[Electronic music] Growing up in the city.

Like you drive around or walk around, you will not miss public art in the city.

Like in every neighborhood of the city, you'll find a mural.

You'll find a sculpture.

You'll find some kind of public art that reflects that community that you're in.

And that's really unique.

Philadelphia has a revolutionary art program called the 1% for Art program.

It's the first of its kind.

It's like when somebody does development in the city, they have to do a creative endeavor that's public facing.

So it's really kind of baked into like how the city functions and supports its community and people who are making art here.

I think gone are the days where you can just come and say, you know, drop something in the middle of a neighborhood and just say, hey, this is art.

This is this is for you.

So I think it's about ownership, storytelling.

You don't own anybody's story, right?

That's their story.

And they get to determine and dictate how they want it.

Kensington as a whole has been heavily impacted by the effects of the opioid crisis and the effects of housing insecurity and violent crime.

I'm somebody who's lost both parents to drug use.

So I know I know firsthand that these issues don't just affect the people most vulnerable.

They affect the broader community and the families that have been touched by this issue.

Kensington Healing Verse.

It's really a way for us to talk to community members.

How can you use art and specifically poetry to get community members to talk about one, their community, but two, also them in their lives, in this community, thriving and also surviving a lot of things that have happened.

And there are hopeful voices here.

And I think what this project was trying to do, aiming to do, was making sure that community members voices are represented.

I didn't really know what to put here.

I was kind of stuck.

Growing into my community feeling more fulfilled.

We are trying to figure out in Kensington how do people feel about the issues and the challenges that this neighborhood faces and what's really positive?

How do they want to redefine for themselves what living in this place means, what this issue means in a way that's not "Oh, we're a statistic."

We're what newspapers write about.

"Yes.

You've read everything about us in Kensington."

This is from the community members.

"You've heard these stories.

You heard about the opioid crisis.

But we also have light.

We go, we go to school, we graduate from college.

We have jobs to support our families."

So in every workshop, I was also hearing hope.

There was a balance there.

Oh, I'm just very grateful for the open door clubhouse because they give me a place where I can be myself.

You know, because when I was there, you know, sometimes I had to leave because, you know, I was like really depressed and stuff.

But they never gave up on me.

They were always there for me.

So I'm like really appreciative that they were always there for me and there was like a good support system because when I felt at my lowest, they always lifted me up and were there to encourage me.

Amaryllis, enduring adversities, growing in my community, feeling more fulfilled, flourishing despite my circumstances, leaning towards God's grace, a new perspective rooted.

One thing Trapeta and I immediately recognize is healing is not an end result.

It's a process.

And so for us, it was important to plant poetry in a space where people could begin a process of talking about their experience so that you're creating a new network of support and a new network of expression.

The culminating part would be this creation of this wonderful billboard in the middle of Kensington.

But the challenge was co-creating it with community members and partnership and being able to reflect, to amplify their voices on that billboard.

The poem reads, "In our story of us.

There is always light.

Here we are shining.

We are dazzling.

We are beautiful, we are healed."

The big part about, you know, the neon sign and having it front and center in the community, the L train goes by.

All types of activities are happening right there.

Schoolchildren are going to see it.

We're healing.

And that's what I saw.

I saw beauty.

I saw grace in the people, even in really difficult circumstances.

I still saw that beauty and they wanted it to be represented in poetry.

What I've been told by people who live here or who are in recovery here or are kids here.

It's just like they feel seen by this work.

This work captures their perspective.

Like it's not something like I'm being told what it is my community is.

This is something that they came together to create.

I think when there's representation and it's a balanced representation and it's a beautiful representation and it's something that they created, I think it means a lot more.