Panel 12: Taking Up Space and Finding Joy in Life, Culture, and Art

14th Annual Lemon Project Spring SymposiumPanel 12: Taking Up Space and Finding Joy in Life, Culture, and Art
Moderator: Ramona R. Chapman

Dr. Lisa Winn Bryan, “The 1% Percenters: Cultivating African American Preservationists”
Currently, only 1% of preservation professionals are African American. It is important for Black Americans to play a more prominent role in stewarding the places and spaces that created Black America. Starting in 2022, we launched an African American Fellows Program to help attract students and community preservationists to careers in historic preservation. This initiative was developed after convening a “Working Group” advisory committee of African American scholars and leaders. In our first year, we received over 40 fellowship requests from applicants across the nation. Three Fellows are currently completing this initial year of the program. To continue and grow this program, with the Mellon Foundation's support, we will recruit five fellows per year over the next two years and increase the number of participants in a preservation networking group called The Collective. The main goal is to grow the number of African American preservationists in historic preservation careers while helping add more African American historic sites to official listing programs like the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.

Dr. Najmah Thomas, “Farming is Hot: Cultivating the Next Generation of Freedom Farmers”
This session focuses on Black healing through land, space, and ancestral ties in the context of farming, and food production. The presenter will discuss Black family farming businesses particularly in the southeast, from a historical perspective of Black farmers and Black farming organizations that sowed seeds of self-determination, collective action, and food sovereignty. The presentation will also include a summary of existing efforts that use farming as a foundation to expand and support generational wealth building, land reclamation, and the revolutionary act of working smarter, not harder. The session will present a case study of Earth People® Farms, a micro farm on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, that is introducing a concept called ‘farming is hot’ (honoring our traditions, healing our trauma, helping our teens, and honing our talents) to help shape the future of Black family farming in the South Carolina Lowcountry and beyond.

Cydny A. Neville, MAEd, “All of the Joy: Centering, Aligning, and Finding Peace through Art While Researching Familiar Struggles in American and East Africa”
This presentation will introduce participants to my research, “Familiar Struggle,” while participating in a Virginia Tech Fulbright-Hays fellowship through parts of East Africa. While conducting research and traveling through nine cities in Kenya and Tanzania, I had the following personal experiences: connecting me to Bantu people, learning Kiswahili, exploring foodways, discovering points of no return, Masai Markets, and coping with the remnants of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade. While the experience took me on a life-altering emotional journey, the resilience of our people (from the Motherland and Black America) always found a way to connect to joy despite challenges will be the focus of this session. This presentation will also highlight nonprofit organizations' means of overcoming societal challenges and finding resilience through art. Participants will have the opportunity to recreate art using East African practices, journaling, and meditation. This session will directly exemplify how to take time to engage healing practices.

Deborah "Dede" Todmann Anderson, “Why Did I Wait So Long?”
While accepting our culture through, style, music, art, fashion and even our hair, to this day, some African-Americans still experience humiliation, ignorance and disdain when wearing their natural hair. A look is taken into the subject of years of our own love and hate of our natural hair, as well as, through the eyes of those who sometimes used and use it as a wielding sword, even with the passing of the Crown Act. How the unexpected onset of a condition, helped to set me free with confidence and, wondering why I waited so long. How applying certain skills, I could be some part of the solution. Something helpful and healing. This presentation will share the scope of trying to “fit in” to the point of damaging our hair and scalp, as well as testing our character, sense of self and freedom of expression. A personal journey and experience are used to give a view of the hurt and self-esteem draining effects that can be felt from within and outside of one’s race when “going natural” and now bald. Lastly what part I’m playing to help support and heal myself and others.