Weeksville Creative Arts Workshop

Her aunt brought her to the program and they worked on this collage together. Family art time together! 

June 13, 2015 I was honored to facilitate a creative arts workshop for families entitled Cityscapes. Families were encouraged to think about community and the parts that make a community successful. I have facilitated this workshop before for other institutions/non-profits but what made working with Weeksville Heritage Center so special is the history of Weeksville. 
As posted to their website, "Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC), Brooklyn’s largest African-American cultural institution, is a multidisciplinary museum dedicated to preserving the history of the 19th century African American community of Weeksville, Brooklyn - one of America’s first free black communities.  Using a contemporary lens, we activate this unique history through the presentation of innovative, vanguard and experimental programs.  Weeksville advances its mission through history, preservation, visual and performing arts, ecology and the built environment." and their mission is to, "To document, preserve and interpret the history of free African American communities in Weeksville, Brooklyn and beyond and to create and inspire innovative, contemporary uses of African American history through education, the arts, and civic engagement."
Having children think about their urban landscape, and the integral parts that make it function as well as their own individual function in the hustle and bustle of a busy city landscape is important for the child and the community in which they live. I believe community is such a complicated system with so many parts it is important to have all the pieces contemplate its part in order to thrive and progress. 
 As stated on Wikipedia, "Weeksville was named after James Weeks, a stevedore and African-American ex-slave^[1] from Virginia, who in 1838 (just 11 years after the abolition of slavery in New York State)^[2] bought a plot of land from Henry C. Thompson (another free African-American) in the Ninth Ward of central Brooklyn. The City of New York confuses^[3] Weeks with a man of the same name who lived 1776-1863.^[4]

The village itself was established by a group of African-American land investors and political activists, and covered an area in the borough's eastern Bedford Hills area, bounded by present-day Fulton Street, East New York Avenue, Ralph Avenue and Troy Avenue.^[5] A 1906 article in the New York Age recalling the earlier period noted that James Weeks "owned a handsome dwelling at Schenectady and Atlantic Avenues."

By the 1850s, Weeksville had more than 500 residents from all over the East Coast (as well as two people born in Africa). Almost 40 percent of residents were southern-born. Nearly one-third of the men over 21 owned land; in antebellum New York, unlike in New England, non-white men had to own real property (to the value of $250) and pay taxes on it to qualify as voters.^[6] The village had its own churches (including Bethel Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Berean Missionary Baptist Church), a school ("Colored School no. 2", now P.S. 243), a cemetery, and an old age home.^[7] Weeksville had one of the first African-American newspapers, the Freedman's Torchlight, and in the 1860s became the national headquarters of the African Civilization Society and the Howard Orphan Asylum. In addition, the Colored School was the first such school in the U.S. to integrate both its staff and its students.^[8]

During the violent New York Draft Riots of 1863, the community served as a refuge for many African-Americans who fled fromManhattan.

After the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge and as New York City grew and expanded, Weeksville gradually became part ofCrown Heights, and memory of the village was largely forgotten."

Time for more pictures!!!