Felicia M. Sullivan, Ph.D.

If we are lucky in life, we may find ourselves surrounded by a cadre of liked mind souls we call community. Over the course of a lifetime, we may find ourselves in many such communities of differing sizes, compositions, and interests. It can be near impossible to create a community, but it is possible to orchestrate the conditions that catalyze it. For me, the 119 Gallery was a cauldron of such catalytic forces. A dynamic space brought into being by alchemists Mary Ann Kearns and Walter Wright. The 119 Gallery has existed in many forms physical and virtual over its many decades, but it was its 10-year expression at 119 Chelmsford Street in Lowell, MA that was a creative community I was privileged to belong.

Mary Ann and Walter were two of the very first people I met in Massachusetts when I arrived here in 1995. I was then the education director at the now defunct Boston Film/Video Foundation. Walter and Mary Ann were local electronic art promoters/makers/evangelilsts connected to the Boston CyberArts Festival directed by George Fifield. George was then on the board of BFVF and was hosting a pre-festival gathering. It is there that I met Mary Ann and Walter. I did not know it then, but these two creatives at the founding of electronic arts were to spend almost three decades as hosts of an amazing creative community centered in Lowell, MA, but reaching far, far beyond.

Walter and Mary Ann had transplanted themselves and the then 911 Electronic Media Arts, Inc. from Indianapolis to the Merrimack Vallery about the same time I moved to Massachusetts. The 911 was the first to present art on the Internet and had existed virtually and physically. But in the early 2000’s, Mary Ann and Walter sought to move from their Chelmsford home to build out a new physical gallery space to house their expansive vision of the creative community as well as a new home. In 2005, they opened the renamed 119 Gallery to coincide with its new 119 Chelmsford Street address.

From 2005 to 2015, Walter and Mary Ann welcomed a variety of artists, performers, community members, neighbors, and those who didn’t even realize that they too could create and commune. If Lowell was riding the creative economy bandwagon, the 119 Gallery was an innovation hub where young and new creators could test and refine their expressions. With little to no paid staff, the 119 Gallery operated under what might be termed radical inclusion in the spirit of Burning Man. I’ve written on this blog before [post 1, post 2, post 3] about the organizational form of the 119.

What I haven’t written so clearly about is how Mary Ann and Walter invited others to co-create the 119 Gallery. Their far-reaching networks of artists and performers found a home at the Chelmsford Street 119 Gallery. It was quite common that these creators would be connected to more locally grown ones Walter and Mary Ann’s home above the gallery was often a makeshift hotel, hostel, impromptu workshop, meeting space, and rehearsal hall. They weathered the vagaries of living in an edge neighborhood including theft, bullets, more than one shattered glass door, random inebriates, and several of their cars smashed on the busy Chelmsford Street artery. But the 119 Gallery never ceased to be a vibrant space full of creative voices, sounds, and visions. But it was the people, the connection, and the community that attracted me and so many others.

Mary Ann and Walter have a way of welcoming in and ignoring boundaries. An audience member one day may find themselves performing electronic music another. The visual artist or sculptor may work with a dancer or musician. The neighborhood twenty-something may find their very first paintings in an exhibition when they didn’t even realize their work could be treated so seriously. The impetus is always to create and experience. In the tradition of other collectivist art movements and as descendants of Dada and Fluxus, Walter and Mary Ann brought these sensibilities to new creative digital tools and technologies.

The Chelmsford Street iteration of the 119 Gallery closed its doors in 2015. Ten years is not a bad run for a community arts organization in a culture that doesn’t really value the process or act of creating. While many of the creators still create, the community energy has dissipated. Mary Ann and Walter sold the 119 Chelmsford building in 2021. The old gallery space housed a folk music collective and eventually a number of commercial concerns. It is currently a shop selling fresh seafood.

Now, Walter and Mary Ann are pulling up stakes and moving to Virginia. It is Mary Ann’s home state and where the couple met many years ago. I will join in the celebration of their new adventure and well-wish these earliest of my Massachusetts friends. At the same time, I mourn the loss of the specific creative community they catalyzed. I leave you with a poem by Derek Fenner.

Some thoughts on the 119 Gallery
by Derek Fenner — April 10, 2012

119 is Walter and Mary Ann
119 is where art belongs
119 is what YOU make it
119 is a place you break bread and boundaries
119 is NOT a gallery/performance space; it is a community center
119 checks ego at the door
119 glorifies expression and communication
119 is all of us
119 is a place to join in the struggle to survive
119 is a venue of workers united in play
119 is a continuum where time never fails. How can time fail?
119 is people unrestrained
119 is NOT the dominant narrative type
119 is TRANSFORMATIVE through the creation of (a) shared story
119 says, “Don’t save the arts. Save the World with the arts.”

As part of the 2019 SSSP Annual Meeting, I had the pleasure of convening a panel of four scholars exploring the role community-based organizations play in engaging, developing, amplifying, and connecting youth to the larger world as social actors and agents of change.  The four presentations by Lauren Dent (University of North Texas), May Lin (University of Southern California), Jessica Sperling, (Duke University), and Wendall Wallace (University of the West Indies) shared research that included multiple contexts from youth police clubs in Trinidad and Tobago (Wallace) to a national orchestral music program targeted to youth (Sperling) to racial justice youth organizations in Southern California (Lin) to tribal youth engaged in emergency preparedness (Dent).  

With methods from deep participant observation to randomized control trials (RCT), the four scholars side-stepped the traditional take on social change that tends to examine the skills, strategies, and tactics of youth to mobilize and exert political power. Instead, these presentations collectively told a more humanistic and developmental story.  With foci on opportunity provision, social-emotional learning, building of collective identity through culture and safety, and leveraging of youth as leadership assets, these scholars highlighted that social change efforts targeting youth need to dig deeper than simple leadership skill development or issue campaign work.  

The intrapersonal and interpersonal attitudes and dispositions to affect change don’t just materialize. They are developed over time, through multiple experiences and in multiple contexts. Wallace shared how the police clubs create contexts where youth can start to see themselves in a different way — as confident and able to achieve.  Sperling’s work with Kidznotes, an orchestral music program, highlighted the importance of not only measuring traditional markers of success like academic achievement, but capacities such as executive function, prosocial behavior, and dispositions like persistence that allow youth to move into collaborative work with others. Lin’s research further stressed the need to create spaces for active listening, reflection and emotional sharing in youth change work.  This sort of healing culture is especially critical for youth of color whose often traumatic experiences in school and society benefit from being unpacked as sources of strength and collective identity. Finally, Dent’s exploration of youth in disaster preparedness efforts spoke to the real gaps and needs youth can fill in much change work if given the space to lead. In fact, their contributions can transform the work as they bring their skills and perspectives to endeavors. 

Over the last decade and a half, the growing body of work on the sociopolitical development of young people, especially as agents of change, has grown. I thank these four scholars for their contributions to this body of work.

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As I am reflecting on my dissertation research about youth engagement and my experiences with community-based engagement efforts, it is not lost on me how important it is for individuals and groups to be responded to. The response acknowledges that they exist and have a voice.

But it seems for true engagement and ownership to happen the response needs to one of openness and support. The “that’s a great idea how can I help” or “that’s fantastic, do you know what might make it better” or “You have something there, you might want to consider these challenges or barriers so you don’t get stopped.” What is not helpful or empowering is the “We’ve tried that and it won’t work” or “You can’t do that” or “You are not doing that right” or “Others are already doing that.”

The best response is not only open and supportive but also helps to connect and build — the “That’s a great idea, let’s see who else is one board” or “X,Y, and Z are also working on that — let’s talk to them too.”

So, how responsive is your group, organization, community, or political processes?

In November of last year, I shared a list of seven principles that our spaces for learning and development need to address in order to create young people (and ultimately a society) with strong civic capabilities.

This is the first in a series of blog posts that will explore each principle within the context of my work at JFF’s Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative.  My ultimate goal is to integrate my thinking around civic capabilities and student-centered learning. Clearly, this is an effort to rationalize my day to day work more fully.

PRINCIPLE ONE

Organizations and individuals should be able to develop capacities to sustain and grow themselves for long-term success. 

 All good learning environments should “grow” leaners for “long-term success.” But what does long-term success mean and what should one grow? 

One marker of long-term success is meaningful work. This suggests learning environments should allow individuals to develop skills and knowledge that lend themselves to practical application in work-oriented pursuits.  To this end, competency-based learning (one of the four student-centered learning tenants) and by extension, learning that can happen anytime and anywhere (another student-centered learning tenant) are well aligned with building work skill mastery. In other words, learning should be experiential a la John Dewey.  

Experiential learning is well suited for the skills needed for successful work, what are often referred to as deeper learning competencies, soft skills or 21^st century skills.  So what does growth for long-term success in the work life have to do with civic capabilities?  It is not hard to draw links between the skills developed for work-oriented pursuits (e.g. communication, collaboration, creative and critical thinking) and their applicability to civic-oriented realms such as grassroots organizing, volunteering, or issue advocacy.  Civic work is work.  It is a type of social production with different sorts of goods resulting, civic goods (e.g. collective action to improve the environment, increased understanding of important issues, stronger bonds between neighbors).

At the same time the idea of learners sustaining and growing “themselves” suggests that there is an individual value to learning.  This leads easily into the idea that learning is lifelong and never ending.  Therefore, long-term success could be found in any learning endeavor that is personally fulfilling.  Here, personalization and ownership of learning, or learner agency, are key student-centered learning ideas at play. Personalized in that every person will have a unique set of learning motivations and goals they will want to pursue.  Owned, because the motivation to engage comes from the individual who is driven in pursuit of their learning own goals and objectives.

With this frame, one would want to “grow” the ability of individuals to understand what interests them and how to choose the correct action to take to maximize that interest.  A constant assessment of whether or not one is actually achieved one’s end goals in their learning pursuit would be critical.  So here, skills like critical thinking, reflection, metacognition, problem-solving, decision-making, and host of other executive order skills are demanded.

What does this framing of long-term success have to do with civic capabilities?  To know one’s self and to act on one’s own interests is agentic.  To have agency or to act in an agentic manner, is core to civic action. But what is really important about the idea of learners sustaining and growing “themselves” is the idea that learners “should be able to develop” themselves.  It is the idea of having the ability that enforces the concept that learners have agency.  It is not that “individuals must develop” (which is prescriptive) or we “must develop individuals” (which is paternalistic). Rather, individuals “should be able to develop”, if they so choose. They are not being forced to sustain and grow, they are simply being afforded the opportunity to do so. And assumed in this principle is that ALL learners should be afforded this opportunity.

A few years ago, my former teammates at CIRCLE worked on a set of civic capabilities that every person should be afforded.  Adapting Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s  human development and capabilities framework, we came up with a pretty great list of 10 civic capabilities.  I share this background, because out of that work myself and the other CIRCLE team members thought through our own extensions and modifications that we would add.  I came across my list of 7 principles that connect the individual (me) to a larger collective world (we).  I share them here as I start to contemplate what it means to connect student-centered learning to the development of civic capabilities:

1. Organizations and individuals should be able to develop capacities to sustain and grow themselves for long-term success.  (Related values:  knowledge, education, investing)
2. Opportunities for involvement in civic and political life should be equitable and accessible. (Related values:  justice, fairness)
3. We should strive to create compassionate and tolerant environments that support a diversity of views, opinions, skills and talents. (Related values:  empathy, love, openness, generosity)
4. Our civic and public spaces should allow for the development of respect, trust and connection. (Related values:  belonging, community)
5. Those who hold power should be accountable to all members of society, especially those who are most marginalized. (Related values: justice, fairness, trust)
6. We should work in solidarity with others to promote fairness and work always towards positive change.  (Related values:  community, cooperation, belonging, hopefulness, impact)
7. Fearlessness and courage are needed when confronting those who curtail the freedom, happiness, and lives of others. (Related values:  liberty, integrity, duty,  ethics)

The global is local. I may not be able to change things at the federal level, but change at the local level is possible and doable.

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president and the near domination of the GOP at almost every level of government has me thinking a lot about what it means to be in a representative democracy. As I see the President-Elect assemble his cabinet, I do not see any person or persons who represent my vision or me for a future. While I can’t speak for the majority of voters who voted for someone else other than Mr. Trump, I doubt they see themselves or their interests represented there.

At this moment, North Carolina’s elected representatives in the state house are stripping the powers of the incoming Governor, a Democrat, who after an extremely competitive race ousted the GOP incumbent responsible for supporting regressive bills that resulted in concrete hardship, both economic and social, for the state. These very same legislators are also the ones who worked to curtail the voting rights of African Americans and young people. They did not succeed.

This anti-democratic move, so like the recent election of Mr. Trump, is a fight to see who will be represented in our government. This has me thinking a lot about my very own local elected bodies. And how like the election of Mr. Trump, I do not feel represented by those who sit on either the City Council, nor the School Committee. I do not see myself, my values, nor my Lowell represented there. There have been a few glimmers in the last twenty years, but they are fleeting.

I’ve lived and worked in Lowell for almost two decades. From the moment I first came to Lowell, I have loved its diversity. The mix of history, culture and perspectives from across the globe are like no other in the Commonwealth. I have thought this is the closest I will get to a mini-NYC in New England. Lowell is big enough to contain many lives and many stories, but small enough to belong and be known, even if one is constantly referred to as a “blow-in” or “outsider” by some. Lowell is fortunate to have committed civic actors who care, love and strive to make the city a better place. Lowell’s nonprofit sector is amazing and I don’t think we fully understand how rare it is the collaboration and partnership that happens here. But most of all, Lowell’s people sustain me. They are the reason I continue to remain invested.

Despite my love of Lowell, every local election cycle I am disappointed. I don’t doubt the fact that those who run and are elected to local bodies love and care for Lowell as much or more than I do. I don’t doubt that they are driven and aspire for what they see as best for the city. Yet, every new Council and School Committee draws its winners from a very small and limited group of the City’s populace. While they are committed public servants, their perspectives are narrow. I do not see all of Lowell represented there. The vibrant ethnic and immigrant communities, the young, the artists, the newcomers or blow-ins, the neighborhoods and so many more perspectives are missing. They are not represented. And because a diversity of backgrounds and experiences are not on our elected bodies, our local public institutions and policies suffer. Lowell suffers. We may be amazing in so many ways, but we could be even better if more of us were represented.

So while I feel despondent about the federal government representing me and I see limitations in so many places, I feel confident that Lowell’s politics could and can be better. We are about to enter into a new local election cycle and there is an opportunity to expand who represents us. There are multiple pathways to make this happen and I urge us all push to make our politics more representative. It might not be easy, or without conflict, but I believe it will benefit us in the long term. I am thinking through what I will do to make this vision a reality, and if you are in a place like Lowell, or even Lowell, what will you do?