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With every passing day and passing Seoul, we lose a little bit of our history.

But what if that history could be recorded and saved to inform future generations and change the way history is perceived?

That's one of the goals of Want to Wa Na Wari, a black art and cultural center in Seattle Central District.

Tonight on Northwest now Wa Na Wari means our home in the Calabari language of southern Nigeria.

The center is involved in all kinds of art, culture and community building activities in Seattle Central District.

In the spring of 2021, one of our we launched the Seattle Black Spatial Histories Institute, which seeks to, quote, train community members in the techniques and best practices of black memory work as an important step towards shifting power around whose stories are told, how they're told, and what place those stories hold in the shaping of black futures.

Joining us now are Wa Na Wari co-founder, Jill Freedberg, who is an award winning documentary filmmaker, radio producer and an instructor at the UW Bothell.

Inya Wokoma is a Central District resident who works as a journalist, filmmaker and visual artist, and Sierra Parsons, a graduate of the first cohort of the Seattle Black Spatial History Institute.

Welcome, all of you to Northwest now.

Really interesting topic today about what to worry the when to start with you.

What's the origin story of want to worry?

How did it get started?

And you've got some family ties to this location to.

That is interesting.

So, yeah, tell me that story a little bit.

Well, first of all, yes.

So the the home that we're want to Y is located has been in my family since the 1950s, and it's been a place where family has lived since the 1960s continuously.

All the way up until the 20 tens.

And so, you know, there's a lot of, you know, connection and personal connection that I have to the space.

You know, my great aunt lived there.

And so it was always filled with cousins and aunts and uncles and so on and so forth.

So there's a lot of rich family history and memories for me in this space.

And so in a way, I want to worry is a continuation of that.

So the way that one of worry was founded is that in roughly around between 2016 and 2019, the House was in danger of being sold.

My grandmother had Alzheimer's.

And, you know, her costs for care was escalating and which is a consistent theme in the central district because Grandma.

The old folks.

Old folks, right?

Yep.

Yep.

Right.

So so, you know, there there was there was a move to to sell the properties.

Right.

And some people were in favor.

Some people weren't.

Right.

And and so folks in the family that wanted to save the house, you know, got together and came up with some you know, some ways that they hope that that would be possible.

And I was involved in that, that process as well.

And so as time went on, you know, some of those problems got those financial problems got resolved.

But there was a moment where there was like this one last gap in her in her finances.

And and because this was a rental property, it was the one part of her assets that sort of had a variable income.

And so one of worry is a collaboration between myself, Jill Freberg, Elizabeth Johnson and Rachel Kessler is the call for co-founders.

And we stepped up, you know, to form one to worry as an idea of renting the house in an as is condition, right to basically, you know, help the family close that gap.

Right.

And so one of I really was established as a way of preserving a black owned home in the central district.

Right.

And so we decided, you know, if we could fill the house with art, invite the community in, you know, invite people in to do programs and other activities that, you know, we might possibly be able to sustain being able to pay this rent, you know, for as long as we needed to pay it.

Right.

And so we've been doing that for the past five years now.

So the Jill, this flywheel gets turning and now all of a sudden you have this really cool integration that I hope you can explain a little bit.

There's a community piece, the arts piece, the community gathering space piece, the gentrification piece.

It there's a lot going on there.

And you describe it as the nuts and bolts.

Give me some of that nuts and bolts.

I mean, I think the the core of all of what you just described is belonging and the ways that the displacement caused by gentrification have made it hard for people to experience belonging and that want to worry that the House itself has always been a space of belonging, that all of the programing, whether it's an art opening or a community meal or a party in the backyard or, you know, an oral history training program is bringing people into the home and experiencing belonging and safety and connection.

And then that also creates an informal setting for grassroots organizing, which is the ownership piece, belonging and ownership.

So people come in to see an art exhibit every 3 to 4 months.

We have four new artists local, regional, national and international, black and indigenous artists as well, exhibiting in the space concerts, film screenings, screenings, workshops, parties, fashion shows, artists and residents, etc.

And every time someone comes in for that, they experience belonging, whether they're there for art or a meal or oral history.

And the piece of that that I pick out is places that are being gentrified, like the Central District.

You end up with a bunch of people who've moved in from other places who have no real connection, and before you know it, it's a very stale, well, stale, sure sterile.

Everybody lives up on the second floor and nobody knows each other.

They go shopping, they go to their jobs.

Nobody knows.

This really seems like an effort to inject some of that community piece to say, time out, Everybody there not only was, but there is a community here that's very vital and doing some cool things.

Yeah.

I mean, I think in his best described it as rebuilding the cultural commons, right?

That it was never completely dissolved And this is a rebuilding of it and you want to worry is one place in a sort of cultural constellation throughout the neighborhood that is contributing to rebuilding that cultural commons.

So, yeah, we're going to get to the Black Spatial Histories Institute here in a moment.

But before before you were a participant in that.

Had you ever heard a one of worry?

Did you have any exposure to it?

And how how did you what motivated you to look at this as a young person go, Hey, these are all folks, got some cool going on here?

I got to participate in that.

Seattle has a lot of amazing black led grassroots organizations and so I was familiar with one worry before applying to participate in the institute.

But I actually work for another community based organization, and it's called Wall BLOCK.

And our focus is on critical literacy, social action and restorative practices.

And the intersection between all of those things is storytelling and narrative.

And so my coworker sent me a post off of Instagram.

This is for you.

Yeah.

So hey, you should check this out and so I applied and I think my intention was to deepen my ability to engage in thoughtful inquiry, but also to improve my listening and big piece of it.

Yeah, and engage in a practice of storytelling and narrative that provided meaningful, meaningful context for me and other young people.

Oral history is something I learned that anybody can engage in, and I think I really appreciated the application piece and the activation piece that was presented by the institute.

It wasn't like we're just going to learn this thing and do nothing with it.

It's like we're going to activate it and it's going to intersect with art and culture and people.

So.

So Sara, you just wrote out the formation of the Black Spatial Histories Institute, which is a chapter or an element in the of the One to Worry center.

How did how did the idea for that come up where you're saying, you know something, we really need to capture some of this?

Things are changing so fast.

Time is ticking.

We need to get this.

How did that come about?

And talk a little bit about that?

Well, you know, I mean, everything that we've done as co-founders of Want to Work has been collaborative.

Right.

And so and that that collaboration, you know, extends back, you know, years prior to want to wear even being an idea.

So Jill and I have worked on you know, several projects together.

Right?

We did some oral history work with Seattle Public Library.

We were talking about the Shelf Life Community Story Project before it was.

But then Jill went on and founded it, you know, on her own, and then grew it into an amazing community storytelling and archiving project.

And so, you know, the success of shelf life was an inspiration to me, you know, as the family was really thinking about, you know, how can this house be saved?

And, you know, because of my position, working with creative people and people in the organizing community, I was looking at that as an option.

I remember I invited you to come look at the house and say, well, maybe shelf life can move here once it's live left.

The promenade.

And so, you know, I would say that, you know, Seattle Blake's spatial history is really is it really emerged out of, you know, our ongoing really interest and desire to to archive community stories and focused it to this oral storytelling into recording this and capturing it.

Yeah it became an initiative in and of itself.

It wasn't just one of the many things we do.

It was really intentional.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And Joe, you know, you can chime in in point, but I mean, there was, you know, when we started want to worry community storytelling and archiving was one of our sort of foundational pillars.

Yeah.

It took a while for it to really start to, you know, coalesce into something, you know, coherent.

But yeah, and what's what's great about you on this is the fact that you're a filmmaker so you understand the importance as Sarah gesture, the importance of teaching people not only to talk but to listen in an interview, how to mike placement, how to make sure you're rolling, how to make sure you're saving in the right four file format, how to archive your good stuff and export something that's an MP three.

I mean, you can't just go into this with, Hey, let's record some stories.

That sounds like a good idea.

Great idea, but there's a lot in the execution.

So talk a little bit about your role in that.

What are you training?

Yeah, so I mean, to pick up where India left off when we started want to worry Indian, I thought that that the two of us would be doing oral history interviews that want to worry.

And it took two years for us to realize we were never going to have the time and capacity to do that.

But also in that time it became apparent to me that there was very little capacity in the community for doing oral history work because every community organization that wanted to do an oral history project was either coming to me or India.

So rather than the same people doing that work all the time, the goal was to build community capacity for doing that work.

And and I think it's important to distinguish oral history from other forms of interviewing, like journalism or documentary filmmaking, that oral history really is a collaboration between the person who's sharing their story and the person who's recording it.

And the storyteller maintains a lot more control over their story.

So there's a lot of ethics built into learning oral history.

It's not.

It definitely.

It's how to get good audio, you know, all of those things, how to approach someone and ask them for an interview, but also how to how the whole process can make sure that the people who are sharing their stories don't feel like they've lost control of their stories.

So you had this cohort, you sent one group out out into the mission field, if you will.

How did that end up working, working out?

How did Cohort one do?

Well?

So yeah, I mean, the first cohort had most of their classes, unfortunately, virtually because they started in 2021 and did recorded oral histories and then proposed ways to activate and share those oral histories in the second year, culminating in an exhibit that just closed at one quarry and most like the goal of building community capacity, most of the graduating first cohort is now out in the world working on their own oral history projects, and I think Sierra can speak more to that.

And so the second cohort started in summer of 2023, and they are now deep in the deep learning by doing part of the institute.

They're out doing oral history interviews for the institution.

So your hope is to have these rolling groups of people.

Yeah, with the library growing and growing and growing.

Yeah.

Which is a great idea.

And I should say it's a collaboration with the Black Heritage Society of Washington State.

They're sort of the archival preservation part of the, you know, we train and gather the stories and they archive and preserve them.

Sierra talk a little bit about your experience.

Did you ever have the sense as a young person that boy, there's a little bit of a sense of urgency here.

There's a there's a clock ticking on some of these stories.

Did you ever feel any of that pressure?

Because as folks age, you know, those stories tend to go away, which is why this is such an important project.

So I'm wondering, give me your thoughts about that and what have you learned that really surprised you?

What what did you come out of this experience going kind of having an moment or a light bulb?

I'm wondering what those are.

Well, to answer your first question, yes and no.

I felt urgency in the sense that yes, people are aging.

And one narrator in particular that me and my project partner had a chance to interview was experiencing some memory loss at the time that we conducted the interview and then ultimately passed away as we were finishing up our project.

And that was a very, yeah, real experience that brought a lot of the learning we had done in the cohort to my to my attention and at the same time oral history, because of the ethics that we're focused on, it's consent based.

You're making agreements, it's a very slow process.

And I felt a lot of intention and honor carrying out the for the full process over, you know, the year of collecting interviews, getting feedback is everything you said in your interview, what you want to be ultimately archived.

Is there anything that you regretted saying that you might want to remove from your from your narrative?

Those are questions that we ask our narrators.

And so the time that it takes to engage in that meaningful process, I felt much less urgency around because all of those questions matter.

It takes some time to think through.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And even even I think the thing that surprised me the most is how much I didn't hear the first time I sat down with my narrators and how much I didn't hear the second time.

I sat down with my narrators both for the pre-interview and for the recorded interview because of all the technical training we did, I found that I was calling Jill.

I was calling my project partner before interview started, like, Do I have my mike on?

Is this thing working?

Because you know, it absolutely sucks to sit down for 2 hours and find nothing I it but but yeah, when I when I went through the process of transcribing an interview and even going back in the activation portion and cutting down these hour and a half interviews into 90 seconds soundbites, that's when I had a chance to actually immerse myself in the storytelling and have the experience of someone like a community member who would be hearing these stories for the first time.

Yeah, and I think that's what surprised me the most, is how much when we're in the moment, we don't hear.

And I really enjoyed that.

And that's why experience and training is so important in something like this is that it allows the technical piece, the execution piece to get smaller and smaller, smaller pieces of mind share so the rest of your mind can open it up to listening and and you don't miss as much because, because if you're thinking if you're split, I'm a one man band, too.

It's very hard.

The goal is to get this smaller so you can be your radar is a little more more active.

So that's an interesting take.

Yeah.

And now with all of the skills that myself and my project partner have built up through through the institute, both technical, ethical and all of the other things in between, I felt it was important to do what I applied to do, which is learn a practice and then put it into practice and practice and practice.

And so my project partner, Ricky Reyes, and I have started a new a new oral history collection about black educators and organizers implementing restorative practices in Seattle public schools, particularly in the south end of Seattle.

And so now my learning has expanded to, you know, what does it mean to buy a full equipment kit for oral history?

What does it mean to put together?

So it's more geared, right?

Well, but maybe not.

I think that's the other thing that was really beautiful about the institute is it was just enough that you weren't overbearing us with.

You need all of these things.

It was really about making the practice accessible for narrators and practical and practitioners.

But yeah, I mean, now I'm now I'm learning like, what does it mean to put together an informed consent agreement?

What does it mean to put together a deed of gift and explain to a narrator, Hey, this is where your story is going to be archived, and this is what it means for you, and this is how you can use your own story for like in perpetuity.

So there are there's other learning that came with starting starting our own project.

You'll talk a lot about the empowerment piece too and in your in your both, you can both chime in on this.

Jill, you've talked about stories of the past deepening connection, the connections, shaping narratives of the neighborhood.

You've talked about the erasure of the central District and how a lot of the newbies can say, Hey, you know, it's so much better now.

No, no, not necessarily.

You know, a lot of that community, a lot of the folks who made it so vital have gone away.

Talk a little bit about that, the importance of who tells the story, how it shapes the story of the future.

I want to hear some of that.

Yeah.

I mean, I think in you can really weigh in on that too, but especially the idea that the processes of self-determination and interdependency and resistance that were a part of the central district in the 20th century did in fact make Seattle the city that it is today, and that those narratives are in danger of being replaced by contemporary narratives of we're making the neighborhood better, safer, you know, what have you.

That is.

I mean, that's an issue for the entire city.

If the neighborhood that shaped it, the those stories are erased, then the whole city loses out.

But also, how do you imagine the future that you want to construct if you don't have it rooted in an understanding of the history that brought you to where you are now?

But I think I have a tough question for you in the end, and it's this I want to go on the record.

Redlining is wrong and bad.

Yeah.

With that said, redlining had the effect in some ways of creating this very vital community right in the central district where your vendors, your barbers, your clothes, your food, the whole nine, your church was very vibrant and and very it wasn't a bunch of folks living all over town who would have never known each other, and this would have never happened.

But how have you how do you how do you how do you weigh that?

Yeah.

So, I mean, yes, that's that is a that's a hot topic.

And when I say that because in I'll try to keep my comments as concise, but that is actually an ongoing conversation that happens inside the black community, around self-determination, around, you know, how do we actualize, you know, the kind of economics that keep our communities vital, Right, Right.

That have to have the dollars?

And I think this is actually a concern now more broadly in America and in I'm a scrappy living, say the replacement of, for instance, big box stores with mom and pop stores is the same type of social and economic mechanism of of of disintegrating communities.

Right.

And so for black communities that, you know, because of all of the racial politics of America, really had to be self-reliant.

Right.

The the outcome of that is that there were these, you know, these ethnic or communal communal enclaves where there was so much vibrancy.

You know, there was and there was so much not only economic vibrancy, political vibrancy, cultural vibrancy, music, music, music.

I mean, everything, everything that you can imagine, Right.

But even to the sense of of what Jill was alluding to, the kind of, I would say the kind of political culture that that arises out of communities like that actually has, you know, a really profound ripple effect on the political culture of the society at large.

And that is, you know, clearly apparent in Seattle.

Once you begin to talk to people that were involved in civil rights, involved in other forms of community politics and how that impacted city government, county government still battling the freeways.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, and that's across multiple communities.

I mean, you know, we talk about just to sort of, you know, really anchor this in, you know, moving out of the black community and moving into Chinatown in a national district when they talk about hamburgers, not hot dogs, you know, around the placement of the stadium district, you know, which totally disrupted the Chinatown International district community.

And then, of course, running I-5 through through the neighborhood as well, which was also an experience that that the black community with an I-5 extension that was going to run through through the neighborhood.

So these are all, you know, but the the political culture that arise out of communities that have to contend with these things and actually having to negotiate with, you know, our are our public institutions that should be working cooperatively with communities, you know, creates a different kind of political culture that then affects all other forms of culture, music, culture, dance culture, theater, culture, you know, all becomes a reflection of these these political and social realities.

Last 90 seconds here, how to folks get involved?

A, where can they find some of your work?

Where can they listen to these things?

I know you have partnerships of Seattle Public Library Library, Black Heritage Society, Shelf Life Project.

You mentioned that Friends of the Waterfront.

So how folk, how can folks, if they have a story to tell, get with you?

How can they see what you're doing?

How can they get to one worry?

Give me a quick synopsis.

I mean, I think the quickest would be that our website 123. org we've got a contact form.

People can subscribe themselves to our newsletter.

People can find our social media there to follow us.

We've got a phone land line.

If somebody just wants to pick up the phone and call and then that gets routed to whoever it it needs to go to, whether it's an artist inquiring about exhibiting or somebody wants to share an oral history, that's probably the best place to start.

So you're in our last 30 seconds.

You still looking for stories.

You need some good ones.

You want folks to call.

Well, you know what?

I'll be honest.

I need funding.

Transcribing interviews cost a lot of money.

So shameless plug coming in right?

Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, I appreciate you all coming to Northwest now.

I hope this gave folks a feel for what one of worry is and the impact you're having on the Central District, the stories you're telling and beyond the stories, also the community gathering space and that sort of critical mass that you guys are forming through art and a lot of the other things that you're working on.

I thank you all for coming in Northwest now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I admit it's a bit of a cliche, but it's true.

You can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been.

The bottom line preserving history is important and collecting neighborhood level personal stories about who and what mattered.

Back in the day can play a major role in deciding who and what should matter in the future.

My thanks to Wa Na Wari for coming to Northwest now.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at kbtc dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest now.

A Streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at kbtc dot org and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That's going to do it for this edition of Northwest.

Now until next Time, I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching