up photos Mr. Harris had taken.
As my sister and I got close to the photos, we saw pictures of musicians, baseball teams, shops, weddings, picnics, parades, and parties. While we were taking it all in we started to hear other museum goers talking. An older woman pointed to a picture and said, "That’s me." Another woman got up close to a picture and pointed our her father. My sister and I even saw a picture of a crowd outside a building labeled ‘Mine Safety Appliances," which is still a Pittsburgh company and happens to be where our father works. These encounters brought the art to life.
Hill District Community and University 
