Executive Director of The Village of Arts and Humanities, Aviva Kapust, gave a tour of the main administrative buildings and the public spaces surrounding those structures (community parks, gardens, and murals) that the Village has been working to enhance.

Kapust led a discourse around the Village’s role in those public spaces, detailing that while certain structural improvements to those areas can increase accessibility to all members of the Germantown neighborhood it is important to the Village that those spaces be community spaces, not just the property of the Village.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Bursese

The Village of Arts and Humanities is a 30+ year old arts organization in the heart of North Philadelphia. We amplify the voices and aspirations of our community by providing arts-based opportunities for self-expression and personal success that engage youth and their families, revitalize physical space, and preserve black heritage.

The mission of The Village of Arts and Humanities is to support the voices and aspirations of the community through providing opportunities for self-expression rooted in art and culture. The Village inspires people to be agents of positive change through programs that encompass arts and culture, engage youth, revitalize community, preserve heritage and respect the environment.

Our legacy is anchored in artist-facilitated community building. More than 40 years ago, Arthur Hall erected the Black Humanitarian Center near the corner of 10th and Lehigh in North Central Philadelphia (now The Village’s main programming building). For Arthur Hall, creating space for people in the neighborhood to read, dance, sing and make music, was a crucial part of each resident learning and celebrating the community’s culture and heritage. Twenty years later, artist Lily Yeh continued growing spaces in the neighborhood, in the same spirit of communal care and compassion. For Lily, the beautification of physical space catalyzed positive mental and emotional shifts in the way that residents viewed their own lives and the health of their neighborhood. Using social art practice, both Arthur and Lily—the Village’s first artists in residence—encouraged people to believe in, and help build, a more beautiful and just future for themselves and their families.

Today—40 years after Arthur Hall taught his first African dance class, and 27 years after Lily Yeh taught children how to grout a mosaic—The Village continues to create SPACE.
Photo Credit: Village of Arts and Humanities

Patrick “Pato” Hebert is an artist, educator and organizer based in Los Angeles and New York. His work explores the aesthetics, ethics and poetics of interconnectedness. The practice works across a range of media including photography, installation, sculpture, language, light, temporality and graphic design. Progressive praxis, spatial dynamics and the spirit of social topographies are of particular interest. Pato lives between NYC and Los Angeles, he will be in Philadelphia at several points throughout the Spring 2018 semester.
Photo Credit: Haverford College Communications

Founder of Apiary Magazine and Village of Arts and Humanities staff member Lillian Dunn engaged students in a discussion around the following questions – “What are the forces that pulse in a sense of place? How do we understand our relationships to place and to one another in interpersonal, historical, political, and creative terms? How do these relationships change over time”. Lillian shared a reading from Eduardo Galeano’s Memories of Fire: Genesis entitled “Medicine and Witchcraft” with the class and gave a presentation on the extensive history of the Village of Arts and Humanities.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Lillian Dunn

Lead artist and non-profit collaborators, members of Haverford College’s group SURGE, and Theresa Tensuan’s students met with Paul Farber at Penn Treaty Park to discuss Indigenous history and legacies of colonialism. The group traveled to The Village of Arts and Humanities were they spent the afternoon at People’s Paper Co-Op, making paper and poetry with Miss Faith and Lillian Dunn. In relation to ideas within the Origin Stories project, the group thought of pulping our pasts, conjuring shared futures, thinking carefully about place, and what is visible and invisible.
Photo Credit: Pato Hebert

Michael O’Bryan, Director of Youth Arts Education,The Village of Arts and Humanities, led a beats workshop with local youth singers & performers from the Germantown neighborhood. Michael and the young performers spoke to SURGE (Sons Uniting, Realizing Goals of Excellence) mentors from Haverford College along with a few of the children that SURGE students mentor. SURGE is a collection of students of color from Haverford College looking to create a mentoring program for young boys of color, aged 12-17. The performers discussed how they make music at The Village and engaged the group in a creative sonics workshop with prompts related to ideas of personal experience and storytelling in Theresa Tensuan’s Origin Stories course.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Bursese

SURGE (Sons Uniting, Realizing Goals of Excellence) is a collection of students of color from Haverford College looking to create a mentoring program for young boys of color, aged 12-17, in the Ardmore area. Interested in learning more about SURGE? Meet mentors Jhoneidy Javier and Cooper Vaughn, hear them talk about their work with the program, and find out how you can get involved. Food provided!
Photo Credit: Pato Hebert

Join us for a lunchtime conversation with PACC artist Pato Hebert, facilitated by PACC Program Manager Stephanie Bursese.

Patrick “Pato” Hebert is an artist, educator and organizer based in Los Angeles and New York. His work explores the aesthetics, ethics and poetics of interconnectedness. The practice works across a range of media including photography, installation, sculpture, language, light, temporality and graphic design. Progressive praxis, spatial dynamics and the spirit of social topographies are of particular interest.
Photo Credit: Haverford College Communications

Students from Theresa Tensuan’s course traveled to People’s Paper Co-op (located half a block from The Village of Arts and Humanities in Germantown) to join an ongoing printmaking project. This project, led by formerly incarcerated women, entailed printing t-shirts and posters for the upcoming “Free our Mothers” parade in Philadelphia, held on Women in Re-entry Day on May 10, 2018. Students worked together with People’s Paper Co-op and the group of formerly incarcerated women to produce these printed items. These items were sold at the parade, and the proceeds went to the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund.
Photo Credit: Stephanie Bursese