Brittany Holiday, Director of Community Engagement at The Village of Arts and Humanities discussed  The Village of Arts and Humanities, a nearly 40-year-old arts and community revitalization organization rooted in Philadelphia’s deeply disinvested Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood. Their mission is to support artists and Black community residents to imagine, design, and build a more just and equitable society.

They engage community members annually through programs and projects that blend art with social justice, youth leadership, and equitable revitalization.

In 2021, The Village started a multi-generational steering committee, which met to learn about and explore literacy while imagining what a literacy-rich Fairhill-Hartranft could look, sound, and feel like.

In addition to The Village, project partners include Mastery Clymer, the Hartranft Playground Alliance, Read by 4th, Historic Fair Hill, Hope Partnership for Education, Urban Creators, Ones Up, Lillian Marrero Library, Joyful Readers, and John F. Hartranft School.

One of the major community initiatives is the Fairhill-Hartranft ABCs, which was made possible with funding from the William Penn Foundation.

This initiative is designed to get people across the Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood to think about and interact with literacy in new and exciting ways, from street art to storytelling. Through this work, they hope to build community power, preserve their stories, and increase appreciation for language in all its forms.

Current activations include two new community-informed murals, which features a neighborhood alphabet with art created by several local artists and letter installations throughout the neighborhood, to be shared through scavenger hunt booklets.

The first public event is a Reading Captain Training on October 1, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., at Mastery Clymer Elementary School. They need your help to break the record of most Reading Captains trained by Read by 4th in a single session!  Reading Captains must be over 18 years old.

They’re also working with our community partners to develop a robust schedule of literacy-rich events that will kick off this fall and run through March.

To learn more about the Fairhill-Hartranft ABC literacy initiative and sign up for the Reading Captain training: https://fairhillhartranftabc.org/.

To learn more about The Village: https://villagearts.org

Follow them on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevillagephilly/