Day-long community workshop to build understanding and engage with local history and stories through InterPlay forms and practices—particularly the history of the 15^th Ward.  This is part of a larger project that will address issues of historical community displacement and belonging. The goal of this project is to create community engagement leading to a performance. Our primary focus will be the histories of the African American and Jewish communities that lived in the 15^th Ward before its destruction via urban renewal and the construction of the I81 viaduct. Our workshop will extend the theme of displacement and belonging reaching back to explore explore the encroachment of Europeans, including the US and NY State governments, on sovereign Onondaga territory in the wake of first contact. We will also begin to explore the story of new immigrants who share the spaces of Pioneer Homes and Brick City with other Syracuse residents. Some of the materials we may use are factual timelines that highlight federal treaties; federal, state and county laws that were enacted specifically to support the displacement of Native American, Black, and Latinx communities and families, as well as white flight and economic disinvestment; and some actual stories of those families.

Lunch will be provided to participants.