Learning Objectives

• Gain exposure to the unique issues and opportunities associated with cultural landscape work in partnership with African American communities.
  • A number of resources, partnership initiatives and assistance opportunities have emerged over the past decade that offer a range of potential tools for advanced physical stewardship in historic African American communities.

    The technical, financial, and strategic advocacy capacities of these programs may be leveraged concurrently by design professionals to tailor collaborations that comprehensively address physical resources at multiple levels. Participants will be exposed to issues and opportunities involving partnering with African American communities and cultural landscapes. A working knowledge of current multi-level historic preservation strategies will be established in the seminar.

• Build awareness of interdisciplinary methods and expertise that may be used to authentically research and interpret historic African American resources for planning and design.

  • The fragmented, piecemeal, disregarded and hidden nature of African American physical resources and the variety of cultural expressions consistently demands exceptionally meticulous effort to assemble authentic and reliable research which allows authentic interpretation and physical integrity. This documentation can be applied to physical stewardship, policy making, planning and design in innovative ways. Participants will gain awareness of the relationships between historic research, interpretation and field documentation at levels needed to inform physical conservation, building and landscape preservation, restoration, environmental policy development, and stewardship of fragile and threatened historic resources.

• Increase the exposure to technical tools that effectively and sensitively address historic African American resources.

  • Define a working knowledge of tools that may be used to capture data and documentation for “Programming and Analysis” and “Planning and Design” work on project specific landscapes and buildings. Knowledge will be shared to retain the integrity of fragile and threatened physical traces of African American history and culture. Tools must be specifically tailored for authentic investigation of a place or community that has been catastrophically damaged, or a site that has been disturbed or with limited access. Detailed restoration of the physical resource may require even more effort to mitigate intrusions on the cultural history that enhances meaning and significance at all levels and aspects.

• Introduce the range of potential documentation sources necessary to address historic African American resources.

  • For decades planning and design professionals have relied on academic research and interpretation of classical styles as points of reference for historic preservation work. Currently, a significant amount of decision making is over reliant on information provided by internet research. An enormous amount of primary source information on physical historic African American resources has not been curated in archives and libraries or on the world wide web. Many African American landscapes were never recorded in public deed records. Many vernacular buildings, structures and landscapes were never documented with technical drawings or photographed. Countless African American physical resources have been demolished, buried, and erased from tangible recognition. As a result, a wide variety of tools and disciplines, ranging from primary source archival investigation, to archaeology, to digital imaging, are often required to recover authentic. These practices assist accurate physical historic preservation, and expand the overall built environment data base.

  • Participants will achieve a  working knowledge of multiple types of interdisciplinary field and archival sources which may contribute to document landscape and building conditions and composition during “Programming and Analysis” and “Planning and Design” of different types of built African American historic resources.

• Establish basic understanding of how local, state and federal regulations and guidelines relate to historic African American resources.

  • Formal historic regulations and guidelines, from local to federal National Register of Historic Places, can be effective tools to protect the built and natural environments. Programming and analysis for potential designation may assist communities in property seizure cases or reveal documentation that better informs physical preservation. Participants will establish capacity to identify points of reference for comprehensive interpretation and analysis of African American historic resources relative to historic preservation regulations, ranging from Secretary of the Interior Standards to local zoning and environmental management guidelines.