How three Wingspan grantees are moving beyond traditional community engagement

By Karen Price

Friends of the Tanner House started as a grassroots community group in 2021 to save the family home of artist Henry Ossawa Tanner in North Philadelphia. Despite being a National Landmark, the rowhouse in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood had been declared unsafe and was at risk of being demolished when the group stepped in. 

But from the very beginning, the Friends of the Tanner House were interested in more than simply preserving and revitalizing an historic landmark. 

“We believe the house can be a hub, that we can exist in this neighborhood to amplify, support, work alongside, and collaborate with so many of the existing cultural institutions, initiatives, organizations and neighbors that exist in Strawberry Mansion,” founding member and director Christopher R. Rogers said. “It’s not just about us, but the ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ strategy.”

Friends of the Tanner House was one of 24 organizations that received a PA Humanities Wingspan grant, a two-year grant initiative that awarded organizations up to $100,000 in unrestricted funding and also provided a learning network to build capacity and support organizational growth. Friends of the Tanner House, the Chester Cultural Arts and Technology Center and the Crawford County Historical Society were among the grantees who used the funding to strengthen their work as living, collaborative experiences rooted in local history and expanded community partnerships. 

Some of Tanner House’s Wingspan funding went to hiring a part-time community engagement coordinator who’s been instrumental in helping the organization reach and strengthen partnerships in the neighborhood. Because they don’t yet have a space at the Tanner House that’s ready to host events, they partnered with Strawberry Mansion Learning Center and used Wingspan funding to pilot a teen night, which the learning center now runs. The nights are held twice a month, bringing teens and mentors from around the neighborhood together for a fun, social game night that always includes a message. They also hosted the Any Day Now Creative Writing Series, dedicated to North Philadelphia writer Larry Neal, for teens and young adults, and partnered with other organizations for programming. 

“It’s all about being a connector and helping facilitate neighborhood-driven vision around arts and culture,” Rogers said. “At Tanner House, we say we focus on the Tanner family legacy spheres of faith, family, freedom, arts, health and education. We look at the legacy of the people raised in the house and it cuts across those spheres that represent true community pursuits that we feel are the building blocks to strong Black, thriving neighborhoods.”

Chester Cultural Arts and Technology Center

At the CAAT Center, the Wingspan funding helped to open a second location. Although they have since scaled back to the original location, the opportunity allowed them to try new things, see what had the greatest impact and adjust their focus. 

President and CEO Tara Jones said that having unrestricted funding that could be used on staffing and building capacity was key.

“Oh my goodness, it’s the lifeline of an organization,” she said. “I don’t think funders get that, because when (they say), “Oh, no, we’re not going to fund staff,’ I’m like, ‘How do you expect the programs to run if you don’t help us keep the people here?’ So it helped us tremendously.”

The CAAT Center was able to not only bring teaching artists and culture bearers to the center to lead classes but also to keep the staff needed to coordinate the new programming. They launched a new theater improv class for older high school students that focused on building confidence and creative storytelling drawn from real-life experiences, as well as CAAT-Tastic Saturdays for youth, offering enrichment classes in visual arts, dance, STEM and creative writing. They also launched monthly open mic nights, creating a gathering space for intergenerational engagement through spoken word, poetry and music. 

“The Wingspan funds opened our eyes to what is possible,” Jones said. “You can have a dream, but when you see it in the works, when you see it come to fruition, it wakes up another part of you.”

Crawford County Historical Society

The Crawford County Historical Society, located in northwestern Pennsylvania, was already thinking about how to become more relevant to a broader population prior to getting the Wingspan grant, but the funding and learning community helped them turn dreams into action. Beyond just documenting the past through stewardship of sites such as the Baldwin-Reynolds House Museum, Wingspan gave them the freedom to explore beyond the traditional functions of historical societies and become a very humanities-centered organization.

“It put us into the mindset of, ‘Where do people fit into their history? Where do they fit into their story?’” executive director Josh Sherretts said. “What makes you you, and how did you get here? And what does that all mean?”

Some of the Wingspan funding went toward salaries, including the addition of a part-time staffer who coordinates the new oral history program they’d long wanted to institute as well as their membership program, which has since added 100 new members. They also used funding to create a new museum space to share local history ranging from the first mass production of the zipper and the oil boom of the 1800s to the stories of Black, Jewish and other underrepresented communities in the region. 

“The financing got us out of maintenance mode and into a humanities-heavy, population-facing mode that I don’t think we’d been in previously,” Sherretts said. “That kind of encouragement took it from a useful grant and made it a dynamic one that pushed us to think about the pie in the sky dream, about what this organization could be, and how to be daring in that regard. Which we’ve been able to do.”

One of the most surprising acquisitions as part of the funding was a working 1921 Ford Model T that now serves as the basis of their History on the Road program. They take the vehicle across the county, and everywhere they go, this unique means of community engagement and hands-on history sparks memories and stories among residents, Sherretts said. 

“It’s one thing to look at a family photo, it’s another thing to hear the sound of the vehicle and the smell of the exhaust, and next thing you know you hear, ‘My grandfather used to take me on rides in a car like this in 1948 and he’d just gotten back from World War II,’” Sherretts said. “Before you know it the person’s half-weeping, sitting next to you, talking about their life.” 

Because of the excitement the Model T has generated in the community, the society was recently offered the donation of a similar vehicle to expand the work. They’re also championing the county’s 250th anniversary celebrations, thanks in part to Wingspan’s success in building capacity, and have several other new partnerships in the works to bring more of Crawford County’s history to life. 

“We’re no longer just telling a story for people to read about,” Sherretts said. “We’re asking their story rather than me just telling them the story of someone else. So on my end, (Wingspan) got me to shut up and listen a little bit, and got our staff to shut up and listen a little bit. And also think about what a healthy organization looks like versus a functioning organization. So it’s been a bit of a godsend in terms of allowing us to stop, breathe, and listen to what we’re actually supposed to be doing versus the hamster wheel we’d been on for years.”

Recent funding for Wingspan was provided by PA Humanities and Spring Point Partners, with additional support from private donors.