SHS City 2.0 Students Transform Harlem Park

This year, Maggie Favretti's City 2.0 class of 20 SHS seniors put words into action by planning the redesign and transformation of a park in Harlem's Renaissance Playground at 144th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. The class embarked on the project to create a space for the community, where Harlem families and children could enjoy plants and flowers, learn about, and play jazz and other kinds of music.

When the class traveled to the park to see where they would be working, they met with jazz musician and locally famous florist, Phil Young, along with a community advocate, Michael Allen. Young, Allen, Favretti and a group of Scarsdale High School students. They have made tremendous strides to create the reborn "Harlem Renaissance Jazz Garden".

I was fortunate enough to be a member of the City 2.0 class and help with the process of transforming the park into the Renaissance Jazz Garden. Once our team had made the initial contacts and put together a coalition of support, we had to address the Harlem community board and present our ideas to them. As a group, Ms. Favretti, four City 2.0 students (including myself), Michael Allen, and Phil Young met at the community board meeting to present our pitch for the new garden.

The community board meeting helped create the momentum that the project needed. Ms. Favretti elaborated on the importance of the board meeting and said, "Going to the community board was very helpful to us and informed us of what to do next. We need[ed] to first work with the park system to build support in the community; then the city government will respond to our project once there is a well organized community movement". The community board meeting was also attended by staff from the nearby schools who also committed their support to the Harlem Renaissance Jazz Garden. As the project continues to grow and progress, it is gaining more and more support. As of now, school officials from Harlem Village Academy, Harlem Children Zone Teen Center, the Police Department, and the City Parks Foundation have committed to help the Harlem Jazz Garden develop.

Based on online and in class research it was apparent that community organizing is the most important step in order to keep the project going. Creating a sustainable community base will allow us to receive the necessary signatures of support for the project.

In order to gain the community's support, the Harlem Renaissance Jazz Garden association is hosting "It's My Park Day" on May 21st to help build and fund the organization. Ms. Favretti described the event. "We will meet up with the school government kids from Harlem Renaissance Academy, and at least 20 community adult volunteers who have signed up for planting. Michael Allen has been working all week to clean everything up for the big day." As a group everyone is hoping that after this event, the organization will have enough support to get the necessary signatures in order to apply for a Capacity fund grant.

This Capacity fund grant will allow the group to create a website, receive donations, hire a publicist and pay for the programming of music in the park. Hopefully after the grant is submitted and reviewed, the city's park's department will take over and make further progress on the project.

The City 2.0 class focused on urban design and how to bring about beneficial change in a community. The class and the "Renaissance Jazz Garden" group has faced many challenges throughout the year. When I asked Ms. Favretti what motivates her to keep working on the Jazz Garden, she stated, "Trust, so the hardest thing and the best thing about community based design is trust. In order to build trust there has to be commitment. You have to be committed and once you show that you are committed then you are stuck. You have to be willing to get stuck". One of the hardest things we had to do was prove ourselves to the community and build trust with the community in Harlem we are working with. The class taught me the power of investing myself in an idea to create trust in the project and the wider community.