Mason Novak, “Community-Engaged Field Work at Walnut Hill Community Garden”
Mentor: Arijit Sen, History, Letters & Science (College of)
Oral Presentation: 9:30am Union E250
Community gardens built on vacant lots where homes once stood are rich with historical value and provide a space for residents to gather and hold various activities. Media accounts of vacant lots in marginalized neighborhoods of Milwaukee fail to disseminate these positive stories of resilience and resistance, often describing these empty lots as blighted results of economic decline, foreclosures, poverty, and disinvestment. Since 2012, the Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures public humanities project at UW-Milwaukee has been exploring methods to identify and disseminate positive accounts of Milwaukee’s poor, underserved, and segregated communities. Recently, we worked with residents who are part of the Walnut Hill Community Garden in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This presentation examines our historical methods of recreating an alternative history that demonstrates the lived realities and dreams of this otherwise ignored community. Through investigating local archives to uncover the physical history of the land, as well as examining permit records, Census data, and Sanborn Fire Insurance Map data, we uncovered what buildings used to occupy the garden space, why they were removed or destroyed, and discovered when and how the community claimed the land back as their own. We also participated in oral history collection and community-led walks, where we heard residents’ stories of local art, parks, homes, businesses, and other landmarks that form their historical experiences of the neighborhood. When researching a neighborhood’s past, through an asset-based and open-minded lens of putting residents first, we were able to discover the immense number of individuals who live and thrive in the community of Walnut Hill. The data collected was distributed back to the neighborhood through a community asset booklet, resident biography cards, and an online history archive. Our research ends with a hope that community-engaged research methods will continuously explore ways to give back the collected history of the neighborhoods we work with.