Kayla Coleman ’14: On a chilly October morning, I, along with Allison Camp ‘14, Maria Burke ‘14, Neil Dua ‘14, and Christopher McNeil ‘14 trekked to the heart of North Philadelphia to make a creative difference. Dua commented, “This was the first time I did community service that dealt with art. It’s a perspective I never really thought about, but it’s an awesome way to bring a community together.”
Founded in 1989 by artists Kimberly Niemela and Philip Dit Wah, COSACOSA was inspired by Niemela’s experience creating a multilingual book with community members in Harlem, New York. The vision for COSACOSA was derived from her desire to make a long term, communal project in inner city Philadelphia. Today, COSACOSA projects range from creating community-healing gardens to interactive acting and poetic performances at local art centers.
One of COSACOSA’s project initiatives, “Community Collections,” strives to create dialogue between community members to produce ideas to empower them to face the various challenges and difficulties of living in their neighborhoods. Murals, such as “Telling Time, Telling Place,” which was created in 2007 with Niemela at the forefront, were crafted to be healing gardens. Healing gardens contain up to thirty-eight medicinal plants, a meditational area, and a small area for performing arts.
What is exceptional about this healing garden is its respect for the past and consideration for the possibilities of the future. “Telling Time, Telling Place” pays homage to past community leaders while telling a story of how the community can help build a new generation of leaders.
COSACOSA’s ultimate goal is to get youth involved in these projects. “Connection Studios” is COSACOSA’s youth-led and youth based initiative, which prepares young adults to become agents of change in their neighborhood and also teaches them different styles of multi-media art. “Voices of Community” is a compilation of songs composed and performed by North Philadelphia youth that tackles ongoing issues in the neighborhood.
Other Connection Studios projects include public broadcasting announcements and two featured films. While creating these works, Connection Studios youth members learn how to maximize their potential success by learning conflict mediation, media literacy, traditional digital media production, and public presentation.
While helping to finish a mural and medicinal garden, we five Episcopal seniors helped to foster the sense of community and lift up the broken neighborhood surrounding us. Dua shared that the art in his eyes was not only beautiful, but “It was great to see how important all this art was to the people of the community. It was honestly a blessing to be a part of something so simple yet so effective and important.” Citizens walking by not only stopped to stare at the dazzling mosaic pieces, but they also seemed truly engaged in how they could help.