NTIT RCO Community Projects
COMMUNITY EVENTS
The NTIT RCO provides free events for the community, including school supply giveaways, health and holiday fairs, dance and music performances, and movie nights. We hope you'll join us! You can support our programs here.
WILLIAMS MOORE REED MEMORIAL PARK
Located at the corner of North 11th and West Venango Streets, Williams Moore Reed Memorial Park (formerly the Eleventh Street Playground) includes a play center with safety surfacing, swing sets, and a basketball court.
The project was created in 2003 by the NTIT RCO in cooperation with Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke's office and funding from the Fifth Council District. The park was rededicated in 2021. |
HEALING GARDEN
The Healing Garden transformed a vacant lot at the corner of North Marvine and West Venango Streets into a small-scale green space filled with a wide variety of medicinal plants. Honoring the leadership of community elders, the garden entryway is marked by four Pillars of Community. A giant Compass of Community mosaic, created by our youth, surrounds a public meeting and performance space. An area for quiet reflection is centered around a shaded mosaic bench. The Healing Garden was created by COSACOSA art at large, Inc. in partnership with the NTIT RCO.
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The Healing Garden was created in 2007 and refurbished in 2013 with support from the Knight Arts Challenge, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
Project artists included Rosita Kamihira, Kimberly Niemela, Pedro Ospina, and Rana Sindhikara. A pdf booklet with more details about the project and the community, titled Telling Time, Telling Place, is available to download here. |
UNITY GARDEN
Designed by NTIT RCO members with COSACOSA art at large, Inc., the Unity Garden is part of our long term process to strategically plan for the neighborhood. Located at the corner of Old York Road and West Venango Street, the garden features a giant quilt of mosaic symbols of unity from around the world, plus original unity symbol mosaic "buttons" created by neighborhood residents. Family-friendly art-making and gardening events are held in the space year round, as well as at the Healing Garden, located just a block away.
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The Unity Garden was completed in 2015 with support from the Knight Arts Challenge, the Kresge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Union Benevolent Association, and L.E.C.E.T.
Project artists included local block captain William Hilton, Kimberly Niemela, and Steve Teare. A pdf booklet with more details about the project and the community, titled Indivisible, will soon be available for download. |
SITE & SOUND
Through COSACOSA's Site and Sound project, NTIT RCO youth developed new methods for neighborhood problem-solving through multimedia art-making. A pilot project of Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods, an initiative of National Learn and Serve America and CTCnet, Site and Sound worked to cultivate youth as vital assets to the neighborhood's long-term health and success. Youth created Voices of Community, a CD of twelve original songs and spoken word pieces with artist Ezechial Thurman exploring issues of concern to the community, while Visions of Community, a film project created by youth with artist Dit Wah Deng, mapped neighborhood history and existing assets.
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OPPORTUNITY'S GATE
Using multiple art forms and intergenerational dialogues, COSACOSA's Opportunity’s Gate project investigated opportunities for advancement for young people living in Nicetown-Tioga. The project celebrated the qualities of community leadership through a giant, collaborative public mosaic installation and a forty minute film created, performed and produced by NTIT RCO youth with artists Dit Wah Deng and Bruce Robinson. Workshops for the project were also hosted in collaboration with Opportunities Tower, a residence and community center for our elders, and our local Opportunities Industrialization Center, providing job training resources to city residents.
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MEMORY MINE
COSACOSA's Memory Mine project brought artists working in multiple disciplines to collaborate with Nicetown-Tioga residents on artwork exploring the residents' collective memory, history, experience, tall-tales, and folklore. The project examined story-telling as "cultural grounding” – social interaction that discovers, delineates, and disseminates both individual and community identity. Works created included the Sound of His Voice, a CD of community stories, and When I Look at My Window, a website about the community by students at Gratz High and Kenderton Elementary Schools, created with North Philadelphia based-artists Homer Jackson and Rana Sindhikara.
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Image at top: Unity Garden, a community green space created through a partnership between the NTIT RCO and COSACOSA art at large, Inc.