“Baltimore’s Black Arts District: A Creative Archive” was a series of Spring 2020 special collections workshops with young adults in Baltimore City, organized in collaboration with the Baltimore Youth Film Arts Program. The project culminated with the creation of “Walking Down the Avenue,” an arts and humanities zine about Pennsylvania Avenue, Baltimore’s historic black arts district.
Fellows visited and engage with Pennsylvania Avenue in person, in collaboration with the Arch Social Club. They took a deep dive into its history by examining scraps of evidence in JHU archives and speculating about the traces of the past found in saved texts and photographs, including the black and white street portraits of the Baltimore photographer John Clark Mayden. Fellows also interpreted the past in relation to their own lives by producing original photographs, images, and creative writing; assembling their own archives; and recording oral history interviews.
