Zines, Research, and Relationships
What if public health students learned about aesthetics?
As artists, our daydreams include relationships like the one we have with Kate Jackson. A Public Health professor, Kate was energized by how TMBLVM embodied the principles she teaches in her Community-Based Participatory Research class.
Kate is an exuberant professor interested in finding ways for her research, teaching, and social justice practices to weave together in service of Lehigh’s neighbors in Bethlehem.
Before Kate brought her students to see our production, she invited me to come and chat with her class about the process and our arts-informed methodology for community development.
I explained that The Most Beautiful Home…Maybe is an immersive time-traveling cabaret about housing. The actors teach the audience a line dance, play games, and perform interactive vignettes that explore the history of housing in the United States.
“I have no idea what that was. It was awesome. Was that theater? I’ve never seen theater like that.”
The students came! They line danced! They daydreamed about a future with a housing guarantee! Afterward, one said, “I have no idea what that was. It was awesome. Was that theater? I’ve never seen theater like that.” The truth is, many theater people haven’t seen theater like that.
In addition to experiencing the show, students analyzed data collected during the Future Forum to create something that could be shared with the community.
During the Forum, we created a collage layered with reflections, insights, daydreams, and opinions about the future of housing for the Lehigh Valley. The students deciphered handwriting and distilled themes from the content.
Co-designed by artist Zoe Miller, sparks, and Mary Wright, the collage reflected a composite of the Lehigh River.
Elements of the collage were coded to a particular set of data:
Currents of River Water: A description of the Lehigh Valley
Rocks lining the River Banks: Values of Lehigh Valley residents
Sticks: The obstacles that impact housing development
Houses: The characteristics of the future they hope to build
Clouds: Daydreams for the Future
Bricks of City Hall: Civic engagement opportunities
Students chose to develop a zine to tell the story of data. This was an exciting stretch for public health students, who had to think about the aesthetics of conveying information.
Additionally, they immersed themselves in local housing data and statistics, learning about rent burden, eviction, and vacancy rates.
They attended zoning and city council meetings and joined Wes Hiatt on an architectural tour of Bethlehem’s Southside.
These experiences informed their zine design.
Students had a chance to practice applying popular education tools to engage community members in housing policy conversations. Creative engagement, coupled with rigorous and data-driven research methods, allows our civic imagination to embody hope physically.
At the end of the semester, a student talked about liberatory research methods, humility, and deep listening. His ceiling was outlined in blue string lights, and with the curtains drawn, his Zoom square looked like he was zooming in from a 1980s dance club.
This could be the future of public health policy leadership.
Dance club meets radical politics and community care!
I daydream of being a part of that future.
Check out a draft of the zine here!
Special Thanks to Kate Jackson, Zoe Miller, Mary Wright, Jan Cohen Cruz, Touchstone Theatre, Wes Haitt, and all of the curious and imaginative students in Kate’s class.