I-SITE recently partnered on an innovative community arts and culture project that is making visible the “unspoken” and seemingly invisible archives of cultural memory in Philadelphia’s rich and diverse past. Funded by Pew Charitable Trusts and conceived and managed by The Painted Bride Arts Center, Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia features artists/thinkers Reggie Wilson, Faustin Linyekula, and Marty Pottenger who are weaving critical dialogue and conversations within and around their work, and recording and archiving the experiences. King Britt, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Brenda Dixon Gottschild will be acting as advisors [aka Free Radicals] and assisting the artists/thinkers in exploring Philadelphia and developing ideas and projects.

For the online program Painted Bride challenged I-SITE to find innovative ways to report on the artists’ work and also encourage communities and the public to use their smartphones and tablets to share their stories and insights while on the move.

All the site content, whether a bio, video or photograph, is in the form of a field note that is displayed on the home page and can be submitted by the public as well as the artists/thinkers, Free Radicals and Painted Bride team.  These field notes can be filtered by tags, author keyword and time period therefore creating a rich and interactive archive that will remain online as a resource after the 18-month project is completed.

The website built on Drupal 7, is fully responsive and uses Isotope and Masonry libraries to sort and filter interactively with the varying media formats and content published on the site. With the project launched, the I-SITE team is now supporting the website and collaborating with Painted Bride on ways to use social media to publicize the project and generate content.

Check out the Re-PLACE-ing Philadelphia website