Humanities Truck Community Archive

Collection Title: Humanities Truck Community Archive

Description: The Humanities Truck is a fully customized delivery truck that serves as an experimental mobile platform for collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and expanding dialogue around the humanities. Using the truck, we seek to mobilize the humanities and democratize the sharing and production of knowledge by bringing together scholars at American University with community residents across Washington, D.C. Together we can collect, create, interpret, and curate stories that can return to the communities they originated from and circulate throughout the metropolitan region. The truck’s custom-design creates a unique space for facilitating participatory, cultural, and educational experiences in the humanities. It has the capacity to function as a recording studio, workshop and maker space, and exhibit and performance venue. People can engage with the truck’s interior and exterior spaces. The exterior features powerful speakers, an all-weather flat screen television, and brackets for attaching a 120” roll-down movie screen for film showings. The magnetized exterior wall of the truck can serve as an exhibition space or also be used to facilitate workshops. The interior of the truck is sound-insulated, equipped with air-conditioning, a second flat screen tv, and ceiling speakers. It is modular and flexible as tables and shelving can be easily added and moved. The space can function as a recording studio for doing oral histories, a digitization station, a workshop space, or a pop-up exhibit gallery. The Humanities Truck is made possible through funding from the Henry Luce Foundation along with additional support from American University. How do we mobilize the humanities? The Humanities Truck working group seeks to establish an experimental mobile platform for collecting and preserving materials, and inspiring dialog around the humanities. The truck will provide resources and equipment for projects that document experiences, start conversations, and share the stories of diverse and underserved communities in the Washington, DC Metropolitan region. It will function as a mobile workshop, recording studio, and exhibit space that can be driven across the region to work with specific micro-communities across the city in the spaces they already gather.

: 2021 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival; “Celebrate Petworth” is an annual free neighborhood festival organized by and for the residents of Petworth and surrounding neighborhoods, celebrating the creativity, diversity, culture, people and quality of life of the neighborhood through storytelling, live entertainment, fare from local restaurants, clinics, contests, crafts, and more. This collection features interviews and images from the 2021 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival on September 25, 2021, in addition to interviews with Petworth residents collected prior to the event.

: Cleveland Park: Site of Imagination; A neighborhood landmark, the Park & Shop is viewed as innovative by some and outdated by others. On April 27th, 2019, the Humanities Truck joined the Cleveland Park Farmers Market and gave visitors an opportunity to learn about the history of the Park & Shop and development in Cleveland Park. Along with an exhibit inside the Truck, viewers also drew neighborhood maps, and listened to and left stories about the neighborhood. American University Public History Master's students Isaac Makos, Maren Orchard, and Katie McCarthy researched and designed the Cleveland Park: Site of Imagination exhibit for their Spring 2019 Practicum class under the guidance of Professor Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska. This collection contains photos from the event.

: Cruising DC Oral History Project; A collection of interviews that explore the history of cruising in DC, created by Kai Walther

: DC History Conference 2022; The DC History Conference is an interdisciplinary, community conference considering the past, present, and future of the District. After two years without a conference in 2020 and 2021, the event returned in 2022, this time with free admission. The conference took place March 31-April 2, 2022. The Humanities Truck set up outside of the conference venue at the MLK Jr Memorial Library on April 1 and presented the exhibit "Downtown Displaced: A Case Study of Gentrification in Mount Vernon Square 1840-Present." The exhibit emerged from a four month collaboration with Street Sense artists, and it explores the social costs of neighborhood change in a long temporal context. In addition to the exhibit, the truck team hosted a mapping activity and conducted oral history interviews about people's experiences in the changing downtown area of Washington, DC. This collection contains photos from the event.

: Downtown Displaced; The Downtown Displaced project involved an extensive collaboration between the Humanities Truck, Dan Kerr and students from his Engaged Community History course, and the Street Sense Media Filmmakers Cooperative. Collection contains photos from planning and creation of Downtown Displaced: A Case Study of Gentrification in Mount Vernon Square, 1840-Present exhibit, for which Dan Kerr's Engaged Community History class collaborated with Street Sense Media artists during the Spring 2019 academic semester. The exhibit explores the social costs of neighborhood change in a long temporal context. Collection also contains photos from May 20, 2019, when the exhibit was presented to the Street Sense Media collaborators. In June, the filmmakers co-op did a performance at the Carnegie Library, which drew upon this research.

: From Me To You: A COVID-19 Oral History Project; Spreading from individual to individual, COVID-19 has moved across the planet with remarkable speed and devastating consequence. With its tragic trail, the virus illustrates how closely humanity is interconnected. People across the world have embraced physical distance as a strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce its harm. While physically apart, we realize how much we need to be together. Close personal connection is what enables us to survive and what allows us to thrive. https://humanitiestruck.com/frommetoyou/

: Homeless Memorial Vigil 2022

: Lunar New Year 2023

: March on Washington 2021; On August 28, 2021, the Humanities Truck joined with DC Sparkle Squad to commemorate the 58th anniversary of the March on Washington. The Humanities Truck and Sparkle Squad Truck were parked in Penn Quarter at the intersection of 8th and D Streets NW to conduct interviews, advocate for voting rights, and share joy. Truck project fellow Naoko Wowsugi worked with DC Sparkle Squad’s Kate Damon and Maps Glover to organize the event. Justice Black, host of “Just Talks with Justice” conducted interviews with event attendees inside the Truck, while Chelsea Soronen-Ritter and others from Chalk Riot decorated the surrounding sidewalks with voting-themed chalk art. A DJ from TwistedEgoz supplied the event with music all day.

: Penn Ave East Neighborhood Plan; More than $450,000 in funds were recently allocated to Penn Ave SE to revise the Neighborhood Small Area Plan, and for a Main Street Program. Ben Stokes and other project partners travelled around the Penn Ave SE neighborhood, interviewing residents for stories and feedback about their neighborhood with the goal of the neighborhood being provided more funding and infrastructural support from the city. Collection contains photos and videos from the Ice Cream Listening tour along Penn Ave East Corridor on July 16, 2021, as well as from the Hard Choices game at Art all Night on October 5, 2021.

: Pride 2022; On June 12, 2022, the Humanities Truck team set up the truck at the corner of 6th and D streets, NW, a few blocks away from the Capital Pride festival. The team pre-made some pride-themed buttons while also inviting participants to create their own. There were three posters set up on the outside of the truck labeled Pride of the Past, Pride of the Present, and Pride of the Future. Event attendees were able to get their portrait taken and then add it to their poster of choice on the truck. Collection contains photos and other documentation of the event.

: Speak OUT!: Pride at the Smithsonian American Art Museum 2019; The Humanities Truck in partnership with the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) invited the Pride community to participate in SpeakOUT; designing a button, contributing to our community video diary, and illustrating their experiences with pride by writing and drawing on the walls inside the Humanities Truck. This event took place on June 9, 2019 while the Truck stood on F St NW outside of SAAM. In addition to the video diary, buttons, and pride illustrations, event attendees enjoyed performances by Pretty Boi Drag, Corazon Folklorico DC, and the Salvadoran Trans Folklore Group. The Humanities Truck also took part in DC's Pride parade on June 8, 2019. This collection features images and planning documents from the events.