Originally a thank-you speech given to the Young Leaders Fund in 2013.
We just had a lullaby parade. A lullaby parade is like a lullaby, only with a lot of people and walking. We sang together, walked together and performed flashlight choreography together. Everyone in our community was invited. We prepared for the parade by working with community leaders and organizations. We had workshops where we learned lullabies from elders, teens, children, and music teachers. We made up movement patterns with flashlights that were fun and musical. The feeling of singing together, walking together and playing movement games together was joyful.
We also created theater for the parade to interact with as a group. The parade led around the lagoon at Humboldt Park. As we walked around the lagoon, we visited artist created sites: a beached whale, a lost traveler, and a singing, talking moon that floated on the lagoon. The parade sang to these creatures, and gestured with flashlight signals. The creatures signaled back. But the most significant thing was that we in the parade experienced a gesture towards each other. You could say it was a gesture of goodwill. But it was more than that. It was an act of affirming the goodwill that’s already there. We all want to believe there is goodwill among us, we know it’s there, but how many ways do we have to demonstrate it?
Our group of artists reached out to our community and asked for help in creating a gesture that we could perform together. We were happy to see how adventurous and generous our community was toward the idea. We were especially glad to experience the beauty of our park, and walking and singing together because that kind of moment proves what we know – that there is goodwill among us. In fact, that kind of community gesture cures an ill. That ill is the mark of negativity a community gets when stories about crime and violence and community problems are all you hear about. There are studies that show our families are afraid to use the park at night. Statistics about crime are reported in the media. That’s not fair and it’s not true. Statistics are not truths. They measure one aspect of a thing and leave out the rest. We need to know about the rest. When we connect with our neighbors, we remind each other about the rest – the truths worth celebrating. The saying “If it bleeds it leads” is a cultural reality that needs to be critiqued, undermined, and rejected. We discovered another saying while working on this project: “If it’s fine, let it shine.” We were able to shine a light for a moment on the fabric of our community that is there because of the hard work that’s done every day by our local organizations, work that’s been going on for decades. We created our parade with community leaders like Association House, which has been at work serving our community for over 100 years; the Block Club Federation, here since 1990; the Youth Service Project who have been at work for 4 decades in our neighborhood; and our local public schools.
The kind of event we created is sometimes referred to as spectacle. That’s not how we think of it. We’re thinking of it as place-making. Place-making is not occupying a space. It’s discovering a reason and a reward for sharing a public space. And it’s about imbuing that public space with meaning. Our reward is finding a place in the fabric of families and associations that make us, us.
Thank you YLF for supporting this mission.
5/23/2013
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