Picturing Sherman Park
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In 2017, a website that ranks neighborhoods and real estate, gave Milwaukee’s Sherman Park Neighborhood a “barely livable” score. Mainstream accounts of Milwaukee’s Northside neighborhoods tend to focus on crime, poverty, and blight —persistently painting residents as hapless victims of environmental dereliction. However, residents bitterly challenge one-sided media accounts: Portraying themselves as active agents of change, they list grassroots actions that address urban problems. They claim that stewardship practices ingrained in their culture and behavior help them “take back homes, streets, and gardens.”
Their contributions vary from urban agriculture, locally sourced cafes, adaptive reuse of boarded up buildings, collaborative block watches, to self-help projects. Some preserve memories of home, perform domestic labor, and sustain multi-generational families. Others organize farmers’ markets and kitchens, conduct housing surveys and serve on clean-up committees. Their grassroots knowledge is passed on through generations via tales, morals, and codes of behavior —during informal storytelling sessions at the Cultural Association lunches, block watch parties at the Center Peace Neighborhood, or Black Men’s Club Tuesday breakfasts. Scholars such as Nel Noddings and Carol Gilligan suggest that ethics of caring and empathy can promote a moral impetus towards social action and democratic civic change. Contrary to universalizing and top-down legal, economic, or law and order solutions, vernacular wisdom offers innovative grassroots responses to complex social problems. Yet, these tangible place-based practices around community rebuilding and revitalization remain obscure to the wider world. The objective of this project is to collect and disseminate local stories of caring and stewardship in order to 1) identify best practices, 2) encourage grassroots dialog 3) render visible positive social action otherwise obscure in mainstream discourses, 4) and promote impactful democratic change in urban neighborhoods. We plan to achieve these goals by planning 1) history harvests, 2) peripatetic walks and discussions led by committed citizens, 3) oral histories around place, and 4) exhibits, reports, and on-site installations. These formats capture different forms of conversations— biographical accounts, photo solicitation, focus group discussions, structured interviews, and crowdsourced storytelling around exhibits. Methods include traditional long-form and short-form oral interviews,vox-populi using smartphone apps such as Pixstori®, video recorded focus group conversations, and on-site installations. Multiple venues reach diverse audiences: Café and library exhibits reach more viewers and inspire them to learn from lay wisdom. Public presentations include talk backs and podcasts, while local exhibits and installations offer tangible artifacts that encourage active communication across differences. Listening, seeing, and talking influences action, values, and behavior. |
Funded in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Wisconsin Humanities Council supports and creates programs that use history, culture, and discussion to strengthen community life for everyone in Wisconsin.
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Sponsors: Wisconsin Humanities Council, David and Julia Uihlein Charitable Trust, Wisconsin Preservation Trust, Matthew Bohlman and the Finney Incubator Project, Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures, Randforce Associates Inc., American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Office of Undergraduate Research, UWM Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, School of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries. Sherman Park Community Association, Washington Park Partners of United Methodist Children’s Services; Ben Barbera and the staff at the Milwaukee County Historical Society, Tricklebee Cafe, Community Baptist Church of Greater Milwaukee, Men's Breakfast Group, Dominic Inouye, ZIP MKE, Midtown Partners, Southeast Asian Educational Development of Wisconsin, Inc.,
