Our partnership was born through acts of solidarity between Miami University faculty and community leaders in the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement— a multi-faceted, grassroots struggle to protect basic human rights in a Cincinnati neighborhood marginalized by systemic discrimination and disinvestment. These faculty and community leaders, led by Prof. Tom Dutton and organizer/activist Bonnie Neumeier, made connections to engage in mutual learning and collaboration for the last 40 years. With this relationship-building came a vision and opportunity to develop new models of education for university students as vehicles for movement-building and social change. This has included an extensive architectural design-build program with over 25 student/community projects built since 1996, the award-winning Residency Program, an interdisciplinary study-away opportunity (2006), and the Miami University Urban Cohort, place-based approach to preparing professionals who are grounded in the life of the community (2008). This collaborative community engagement recently entered the realm of social practice art, as evidenced in our Storefronts Community Arts series (2017).
Our partnership has expanded in recent years to include a kindred movement and key partner organizations in Lower Price Hill—a neighborhood that shares a spirit and common experience with Over-the-Rhine. These communities are similarly situated with respect to crises that oppressed groups have faced for decades—disinvestment, insufficient safe and affordable housing, displacement of long-time residents and the co-opting of local schools. Collaborative research across these two communities facilitates knowledge transfer and provides leverage and solidarity to work against systemic injustices. Additionally, a number of Cincinnati Public Schools, in urban core neighborhoods, serve as placements for student-teachers, engage in youth participatory action research projects, and co-design our teacher training framework.
University students and faculty have been invited to participate in and learn from our communities’ movements for social justice. In this way our partnership diverges from traditional service-learning models: We challenge students to critique social, economic, and political forces that perpetuate inequality; we challenge ourselves to ethically navigate resource differentials across our institutions and organizations; we regard community members as educators with valuable knowledge; we collaborate, in non-hierarchical ways, to realize benefits for our people; and we foster longer-term, personal relationships that favor transformation over transaction. Our framework facilitates collective contributions to social justice in the present and is driven by a belief that students’ experiences in community will result in lifelong commitment and expanded capacity to be agents of positive social change.
It is with deep gratitude that we acknowledge the community partners that make this range of inquiry and programming possible: Peaslee Neighborhood Center; Over-the-Rhine Community Housing; Community Matters; Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition; Contact Center; Cincinnati Interfaith Workers Center; Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center; St. Francis Seraph Ministries/Sarah Center, Joe Williams family center, boiler Community school, Rothenberg Preparatory academy, Withrow High School and Woodward Technical High School, as well as the many individuals of Over-the–Rhine and Lower Price Hill that share their stories with us. Without their invitation, nurturing, critique, and leadership, we would not succeed in this endeavor.
