This free panel discusses the Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) - a public humanities project documenting Black social culture from the Great Migration through the early 21st century with a focus on the emergence of house culture in the 1980s. Drawing on the CBSCM project’s core goals and values to engage in a spirited conversation, we will discuss the joys and challenges of building a community archive and the ethics and care of engaging, documenting, and preserving community sourced knowledge forms and practices.
The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) archive is designed by Honey Pot Performance (HPP) to reach a wide demographic, from the casually curious to academic experts. The archive documents the lived experiences of Black Chicagoans from the Great Migration through the rise of House music, giving this chronically under-documented constituency an opportunity to see their stories and histories represented as written record and archive. The act of creating and sharing the CBSCM archive not only serves to insert this important segment of American history into the official canon, but also engages those whom the archive represents, inviting them to actively help to build and shape this historical record, and increasing their agency from passive audience into participant and history-maker. The CBSCM archive encompasses the oral and material history of Chicago’s Black social culture across the 20th century from the Great Migration through the birth of house music.
Hip Hop Heritage Museum The Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum celebrates, honors, and cherishes the community that nurtured collective talents and creative energies within the elements of Hip Hop. The Chicago Hip Hop Heritage Museum celebrates the Hip Hop community that has served as an alternative to negativity by providing creative outlets since the 70s. The Chicago Hip Hop outlet was used to save lives and became therapeutic to the many that participated to escape from the realities of gangs and drugs.
Meida McNeal & Honey Pot Performance – Meida Teresa McNeal is part time faculty in Art & Art History at Columbia College Chicago. Courses taught include Performance Aesthetics, Community Engaged Arts & Social Practice, Gender, the Body, & Representation, and The Body. Areas of research and specialization include performance studies, dance, creative placemaking, and critical ethnography. She received her PhD in Performance Studies (Northwestern) and her MFA in Choreography & Dance History (Ohio State). Meida is Artistic/Managing Director of Honey Pot Performance. Awards include the 3Arts Award in Dance, Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, and the Links’ Hall Co-Missions Fellowship.
B-Long: Honoring and Examining Lineage, Legacy, and Belonging in Hip Hop and Street Dance Culture celebrates ten years of the B-Series Festival with workshops, cyphers, panels, screenings, battles, and jams that unite academic scholars, commercial practitioners, and community innovators.
The presentation of the B-Series 10th Anniversary is made possible in part by support from Alphawood Foundation, Chicago Arts Recovery Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, Honey Pot Performance's The Chicago Black Social Culture Map, the Illinois Arts Council, and Red Bull.
The presentation of 7NMS|PROPHET Wkshp: PILLARS was made possible in part by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
This project is partially supported by a grant from the Office of Academic Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Columbia College Chicago.
