Culture Builds Community: On to Phase 2

Over the last 3 years, we have delivered the Culture Builds Community program in the Twin Towers Community in partnership with East End Community Services Corporation. Due to the success of this pilot program, we have begun planning for Phase 2, which involves bringing this successful program to several more Dayton neighborhoods. We have formed a partnership with The Fitz Center for Leadership in Community through their Neighborhood School Center Initiative. There are five Neighborhood School Centers (NSCs), each of which is working with a community partner agency to make the school a center for community activity, and create a broad local network of support for students and families. Culture Builds Community fits well into this network of support, as a program that has proven to be very successful at engaging a broad section of community members, families and youth within school walls around cultural expression and learning, and community building. East End Community Services is the Community Partner for the newest NSC site, Ruskin Elementary school, which opened this fall. Cityfolk will continue its CBC work in the Twin Towers Community with a central focus on Ruskin School as the site for all kinds of community building activities through the arts and culture. And over the next 2-3 years Cityfolk will slowly begin to expand this program into the other NSC sites. The five NSC sites and their community partners include:

• Cleveland Elementary School; YMCA of Greater Dayton
• Edison Elementary School; Dayton Urban League
• Fairview Elementary School; Unified Health Solutions
• Kiser Elementary School; Salvation Army of the Greater Dayton Area
• Ruskin Elementary School; East End Community Services Corporation

Last month we began taking steps toward building the program in the Wright-Dunbar/WolfCreek/McFarlane area with the help of the Dayton Urban League, and Edison Elementary School’s NSC site coordinator, Nina Scroggins. This NSC partnership organized a wonderful event called Trunk or Treat, where area organizations parked vehicles in the Urban League’s parking lot with elaborately decorated trunks full of treats for the kids and pamphlets on social services and other resources for families. Cityfolk participated by providing a trunk full of sweets and CBC fliers, beautiful cultural photos from past Cityfolk Festivals, and the rhythmic sounds of traditional music thumping through the car windows. After the kids finished trunking for treats, they gathered inside with their families for all kinds of activities throughout the Urban League building, from films and face painting, to games and crafts. Indoors, Cityfolk provided a taste of what CBC will be bringing to the community soon, with local Motown and Jazz singer extraordinaire, Theresa “Misty Moneé” Gill, and her band. Misty filled the front lobby with memorable Motown classics, which brought on waves of nostalgia among the parents, and spontaneous dancing among the kids. The band closed with a rendition of the Electric Slide, which got the entire room up dancing, and the icing on the cake was a beat boxing battle that took place among kids passing around the microphone as the band members packed up. Cheers and dance moves were abundant as the kids showed off their skills at creating complex rhythms with their mouths. This event was just a mini example of how a little bit of music can bring about spontaneous and joyous expressions of life within a community. It is clear that there is great potential in the new relationships we are building in this community to create exciting and powerful CBC programming together.