Saturday, April 21, 2012
What are your initial thoughts for engaging the Bristol Park Community?
On Tuesday, we will begin our engagement efforts in Bristol Place as a class. This post is to reflect your gut feelings about people, neighborhood enhancement (thanks Maria), and local intelligentsia. What do you think young people of the post Hip Hop generations will respond too? I really want you to be sensible in your thoughts and remember that this is a community with young people and families that have culture, dreams, and aspirations. Additionally, allow these thoughts to to help shape your proposed final class project.
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Due to previous experience with the Breakfast Club as well as the Urban Reality Movement, I think it would be best that we approach this project with the mindset that we do not know what is best for the people in the Bristol Park community. However, I would not consider myself as a graduate student at a university such as this, if I did not believe that we should prepare ourselves for different scenarios that could potentially be presented to us by its inhabitants. Personally, I think it would be effective to develop a plan that would not only represent the history of this community to outsiders, but one that would eliminate the disconnect between the different generations present. In doing so, it would benefit the entire community to develop a sense of ownership from the oldest member to the youngest in order to foster a new community atmosphere!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nino. If I have learned anything about working with the community, it is that rapport is essential in implementing any type of change. As demonstrated at the community meeting we attended with the Champaign neighborhood services, the residents are not very receptive to those in charge of restoring their community. I like Nino's statement regarding ownership across generations and bridging the current disconnect, this is VERY important. I like the talk we had about bringing the boys and girls club into the neighborhood, adn I am interested in seeing how we can make them fit into the redevelopment process. I think some type of mentoring is going to be critical in this neighborhood- mentoring allows young people to foster their dreams and aspirations under the guise of someone with experience that can guide them. This is something that can bridge the hip-shop and post hip-hop generations. Music is known to bring people together and allows people to relate to one another and begin building relationships- Just some thoughts.
DeleteI agree with both the above statements. it is going to be important for us to be able to connect with the residents on a fundamental level if we are going to gain their trust enough to really be able to ake a difference. by that I mean if they are not willing to open up to us and share about their families and history and expeiriences then it is going to greatly reduce the amount of authenticity we are able to include in our proposal. The more we know about the the people in this lanscape the more we have to work with so building a relationship is going to be crucial. I hope there is enough time in the semester fo that...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alisia hone she says that we need to connect with the residents and gain some type of trust with the people in these kind of neighborhoods to be able to make a difference. Knowing more about them and experiences will definitely help us with our project.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Nino's assessment that letting the inhabitants of the Bristol park area inform us of what they want and need in their community. It's just a simple matter of respect, they should be the ones deciding what happens in their community.Also having programs that gets the youth mentored by the older members of the community should prob be set up as well. After going out to the community and interacting with the locals I noticed that they have knowledge to impart they just need a medium to do so, and that is where hip-hop comes in at.
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