Participants in the Northeast Philly meeting of This We Believe gather in their small working groups.

A day after stopping in South Philly for its first community gathering, the Mural Arts Program’s “This We Believe” made the trek up the John Perzel Community Center in Northeast Philadelphia to get ideas from that section of the city for the first citywide mural.

Again, WHYY tagged along and listened in on several of the conversations as Philadelphians shared stories about themselves and got a chance to view the city through the eyes of other people. Special thanks to Peter Crimmins for gathering the audio below.

Bartram
Two women from Motivation High School (formerly Bartram School of Motivation) share their story, including about a tragedy that struck their school’s valedictorian.  One talks about what it meant to attend an all black high school in an all white neighborhood.

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While the other discusses how her husband, “an outsider” from D.C., showed her how much the city she grew up in had to offer.

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Immigration
A woman talks about changes in the real estate market of her neighborhood as many south Asians buy up property and make “a nice difference” in an area that had previously been Catholic and Jewish.  She says that the tension is not about differences in the origins of the people but in the loss of space and the increasing density.

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Tacony
Christine Woolslayer is from the Tacony neighborhood and attended Central High School.  She describes Tacony as “more than just the bridge” and talks about its history as a neighborhood that grew up around a major employer with a shared sense of community among the workers.

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Interconnected
Steve Wammer describes the Philadelphia tendency to identify by parish or school as Christine Woolslayer and David Guinn - one of the mural artists - discover their connection through their own high school.

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Green space remembered
Tom Brady grew up in the density of Port Richmond and moved to what was then idyllic Rhawnhurst.  He has since seen the development turn what was actually a “rural” part of the city into a more populous neighborhood centered around church groups and other associations.

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