Activating Community Memory & Knowledge: Early Interventions at the Former Columbus Square
What does commemoration mean to you? Below is one among the many responses gathered from the Providence community by PCL artist Shey Rivera last summer.
Questions around commemoration are rendered especially poignant at the former Columbus Square, one among three public sites that PCL artists are currently activating. A small park between two busy roads in the Elmwood section of the City, Columbus Square was previously the home of a controversial Bartholdi Columbus statue, fabricated at the nearby Gorham Manufacturing Company and gifted to the City by local elites at the end of the 19th century. The site brings questions of commemoration into sharp relief, compelling us to interrogate what this word truly means – and to whom – in the city of Providence.
Since last summer, PCL artists assigned to this site – Lu Heintz, Shey Rivera Ríos and Valerie Tutson – have been organizing temporary, ephemeral interventions to re-establish this location as a space that now has the capacity to hold and honor its community’s stories and collective memories.
In August, the three artists marked the beginning of their interventions by organizing a Land Blessing. Residents and culture bearers gathered to acknowledge the harms of the Doctrine of Discovery, share offerings of truth-telling and cultural resiliency, and affirm the importance of honoring cultural lineages as a critical part of American histories. They brought with them offerings of song, dance, poetry, flowers and more.
“No matter where we go, we Indigenous folk, we pray through song, we communicate through song.”
Artist Lu Heintz has also been organizing events at the site that encourage new ways of reconnecting with the land. In October, she organized Tree LC in collaboration with Providence Neighborhood Planting Program – a community workday to tend to the grove of Sycamore trees. The evening involved resetting the stone perimeters and providing aeration, compost and mulch. The activity was hosted in acknowledgement of the land and traditional ecological knowledge that predates colonization.
In the meanwhile, artist Shey Rivera Ríos has been activating dialogues around economic justice at the site. A Culture Jam organized with their key partner SISTAFire in August, the event brought together SISTAFire members and neighbors of the area to engage in poetry, performance skits, and conversations by SISTAFire on economic justice and commemoration. The evening featured poetry readings by Rivera, Sussy Santana, Charmaine Porter, Terri Wright, Sage Morgan-Hubbard and Justice Ameer, as well as live drums by Jesús Andujar.
In November, artist Valerie Tutson also organized a Community Story Circle at the Providence Public Library, inviting members of the Black community to come and share their stories of growing up, living or making art in the neighborhood near Former Columbus Square. PCL Director Ena Fox commented, “This was so powerful and moving, hearing the stories from these community scholars, folks with deep past and present ties to Elmwood, painting a picture of a vibrant Black community!”
And that’s not all. PCL also has a robust writers’ residency with writers who have been engaging with each of the three sites. Traci Picard – who has been assigned to Columbus Square – is a researcher and public historian who works as Senior Research Assistant at Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, leads the Snowtown Research Team, and supports community projects with her research and writing. Picard will be working alongside the artists to research and synthesize activities and insights that emerge at this site over this year.
These early activations have been laying a crucial foundation for the work these four practitioners will be doing over this year to reclaim Columbus Square and expose its potential to understand commemoration as a communal process of historical redress. Stay tuned to see more of what takes place at the Former Columbus Square and head to this page to learn more about the artists and writers.