2023 Meeting House Raising in Detroit
On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, the Sweet Water Foundation team traveled to Detroit, Michigan, to help hand-raise a Meeting House with the Freedom Dreams community and members of the Values-Based Partners network. The raising of Meeting House in Detroit was a historic event, bringing the first newly built structure to the Poletown East neighborhood in more than 30 years. The event not only activated the physical site but also energized, inspired, and cultivated a sense of community for all in attendance. We invite you to read more about the hand-raising.
Background
SWF has been connected to Detroit since 2005, when co-founders Emmanuel Pratt and James Godsil first visited Grace Lee Boggs and made connections across the network of visionaries and activists that emerged from the seeds of Grace and Jimmy Boggs’ work. Grace and Jimmy, and the larger Boggs’ network, showed the promise of intergenerational communities coming together to think and do, even as Detroit’s industry was being dismantled.
Almost 20 years later, the connections have flourished and evolved into a growing network of Values-Based Partners established by Sweet Water Foundation in 2019 to connect Solutionaries across geographies and catalyze collaborations and learning across generations. The network reaches across Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; Charleston, South Carolina; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Tucson, Arizona; Wayne, West Virginia; Washington, D.C; and Maroon Town, Jamaica. Although each Values-Based Partner works amidst a unique, local context, their communities share common histories of erasure, disinvestment, and economic decline, and, most pertinently, they are confronted with the challenge of regenerating people, land, and community amidst the bounded rationality of growth and profit.
The VBP network includes members of the Boggs network who created Freedom Dreams, an emerging community land trust that is building community and reclaiming land on the near east side of Detroit. Through conversations and connections over the course of 2022, SWF and Freedom Dreams, in collaboration with other VBPs, forged a plan to bring SWF’s Meeting House to Detroit in March 2023.
Rehearsing the Future…
In February 2023, members of the Freedom Dreams team visited Sweet Water Foundation to expose apprentices in their youth program to The Commonwealth and practice hand-raising structural elements of Meeting House in preparation for bringing Meeting House to Detroit in March. The Freedom Dreams team and apprentices were immersed in the practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development as they cultivated life in the hoop houses, made Interlocking Burros in the Work-Shop, and dynamically re-created space in Civic Arts Church to prepare for a Civic Arts Friday workshop during which they created Sankofa collages. Their visit also overlapped with the culminating session of SWF’s Sankofa Living Memories series, during which the Freedom Dreams’ apprentices shared their experiences across Detroit and Chicago with a national audience of Values-Based Partners and SWF community members.
The heart of the Freedom Dreams visit was engaging in a rehearsal of the future- the assembly and raising of a structural bent of the Meeting House that would soon find its way to Detroit. The Freedom Dreams team and apprentices assembled in SWF’s Garage Shop, where they discussed the raw materials of the Meeting House - wooden pallets from a local development diverted from the landfill - and learned more about the process of assembling the structural bents at the core of the design. The group then engaged in a procession to the Thought Barn, carrying the materials in sections. In less than 40 minutes, the collective assembled and raised two structural bents of Meeting House, rehearsing for the future build onsite at Freedom Dreams.
In the weeks that followed the immersion in Chicago, the Freedom Dreams team laid the foundation for Meeting House in Detroit, and just days before, Freedom Dreams team member, Sam Scardefield, journeyed to Chicago to transport the Meeting House components to Detroit.
A Historic Day of Freedom Dreams
The Sweet Water Foundation team journeyed to Detroit on Monday, March 27, for the community hand-raising event that would take place the next day. On March 28, both teams arrived bright and early at the Freedom Dreams site to begin raising Meeting House. SWF and Freedom Dreams team members went straight to work to establish a seamless workflow that would allow members of the community to safely join in once the festivities began.
More and more people plugged into the event as the day progressed. The collaborative effort involved not only raising the Meeting House, but also a dance performance, music, and discussions focused on sustainable building practices, community engagement, and the potential of the Meeting House to serve as a hub for social connections and resilience building.
The event culminated in a presentation by key members of the Freedom Dreams team. Coach Kellogg and Pastor Jones shared their gratitude through words and song, relaying the historical significance of Meeting House as a symbol of hope and resilience as the first newly built structure in the community in more than 30 years. In total, more than 75 people ranging from community members, folks from across the Detroit network, and VBPs from Chicago, Detroit, and Boston participated in the event. Working alongside one another served as a powerful reminder of the importance of community-based solutions and collective action.
We are grateful for our longstanding relationship with our VBP Network in Detroit and the opportunity to continue working together to create sustainable and regenerative communities. The successful raising of Meeting House in Detroit is a testament to the power of collaboration and the importance of working towards a shared vision. We look forward to future collaborations and the transformative change that lies ahead.
