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Overview
Symposium Overview Studies in community are moving from deficit- to asset-based approaches, with an emphasis on how communities conduct inquiry to investigate and take action on their realities. Such approaches seek to build upon the unique capabilities, history, culture, and lived experiences in local settings, with the understanding that problems must be articulated, and solutions made workable, within the lived experience of actual communities. When we look around the world, we find exciting examples of community empowerment, places where people with limited resources are developing creative, liberating and collective means of meeting challenges and goals in daily life.
The concept of “community as intellectual space” is based on the premise that if individuals are to understand and create solutions for problems in complex systems, they need opportunities to engage with challenging problems, to learn through participative investigations, to have supportive, situated experiences, to articulate their ideas to others, and to make use of a variety of resources in multiple media. The aim of communities as intellectual space is to bring people from all walks of life together to develop “critical, socially engaged intelligence, which enables individuals to understand and participate effectively in the affairs of their community in a collaborative effort to achieve a common good” (John Dewey Project on Progressive Education, 2002).
Paseo Boricua provides one of the world’s leading examples of melding collaborative action and research across university and community settings. Paseo Boricua is a mile-long section of Division Street in Chicago's Humboldt Park area. It is a vibrant neighborhood characterized by strong, multi-generational, multi-institutional community activism, where about 70% of residents are of Latino origin, and 30% of families are living below the federally defined poverty level. Paseo Boricua embodies the development of an autonomous cultural, political, and economic space for Puerto Rican and Latino/Latina residents that came into being as a response to encroaching gentrification and displacement in nearby sections of the city (Flores-González, 2001; Rinaldi, 2002).
The Puerto Rican Cultural Center (http://www.prcc-chgo.org) has served as an institutional anchor in Paseo Boricua for thirty years, galvanizing neighborhood residents around issues such as poverty, gang violence, AIDS, destruction of cultural identity, lack of educational resources, and racism.
Organizations affiliated with the PRCC include the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS), an alternative school that pursues a critical pedagogy while providing a safe place for; the Centro Infantil pre-school; the Family Learning Center, which grants high school diplomas to young women while providing daycare for their children; Vida/SIDA (an AIDS/HIV education center); Batey Urbano Café Teatro, which provides Latino youth with an outlet for expression and community action; the Division Street Business Development Association, a community-based economic development nonprofit; and the National Boricua Human Rights Network.
With this symposium, we invite students, faculty, researchers and others interested in community research and action to participate in the life of Paseo Boricua, gaining first-hand experience with community as intellectual space. Symposium participants will attend panels and workshops that highlight the intellectual work of communities like Paseo Boricua, in addition to engaging in local activities—including youth performances at Batey Urbano, community-curated art and culture exhibits, and the Puerto Rican People’s Parade.
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