Community Projects

 
Hidden City is about forging new relationships and making connections between people and place. We work closely with site and community leaders to build the “social capital” essential to developing more sustained support and value for our precious places.

Through our Community Projects, we work with the places and leaders we’ve gotten to know through our festival on the development of sustainable projects that address the needs and goals of their communities. Some of our current projects include:

photo: Joseph E.B. Elliott

Pilot Artist-in-Residence Program at Founder’s Hall

For the 2009 festival we opened the third floor of Founder’s Hall at Girard College. American artist Steve Roden’s installation for the festival animated the former classroom spaces for the first time since 1916, when Founder’s was largely decommissioned as an educational building.

Girard College has continued to thrive as a primary and secondary school, and has a strong commitment to the fine and performing arts. It is currently experimenting with various after-school programs to offer enrichment and professional experience to its students, in particular in the visual arts.

As part of the effort Hidden City is helping to develop and fund a pilot residency program with Philadelphia artist Sebastienne Mundheim and White Box Theater. The program would inhabit the former classroom spaces on the third floor of Founders, making them once again into educational spaces for Girard’s students.

Dance Space at Shiloh Baptist Church

Philadelphia artist Steven Earl Weber and Chicago artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle created works for historic Shiloh Baptist Church’s Akron Sunday School space and former Boy Scout Meeting rooms for Hidden City’s 2009 festival.

While Shiloh remains an active congregation, its numbers have diminished over the last century, and the church is working today to build new community partnerships and find new uses for its spectacular facilities.

In collaboration with Partners for Sacred Places, Dance USA Philadelphia, and CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia, Hidden City is assisting with the development of a space for multiple dance organizations to use for rehearsal, teaching, administration, and eventually public performance. This project is one of several pilots of “Making Homes for the Arts in Sacred Places,” a new initiative of Partners for Sacred Places, developed in collaboration with CultureWorks.