Growing Griot
A 2018 “St. Louis Arts Ecology” study by the DeVos Institute of Arts Management revealed that, “though almost half the citizens of St. Louis are African American, there are no organizations of color with budgets exceeding $1 million” within its arts and culture industry. And, of its largest 25 arts and heritage organizations, not a single one is focused primarily on the history, art, and culture of African Americans.
Since its origins in 1997 as a black wax museum, The Griot Museum of Black History has been the primary historical museum in St. Louis City that is dedicated specifically to black history. However, much like the North St. Louis Promise Zone community in which it sits, The Griot has endured severe and inequitable disinvestment, social disinterest, and structural decline throughout its 22-year existence. Though it attracted 35,000 annual visitors in its early years, it currently hosts approximately 4,800 annually. With an annual budget that funds one full-time employee, it seeks to position itself to secure the capital and public interest needed to sustain it as an anchor institution. This is an especially acute need as new development projects like the Northside Regeneration Project—a private development claiming over 10 acres—and the 97-acre National Geospatial Agency (NGA) development have advanced via eminent domain to displace much of the surrounding community.
In collaboration with Washington University Professor Adrienne Davis, Kemper Museum Academic Programs Coordinator Rochelle Caruthers, and social impact designer, De Nichols, The Griot Museum of Black History seeks to initiate Growing Griot, a community-centered design and learning framework that investigates the feasibility of reimagining its purpose, redeveloping its building and grounds, and deepening its social power in contemporary St. Louis. This initiative is part of a multi-faceted, long-term vision that builds upon previously initiated and ongoing internal capacity-building activities. Its primary goals include three scopes of work: community engagement, Team Griot, and facility planning.
Community Engagement:
The Griot seeks to re-envision its interpretive programs to include contemporary history (i.e., pop culture, recent civil unrest) and revamp its core and touring exhibits to enhance the visitor experience. It also seeks to cultivate a presence within affected communities through the creation of historic markers, community forums, and pop-up exhibits.
To work towards these goals, a variety of community engagement efforts will be facilitated by The Griot and its Growing Griot partners. In summer 2019, a kickoff will include a Juneteenth collaboration with FoodSpark STL to foster critical conversations about the role of black cultural institutions in addressing social injustices, neighborhood displacement, and racial discrimination. In the fall, we will engage community residents as an activation site of the Chouteau Greenway (development by Great Rivers Greenway) to collectively envision how the armature and ecology of the greenway design might cultivate vibrancy, cultural equity, and economic development as it stretches into the area. A third spring engagement would focus community involvement on how The Griot could deepen its role as a cultural anchor, while a summer 2020 capstone event would then unveil the collective vision of The Griot’s capital campaign with its public launch.
Funding will be dispersed across these four sets of community engagement experiences to cover event staffing, speakers, and marketing. Additional expenses—such as event supplies and refreshments for the winter and spring engagements—will be subsidized through our partners and the pursuit of additional programmatic grant support, including the Institute of Library and Museum Studies’ grant for African American Museums. To evaluate these engagements, we will develop learning benchmarks in order to implement event surveys, ensure successful progress of the project plan, and assess our effectiveness in understanding the perspectives of community participants.
Team Griot:
Team Griot is a volunteer group of seven local arts and humanities professionals, one Griot board member and one Griot staff member. Amongst its current endeavors, it is steering the completion of a strategic plan that unearths The Griot’s vision for a capital campaign to ensure its long-term institutional stability. Of the requested grant support, $4,000 would be utilized to bring in consultants to facilitate quarterly half-day sessions with Team Griot as they build working groups to help identify prospective funders, develop a fundraising campaign, and execute the completion of the plan.
Student Engagement in Facility Planning:
Finally, as the Griot seeks to implement an assessment of its building and grounds, a Divided City grant will enable us to cultivate student leadership into the process by developing a Learning Lab and studio for communications design and architecture students of Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design as well as the African & African American Studies students in the School of Arts & Sciences.
In the summer of 2019, The Griot will welcome a second student from its partnership with the Gephardt Institute’s Arts as Civic Engagement residency program to provide administrative, curatorial and community engagement activities. In the Fall 2019 semester, an elective course, Design as Catalyst, taught by social impact designer, De Nichols, will guide students to develop and prototype contemporary environmental designs for The Griot’s exhibitions, galleries, and exterior landscape. Then, as relationships continue to develop with leaders of the African and African-American Studies department in the School of Art & Sciences, we seek to offer a Spring 2020 Learning Lab specifically with AFAS students to engage ideation of how The Griot might increase its utilization as a primary source for learning about Black history and contemporary culture.
Students’ involvement in these experiences would expand The Griot’s capacity tremendously, and their insights—alongside community members’—would help us identify the resources and capital needed to render the building more accessible, accommodate administrative functions, store our collections and archives, and actualize innovative programs and services.
To evaluate the Learning Lab experience with students, we will assess their learning through instruments provided by their respective schools and university programs, and we will also administer pre-post surveys each semester to better understand their comprehension of The Griot’s mission, perspectives of its facilities and grounds, and satisfaction of their learning experience.
As we endeavor to develop a clear path toward helping The Griot understand the possibilities and feasibility of ensuring its long-term institutional stability, support from the Divided City grant will serve as a key driver in ensuring success of the Growing Griot community engagement structure. Outcomes would also advance The Griot’s process of getting the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places. And, as we recognize that The Divided City grant will not cover the full expanse of this visioning process, we believe it will be a catalyst that incentivizes and cultivates additional philanthropic excitement and support for this visionary undertaking.