By Drew Lindsay, Photo: Courtney Perry/The Chronicle of Philanthropy, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, November 30, 2021
In the Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood of north Philadelphia, angels line the exterior of adjoining rowhouses, part of the nonprofit Village of Arts and Humanities. Created in the early 1990s by the Village’s founders, the angels — painted mosaics with mirror-glass eyes and shimmering tiles — watch over what was once a dark and unsafe alley.
This fall, the Village opened the rowhouses, long vacant, as the Civic Power Studio, with high-end multimedia production space that includes three music studios and a photography and video studio. Teenagers and young adults gather there to wage a statewide campaign called Care, Not Control to abolish youth prisons in Pennsylvania and invest in communities instead. Art — including a record album and a graphics-infused social-media effort — drives their lobbying and communication strategies.
Fairhill-Hartranft residents also come to the studio to work on a plan to reduce violent crime in the neighborhood without police. The effort has won a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. That the Village, a grassroots arts group and community organizer, won such a big grant from the nation’s top law-enforcement agency surprised executive director Aviva Kapust. “I really was just blown away,” she says.
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