The immense Home Court creative placemaking project I recently wrapped up at The Village is now online! The interactive exhibit lets you listen to the original soundtrack written for the exhibit and watch the short film about the project — go check it out.
And this article by Malcolm Burnley does a great job capturing what the exhibit was like in person. My favorite: it includes great quotes by neighbors, especially Eric and Mikal, who were instrumental in clarifying the spirit and purpose of the project for the artists working on it. They told the story of the court’s difficulties but held out hope for the future, and bridged the generational gap between the elders who’d played at the courts when it was richly resourced, and the teens who’d only ever known it as a cracked asphalt square.
“When you enter, the sounds envelope you: a bouncing ball; the scuffing of sneakers. They seem to be coming from neither here nor there. Although you don’t see people, you hear them — voices — talking about a shared space that’s familiar. It’s the story of Hartranft and its basketball courts, which lie outside a long-closed rec center in the North Philadelphia neighborhood. It’s a story that can’t be told with one narrator. It requires several.
On display for the past three weeks, and concluding Wednesday (with a closing celebration in the evening), this sensory art exhibit has become a point of pride in Hartranft at a time when the courts are in transition to their next chapter. The exhibit, “Home Court: The Hartranft Basketball Court Revival,” has been a year-long endeavor involving commissioned artists, a wide array of community members, and civic leaders who have come together for more than just an inclusive art project. Their effort also has yielded renewed commitment to the future of Hartranft, a neighborhood that’s suffered from a lack of capital investment for decades.”