Two years ago when Meredith and I were hobbling home on the last leg of our cross-country road trip with Bill and Jessie, we had a long discussion about what kinds of things she wanted to do in Winston-Salem once we got home. A central topic of discussion was the lack of collaboration—even communication—between students at Wake Forest, UNC School of the Arts, Salem College, Winston-Salem State University, and Forsyth Tech. Students had engaged with each other in the past—an earlier example of such collaboration took place during the 1960s, when white Wake Forest students took seats alongside their black peers from Winston Salem Teachers College (now Winston-Salem State) at the Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Winston-Salem to protest discrimination and segregation. ”When did such interaction fade from the student populations in this city, and how can we revive it to foster a more vibrant and synergistic diversity in Winston-Salem?” she asked.
Perhaps even more troubling than the lack of interaction between students across the city was and is the substantial lack of engagement between students at Wake Forest and the people of Winston-Salem. This absence creates an unsettling, elitist seclusion, and, personally-speaking, led to my four-year battle against fellow WF students who hurled “townie” derogatorily at anyone who called the 336 their home. The Wake Forest Institute for Public Engagement—a forward-thinking initiative led by the Provost and one of my mentors—has been working to bridge that gap between the University and the City. Last night, Meredith helped to do the same with a project called “Transforming Race.”
The project—funded by an Accord Grant by the Kenan Institute for the Arts—paired Wake Forest arts students (picked and supported by David Finn) with high school seniors from Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools to create a piece of art that addressed race.
Here is a complete description:
Transforming Race encouraged youth to use visual art media to communicate the problems and joys of living in a multiracial society for Winston‐Salem’s Millenium generation. The project teamed five Winston‐Salem/Forsyth County high school students with Wake Forest University Art students. Transforming Race provided racial identity and diversity training and a venue for interaction between these students and young adult artists. The program encouraged them to work in an open‐ended format, using their strengths and artistic talents to communicate for their generation and collaborate on these visual representations of their examination of racial identity.
The exhibit opened last night at the Liberty Arts Center, formerly DADA. The crowd most certainly represented the ethnic and socioeconomic diversity of the City, and the pieces really impressed. The exhibit will be travelling around to the different high schools throughout the city before stopping at the Wake Forest Student Art Gallery (START).
