Hub Meeting Minutes
March 28, 2005
A joint Civic House & Writers House Hub Meeting

In attendance: Caitlin, Sylvie, Richard, Maria, Adrienne, Jill I, Jamie-Lee, Samantha, Scott G, David G (civic house), Walter L (civic house), Jen, Tom, Blake, Talia, Phil, Arielle, Sarah G, Gabe, Nora, Fred, Joan, Jamie (from Civic House), Sheri (from Civic House), Peter, Danielle.

Minutes by: Phil

Intros

1. KWH business
   • End of year hub party on 4/27/05
   • KWH contests—submit by April 20, 2005 email to jsnead@writing.upenn.edu to apply
   • Junior Fellow Award
     • Blake and Adrienne discuss their projects
     • Jennifer describes Beandrea's project—a civic house style project—a possible collaborative sort of program between civic house and kwh in the future relating to photography
   • Kerry Prize—Phil discusses Hal Sirowitz's recent visit as part of this prize
   • Proposals Hublet – Tom reminds hub members about the proposal hublet website
   
   
2. Civic House/Writers House potential collaborations
• an intro to Civic House by David
• started in 1998, proposed by students
• affiliated with local schools, Amnesty International
• often a special emphasis on issues of race & class in society
• they believe in forming new partnerships in Philadelphia; making meetings happen between various groups; working with community groups; coordinating student public interest projects; fostering community through educational programming designed for and led by student activists
• Walter
• Civic House has an interest in West Philadelphia, in working with the community outside of Penn students

• Showing students that there is a future for those who are interested in public interest careers by passing on and posting information about jobs to career services and to interested students
• Another goal of the house: to help and encourage student-run groups to sustain while students are leading very busy, hectic lives
• Civic house is not always full: part of its mission statement is that people should be out there in the community
• Sheri - Sheri is a civic house liaison to other student resource groups (over 50 student run groups)
• attends the Black Student League meetings, JHP, Newman Center, Hillel, etc. and reports back and forth between the groups
• understands that there are a lot of like-minded groups on campus, and since Sheri is a liaison to a lot of art-based groups, she is excited to be at a writers house hub meeting because of all the opportunities to collaborate


3. Opportunities for COMMUNITY and WRITING/ARTS collaborations
• running a KWH led / Civic House style reflection session
• invite people to think about their work in different ways
• Everyone wants to do well—how do we feed ourselves while we are working on our own programs?
• giving time to process our thinking while we lead and participate in own community-based programs 
• "an organic process"
• Blake and other hub members met with Civic House hub members a few years ago and learned from the experience that the impetus for this sort of collaboration works best when it is developed organically, rather than top/down, and is able to progress in a comfortable, organic fashion.
• David and many others agree about this point re: organic development of ideas.
• Penn Corps
• Shari thinks that there could be an opportunity for a Writers House Penncorps pre-orientation program
• Maybe a mural tour of Philadelphia in September
• Or a session with writers who write in response to city murals
• Working with some of the Penn groups that focus on community initiatives
• Stimulus Children’s theatre
• InterAct theater company
• Friends of 40^th St
• Penn Pals
• WPTP (West Philadelphia Tutoring Project)
• Dancing performing arts groups—learning how to dance
• Civic House to potentially offer workshops for volunteers in the Writers House programs Write On! and Saturday Reading Cooperative on how to coordinate and instruct students
• Walter suggests “Poetry and Protest” a one-shot program that would be fun even though we should also strive for a more organic idea over the next six months; we could set up a stage outdoors on 39^th st. and have a joint writers house/civic house reading.  
• Samantha suggests a collaboration on the idea of community where everyone in writers house has a buddy on the civic house side where we each meet for coffee and take each other to a program—an exchange so that we can inform our two communities of what each other can do
• Tom suggests having another meeting and just continuing to flood the room with ideas and float out on them
• Jen suggests a workshop on art and its usefulness in the community
• Theatre and Acting related programs
• Jamie suggests a potential collaboration with Front Row theater—they produce “socially relevant” theatre—KWH has collaborated on a fellowship, but maybe there are more possibilities to collaborate
• Maria suggests getting “The Play’s the Thing” involved in this collaboration
• Stimulus children’s theatre is also always looking for student writing to perform
• Nora suggests that we get students in writers house literacy programs to write plays and perform them
• Shari suggested working with the Penn Music Mentoring Program to generate performances by kids—this can be combined with Jennifer’s idea on a workshop related to community and the arts
• A possible teachers and writers collective to teach kids about poetry; to have a day together to teach children


4. Next Steps - propose a date and time to meet again and work out some next steps on the potential collaborations we would like to try