“BLACKSPACES EXIST”
Words by BlackSpace co-founder Emma Osore
and program manager Alicia AjayiPhotography by Guarionex Rodriguez, Jr.
Brownsville Heritage House. Brooklyn, New York
Physical spaces exist and within physical spaces, places are created. Places are adorned with memories, nurtured with care, and can be grounded in legacy. Places deserve to be seen and protected as they ensure the significance of our futures.
The importance of Black space is incredibly apparent in the intimate room where Brooklyn-based writer’s group Power in the Pen meets every weekend. Rooted in the heart of a historically Black New York neighborhood, the group has made its home in the Brownsville Heritage House. Every Saturday, writers from all walks of Black Brooklyn life cram around a long table for a few hours, fueled by donuts and coffee. One by one, a retired teacher, a recovering addict, a published poet, and a real estate broker, among many others, courageously share their own words and fiercely love on their peers’ work. This is an important place. The rooms are filled to the ceilings with Black relics such as a collection of small, hand-stitched cloth dolls, worn vintage copies of Ebony magazine, and a prominent life-sized cut-out of Michelle Obama in an exquisite turquoise dress, clapping delightedly. Recently, Power in the Pen hosted their first Authors Showcase in the space. Each writer read an excerpt of their work from small brightly colored yellow books whose patterned covers were inspired by a West African print.
1. “Black in Design Conference.” Black in Design Conference, n.d.
The spaces that allow for Black self-determination are the reason BlackSpace Urbanist Collective was created. Its mission is to acknowledge, affirm, and amplify the contributions of the public spaces, cultures, and places designed for and by Black people. BlackSpace was founded at the inaugural Black in Design (BiD) Conference hosted by the Harvard Graduate School of Design. BiD, now in its third year, “promotes discourse around the agency of the design profession to address and dismantle institutional barriers faced by our communities.” [1] After meeting at the conference, co-founders Emma Osore and Kenyatta McLean started hosting salon-style brunches in their own Black spaces—their apartments. BlackSpace is now comprised of over one hundred Black professionals dedicated to the conservation of physical places like the one that Power in the Pen has created inside the Brownsville Heritage House. Its membership is made up of urban designers, developers, architects, landscape architects, policymakers, artists, and advocates, guided by a manifesto of fourteen core values.
“Every Saturday, writers from all walks of Black Brooklyn life cram around a long table for a few hours, fueled by donuts and coffee.”
Like with much of BlackSpace’s work, significant collective energy and time was required to get the manifesto right, a value correlated to a process dependent on, in the words of Adrienne Maree Brown, “moving at the speed of trust.” BlackSpace member Jennifer Allen suggested the group create a manifesto to clarify its values and to have a tool for holding itself accountable. Allen led a year-long initiative of focus groups, sessions, and workshops and worked with a graphic designer to create the manifesto. “Honestly, the thought of BlackSpace inadvertently harming Black communities sort of scared me.” Allen knew that many BlackSpace members were educated and trained through a myriad of paradigms that did not center or even listen to Black people and cultures. She thought it essential to have a tool to help BlackSpace members continually un-learn methods that don’t make the space for Black people to create their own futures. “I am usually a very modest person,” expresses Allen at a recent BlackSpace event, “but I am very proud of this [manifesto]!” The excitement is shared among anyone who talks about the manifesto, an indicator of how much this space is needed. If brunches are the soul of BlackSpace, its manifesto is definitely the heartbeat.
2. U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates, 2013 adapted from: "Brooklyn Community District 16: BROWNSVILLE - New York City." Accessed April 4, 2019.
3. Wendell E. Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto (London: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
4. Ginia Bellafante, "Resurrecting Brownsville," The Nation. June 29, 2015. Accessed April 09, 2019.
5. Andrea Leonhardt, "Study: Brownsville Could Be Next to Face Gentrification," BK Reader. March 22, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019.
In 2018, BlackSpace was awarded grant funding by the J.M. Kapland Fund to support Brownsville, NY. Brownsville is an approximately one square mile residential neighborhood in Eastern Brooklyn in which over seventy-five percent of the population identifies as Black.[2] In 1940, Black residents made up just six percent of the population. By 1950, this number had doubled and white flight ensued.[3] Today, Brownsville’s diverse community ranges from Black business owners, entrepreneurs, and young families to long-time residents and others who have returned to their beloved home after time away. Brownsville has one of the highest concentrations of public housing in the country (intentionally designed as a repository for the displaced and designated for the “colored” in the 1950s by urban planner, Robert Moses). By some accounts, this concentration has prevented the effects of gentrification that have ravaged other, also predominantly Black parts of Brooklyn.[4] However, since 2010, Brownsville has seen a resurgence in investment, making residents wary of gentrification in the near future, with more recent studies confirming this fear.[5]
“BlackSpace is now comprised of over one hundred Black professionals dedicated to the conservation of physical places like the one that Power in the Pen has created inside the Brownsville Heritage House.”
Throughout 2018, BlackSpace employed several methods of collecting and recording Brownsville histories. Members even took to the streets to interview residents. The lessons learned lead BlackSpace to create the Co-Designing Black Neighborhood Heritage Conservation playbook. The playbook serves as a record of that engagement process, as well as a dynamic exercise for those interested in working alongside communities to preserve heritage in historically Black neighborhoods. Since BlackSpace is not a Brownsville-based organization, this work called for active and intentional empathy towards the present dynamic. Investing in Black enterprise and establishing partnerships are overarching initiatives of this collective. Therefore, BlackSpace teamed up with Made in Brownsville, a youth development non-profit focused on reducing the barriers for young people to enter creative fields, to co-design the playbook. “My hope is that people from other similarly-situated neighborhoods will learn of this work and ignite the playbook by taking it back to their communities,” says BlackSpace co-founder Osore.
“Leveraging the collective skill set and knowledge of its members allows BlackSpace to offer a breadth of services that many organizations might not have access to.”
While BlackSpace believes in deeply involved, hands-on engagements—like the playbook—this organization also understands the power of light touch support. Leveraging the collective skill set and knowledge of its members allows BlackSpace to offer a breadth of services that many organizations might not have access to. In the Authors Showcase, the yellow books being read from were designed and produced by BlackSpace in collaboration with Power in the Pen. Power in the Pen is currently producing a second edition of the book and will use the sales profits to support future events and projects for the writers. On the night of the showcase, the small room was full of rows of chairs, seating nearly sixty attentive audience members. The bright yellow books peppered the scene, adding to the catalogue of other Black relics that makes this Black space invaluable.
