COMMUNITY UNDERSTANDING OF CARE

ABSTRACT

In Winston-Salem, we have a dynamic and significant history and current presence of care-centered and anti-violence advocacy actions. Advocacy on the local level is important for creating impactful changes and transformations, and so it is imperative for our community to engage with localized spatial justice practices that build community awareness and relationships. UNCSA High School Seniors enrolled in transformative justice themed English courses will engage in a community-based project over the course of the 2021-2022 academic year that will provide a structure for identifying care resources in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, with the objective of building a care infrastructure map. The central tenets of locating care infrastructure spaces are 1) places that feel safe, 2) places that are a care resource, and 3) places that hold joyful memories and activities. In order to build relationships with existing local advocacy initiatives, students will share a survey with solicited arts advocacy community members and organizers requesting identifications of such places, and then each student will select at least one suggested place to visit, picture, research, create a caption, and upload to an interactive care resource map of Winston-Salem. By identifying care resources, alternative safe spaces, and locations that bring joy, students will creatively and radically begin the design of a care infrastructure for the Winston-Salem community. In addition, through the project’s research process, students will engage with the stories and archives of local social movement work from the Winston-Salem community, thus re-remembering and implementing thorough and robust local research. This project builds community understandings of care, healing-centered, and community-based approaches to problem-solving as we give voice to our youth to start at the roots of (re)imagining justice by identifying care-centered and alternative safe spaces across the City of Winston-Salem, thus building both a spatial awareness and beginning to a localized and interactive care infrastructure map that will be open for continued contributions and revisions.