For the last six months, hundreds of Ward 8 residents, in southeast Washington D.C., have shared their hopes, worries and ideas for what their neighborhoods might look like in the future through a public engagement exhibit called “Our Stories; Our Future.”
Now the Headway team at The New York Times wants to share some of those reflections.
The “Our Stories; Our Future” closing reception will conclude after nearly six months of traveling around Ward 8 with an interactive theater experience led by Verbal Gymnastics, a local theater group, that will ask the audience to help build on the responses residents shared.
The catalyst for Headway’s public engagement exhibit started with a story published last summer about the 11th Street Bridge Park, a pedestrian bridge that will connect Anacostia, a historically Black community in southeast Washington, D.C., with Capitol Hill, a wealthier neighborhood on the other side of the Anacostia River.
Headway’s story asks the question: Can development happen here without displacing existing residents? How might Anacostia and Ward 8 change? Who will benefit from that change? Who has the voice, choice and agency to shape it?
“Our Stories; Our Future” launched on Oct. 15 at the Anacostia Arts Center. A few months later, the exhibit went down the street to Project Create, a community-based nonprofit that promotes creative youth development through the arts. And since January, “Our Stories; Our Future” has been on display at a gallery in THEARC, a cultural and social services campus in Southeast Washington, D.C.
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