Getting Them To Come Back

Being an applied anthropologist did mean doing field and archival research. But by and large, it wasn’t just meant to sit on a shelf. It was being done for an immediate purpose. In my case, it was primarily done for the creation of public programming for communities, to enhance cultural awareness and support the continued survival of local and ethnic communities. In other words, do some actually valuable social science research and find an application for it. For me, it was mostly public engagement and education. The engagement and education served the purposes of helping those outside the communities understand them and aiding those in the communities to continue to validate their home culture.

It was fun, too.

So I was always in a round of doing research, managing and developing programs, and assisting the members of the communities to do their own research and program development. It wasn’t just me plugging away. As much as possible, I always had a core group of advisors who helped steer things. Ideas I thought would be dynamite sometimes met with cold receptions, and vice versa. What we all kept in mind was that today’s panned idea might meet a warmer reception, and a new day, down the line. So many things were deferred that were done later. The number of the group would vary from six to twelve, up to twenty, for various programs, with a core group of about six people who had deep roots in Eastie and extensive networks that crossed generations and ethnic/cultural boundaries. In many ways, they were the brains of the operation, and I was the brawn. I did the research, fleshed out the details, and arranged the production.

Ideas for creating programs would often come out of coffee and cake meetings on a Monday morning. Mrs.Gelowtsky would be discussing with Mr. Budryk something about their grandchildren in the local school, and an idea would hatch for a super after-school program.

While cultural programs with a strong research component were very interesting to me as an anthropologist, my practical “Kitchen Cabinet” reminded me that we needed to build engagement. So we found lots of ways to build engagement and let the boy do *research. That meant we did lots of Foodways programming. A local cook or chef was invited in to share recipes and samples. These were ever popular. Then there were the successful “Evenings of Song and Dance with……..” Being a newbie at this, when I started, I required education. These programs furthered the mission while also building a following. You wanted them to look eagerly in the local paper for the little public service announcements about the doings at the Heritage Center.

So building engagement with programs popular with your population is important. For us, food and music proved to be universal solvents for boundaries. Eastie was tiny. The residential area surrounded by the industrial borders was only about a square mile in area. Within that area were then settled members of at least five ethnic communities. But over the years, there had been extensive intermarriage, so if you could pull in one group, you attracted the wives, husbands, cousins, and others who shared their family units. The effect was that coming to our programs became a regular part of life in the community.

Now, if you run these types of programs, you know that budget is important. In my case, I had a small budget that would cover disposable items like napkins, paper plates, and such ( we had no facility that would pass easily as a kitchen). Actual food and other refreshments were often provided pro bono by local businesses, chefs, and caterers. This was in the 1980’s, and the state and local ordinances are probably different today.

So one program led to another. And after a while, we developed a reputation in our local community. We began attracting an enthusiastic public from distant areas, including educational institutions that wanted to use our facilities and tap into the program and knowledge base we had created.

The end of the road

Sadly, good things often do not continue forever. I want to note that the program and the Center were dissolved over budget issues, and whether our mission aligned with the agency we were part of. This is not an uncommon, but sad fate. However, much of the good achieved continued. We had strengthened local cultural institutions, assisted in educating youth, supported residents, and left a heritage behind.

• Not all excursions into research resulted in programs right away. I’m a gardener, and very successful programs in gardening led to some research into herbal and traditional medical practices that related to materials raised in local gardens and which were used medicinally. These excursions did not result in any immediate practical application or programs. But they fed the general development of programs downstream when I went to work for other agencies with similar purposes.