Designing Women, Philadelphia Orchard Project, Liberty to Go To See

Designing Women

Art of Life — Produced by Karen Smyles

Moore College of Art & Design is dedicated to excellence in art and design. Founded in 1848, Moore is the first and only visual arts college for women in the United States. Through its undergraduate bachelor of fine arts degrees for women and its coeducational graduate programs, Moore cultivates creativity, promotes scholarship and prepares its students for professional careers in the arts by emphasizing critical thinking, problem solving, risk-taking, and strong communication skills. Moore is dedicated to producing graduates that distinguish themselves as leaders in their fields. Friday Arts got the opportunity to see just how Moore goes about creating those leaders.

We went behind the scenes with Moore students to see how several talented, young women are paving their pathways to success. In Spring 2015, Emily Oluoch and Erin O’Brien got the opportunity of a lifetime. They were chosen to display their work in the windows of the Century 21 department store here in downtown Philadelphia. Each was given an entire window to decorate, with their names and the inspiration for their work displayed on the window. Emily is a senior, studying Fashion Design and Erin is a junior Fine Arts major. They both share what’s behind their winning designs.

Later, we drop in to the graphic arts studio and talk with seniors Brianna Boulanger, Spring Paul and Wydelah Campbell while they work on their senior thesis projects. They share how Moore has prepared them for life after Moore. And, Moore President, Cecelia Fitzgibbon, Roy Wilbur, Director of Marketing and Communications, and Century 21 Chief Marketing Officer, Valentino Vettori, tie it all together with the details on how Moore graduates are finding success in the world of design.

Philadelphia Orchard Project

Art of Food — Produced by Monica Rogozinski

It is growing season and the Philadelphia Orchard Project (POP) is calling out to YOU, all Philadelphians, to come out and help transform your city into a green edible paradise. Since 2007, the POP has been dedicated to the strengthening of low-wealth neighborhoods through the planting of orchards in partnership with community organizations. They are increasing their direct access to healthy food, green spaces that beautify and a permanent infrastructure for food security. POP provides the knowledge, plant materials, training and support, while giving the people and organizations of the community a chance to actively learn how to grow, maintain, and harvest the orchards for their own benefit. They love and need the help of volunteers and work with all kinds of partnerships, from schools, houses of worship, Community Development Corporations and even the Philadelphia Prison System. See them in action at the Teens 4 Good Farm, the Awbury Orchard, and the Solid Rock United Methodist house of worship, having completed 36 orchards and counting!

More information or volunteer

Liberty to Go To See

Art — Produced by Michael O’Reilly

Liberty To Go To See would most accurately be described as a “play within a house museum” and comes about through the unusually co-operative efforts of several artistic and historic agencies. In the past 50 years, the mountains of records stored in the basement of Cliveden, ancestral home to the Chew family of Philadelphia, have been cleaned, cataloged and pored over by researchers. These papers have revealed some remarkably intimate portraits of the people who lived there – not only the members of the Chew family but also the free, indentured and enslaved peoples who were the backbone of Cliveden itself. Realizing the power of this material, David Young, the Executive Director of Cliveden, reached out to the Philadelphia Young Playwrights (PYP) and, along with the young high school students organized by PYP, began interpreting and writing original scenes from this archival material. They soon had an “entire flock” of performance-ready scenes, for which New Freedom Theater (NFT) was brought in to shepherd. NFT was able to direct, refine and connect, along with the original student playwrights, so that this flock of scenes felt more like an actual play. FRIDAY ARTS visits with the principal participants in this project through interviews and rehearsals, to present an inside look at a performance that will run on June 19th or the 150th “Juneteenth”, the word used to describe the date that commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in June of 1865.