PubComm 2018 is set for TOMORROW – Thursday, April 4th, 10am-3pm at the William Way LGBT Community Center (1315 Spruce St). Register here.

This year's theme is Racism & Resistance. We'll be dialoguing around issues of inclusion and accessibility impacting public history work. Three sessions on education, activism, and preservation will be led by local community leaders of color both within and outside of the so-called field. Our organizing question –

How can we return public history to its grassroots, civically-minded origins?

Our speakers:

EDUCATION

Kimberly McCleary
Education Manager,
Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Tukufu Zuberi
Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations and
Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Ismael Jimenez
Social Studies Educator,
Kensington Creative & Performing Arts High School
Co-Founder,
Philadelphia Black History Collaborative

ACTIVISM

David Acosta
Co-Founder and Artistic Director,
Casa de Duende

Sharron Cooks
Owner and CEO,
Making Our Lives Easier LLC

Tyrone Smith
Community Organizer and Co-Founder,
UNITY, Inc.

PRESERVATION

Faye Anderson
Public Policy Consultant and Director,
All That Philly Jazz

Cynthia Barnes
Assistant Managing Director, Civic Engagement,
City of Philadelphia Managing Director’s Office
Director,
Nicetown-Tioga Improvement Team RCO

Our session questions:

EDUCATION

Educating Ourselves & Others
• How do we better engage with the nuance, complexity, ambiguity, tragedy of our history? How do we covey these ideas to our students? To the public?
• What topics are excluded from our public memory? Why?

Moving Forward, Together
• What will it look like when we have fully embraced our past as a nation?
• What is one step we can make towards equity in public history? In education? In the US?

ACTIVISM

Whose History Is It?
• What should historians understand about the power of history for activists? For marginalized communities?
• Can historians who are not part of these communities build equitable collaborations? What does responsible engagement look like?

Moving Forward, Together
• Can history incite social and political change?

• How can historians create more inclusive content, relevant to today’s concerns?

PRESERVATION

Whose Community Is It?
• Does a sense of local history bolster community advocacy and planning? How? Why?
• How do poor communities of color initiate preservation efforts within their neighborhoods? Do academically trained preservationists have anything to offer these communities?

Moving Forward, Together
• Does historic preservation inhibit or encourage gentrification? How? Why?
• How can preservation efforts provide opportunities for community-driven development (e.g., job creation, affordable housing, and “home-grown” economic entrepreneurship)?

Our schedule:

9:30am-10:30am – Check-in opens; Refreshments available
10:00-10:30am – Introduction; Ice breaker
10:30-11:30am – Session I: Education (Jimenez, McCleary, Zuberi)
11:30am-12:30pm – Session II: Activism (Acosta, Cooks, Smith)
12:30-1:30pm – Lunch
1:30-2:30pm – Session III: Preservation (Anderson, Barnes)
2:30-3:00pm – Closing remarks

Our session structure:

20 minutes for speaker introductions, insights & questions
20 minutes for attendee group dialogue
20 minutes for sharing/wrap-up

More info at http://2018.pubcommphilly.com!

^{100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative Hive account@phillyhistory. This crypto-experiment is part of a graduate course at Temple University's Center for Public History and is exploring history and empowering education to endow meaning. To learn more click here.}