Since the receipt of the Divided Cities Faculty Collaborate Grant, the following activities have occurred, members of the Divided Cities lead team have met three times in person and held two telephone conversations to review, discuss, and apply the proposed work plan. Since the start of the Growing Griot efforts, the team has gained the participation of Dr. Geoff Ward, Associate Professor and Associate Chair African and African-American Studies. 

For our expressed Team Griot convening, leaders have met once as scheduled in May 2019. The objective of this gathering provided members an opportunity to learn more detail about the Growing Griot work plan and consider how it can be most effective in helping to accomplish outcomes. Team Griot will convene its second meeting on Friday, August 2 to continue engaging the work plan.

An initial community engagement collaboration with FoodSpark occurred in June 2019 as part of a kickoff to its Black Summer series. While convening at The Griot, participants discussed the state of Black St. Louis and suggested ideas and vision for how greater awareness of black history and culture could be shared through public art and  physical markers throughout the city. This idea has aligned with additional conversation and ideation that resulted from a new collaboration with the Commonwealth Project team of Harvard University. A follow-up community engagement event with FoodSpark is scheduled for August 17, consistent with the activities described in the work plan.

Subsequent to the awarding of the Faculty Collaborative Grant, another piece of the puzzle in the journey toward building the organizational capacity of the Griot, was put into place. Namely, De Nichols learned that she was awarded the Loeb Fellowship from Harvard University that would enable her to spend an entire year working on behalf of the Griot’s efforts. The Fellowship supports De and brings with it many resources that are available through Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Affirmation of the Loeb Fellowship, however, has required our team to revisit our work plan and consider the best ways to make adjustments to the timeline. We have been in touch with Divided Cities staff and will spend significant time over the next few months revising that schedule, as one change to this schedule involves the coursework and student engagement: 

For the fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters, engagement will focus on students within WashU’s African and African-American studies department with integration of coursework by Geoff Ward. 

While in residence for the Loeb Fellowship, De Nichols will not teach at WashU for the 2019-2020 school year. 

De will be eligible to lead a 1-4 week January Term intensive course through Harvard that would prospectively allow site-specific learning and implementation, and she has been welcomed to teach her course, Design as a Catalyst for Change, in Fall 2020. 

To complement the activities of both the Collaborative Grant and the Loeb Fellowship, we submitted another grant to the Mellon Foundation to support the work of developing Community Archives.  We are awaiting a decision.