Fifth City Revisited

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I am staging a solo performance project called Fifth City Revisited at the First Church of the Brethren in Garfield Park. The work explores the history of Fifth City, a radical community experiment from the 1960s to early 1990s on Chicago’s Westside. My parents were part of the original movement. As an adult, I am curious about why this incredible movement isn’t talked about more and why it isn’t more known as part of our local Chicago history. Tying together personal memory, oral history, original Fifth City documents, urban planning, and city policy, Fifth City Revisited explores how we create healthy communities while also considering the scale at which we must do this work in order to grow and sustain it. This project holds Fifth City up as a symbol of radical Black-centered community building using dance, story, and media to ask: what is the power of this community’s story against the backdrop of city planning systems that have all but erased its work? What lessons does the Fifth City movement have to teach us in our current, exciting, and (cautiously) hopeful era of grassroots change where a renewed commitment to neighborhood investment is bubbling up across Chicago’s West and South sides? Your support for Fifth City Revisited contributes to this energy. With your donation, you are helping to bring this community history alive and continuing this conversation about the revitalization of Chicago’s Westside.

About This Project

Born in the 1960s, the Fifth City Human Development Project was an ambitious community redevelopment process for Chicago’s Westside. Developed as a “40 year plan,” Fifth City incorporated educational curriculum, economic development, skill training, creativity, and community investment to rebuild the neighborhood following the 1968 riots that decimated so much of Chicago’s Westside. The visionary example presented a powerful model for local citizens reimagining their community and working together to manifest a new vision to bring a higher quality of life for all.

Drawing on a massive archive of the movement’s history preserved by the Institute of Cultural Affairs (the organization that grew out of the Fifth City movement), this project invites people to consider Fifth City’s plans, symbols, and rituals for community transformation as part of an active creative community process. I am partnering with the First Church of the Brethren, an intimate neighborhood church in Garfield Park right in the heart of the Fifth City community, to be the presenting venue for Fifth City Revisited. It is necessary that this work be staged in the actual community that the subject matter is all about. It is important that this work be in conversation with current citizens’ concerns and activations of energy across the Greater Westside from Garfield Park to North Lawndale, Austin, South Lawndale, Humboldt Park, and Little Village. It is crucial that on the ground community experts and activists be engaged to help spark a larger discussion and offer an array of solutions contemplating what it means to redevelop and what it takes to heal the Westside.

Comprised of an evening-length performance, an expanded installation of Fifth City history, and complementary programming, Fifth City Revisited is a call to action. Part of the work seeks to imagine new futures for this community through the lessons of the past. I will incorporate Fifth City's history with the current moment/movement on Chicago’s West and South sides around quality of life issues and citizen-led change. Complementary programming will include dialogues, workshops, walking tours, lectures, and visioning sessions where Westside community members and local grassroots change agents convene. Together, we will collectively imagine what healthy cities and neighborhoods can be using a combination of creative tools from storytelling, oral history, and collective mapping to performance.

Performances & programming will be staged April 24-26 & May 1-3, 2020 at First Church of the Brethren in the Fifth City community.

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $25
  Shout-out on social media ($25.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  Above + 1 ticket to "Fifth City Revisited" ($30.00 is tax deductible.)
• $75
  Above + a special "Fifth City Revisited" playlist of freedom struggle music featured in & inspired by the show ($40.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  Above + 2 tickets to "Fifth City Revisited" ($45.00 is tax deductible.)
• $250
  Above + 4 tickets to "Fifth City Revisited" & co-producer credit in the program ($155.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  4 tickets to "Fifth City Revisited," co-producer credit in the program, & a special tour of the exhibit and talk with the artist ($250.00 is tax deductible.)

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Meida Teresa McNeal

Meida Teresa McNeal is the Director of Honey Pot Performance, an Afro-feminist collective dedicated to critical performance and public humanities. Recent projects include ways of knowing (2019), a performance and media project exploring systems of knowledge production that premiered at …

View Meida Teresa McNeal's profile

• 4 updates
• 53 supporters

• Update 1: MATCH ACHIEVED!

  Posted on March 03, 2020

   

  THANK YOU! We are now 72% funded and almost there!

  I've assembled quite the production and community programming team and everyone is busy doing their part to bring this work to dynamic life. 

  Our creative and admin team includes: Keli Stewart (Creative Direction), Justin Botz (Media Design), Margaret Nelson (Lighting Design), Stephanie Jeter (Video Design & Story Gathering), Vitaliy Vladimirov (Exhibition Design), Miranda Gozalez (Marketing Coordinator), Jordan Kunkel (Marketing Support), and Victoria Sockwell (Community Programming Coordinator).

  Last weekend we had our third community planning meeting at First Church of the Brethren. I am blessed and inspired to be in a room full of folks working together to build a creative platform featuring an incredibly rich two weeks of roundtable conversations, panels, and workshops surrounding the performance. All of this activity will create a deeper conversation and space for action around the themes of the work - uncovering quieted histories, preserving community culture, legacy, and heritage, investing in Westside communities now, and healing from the impacts of long term disinvestment. 

  Our next meeting is Saturday, March 7th at 11am. If you're interested in getting involved, drop me a line. Would love to have you at the table!

  More soon

  Meida

  Update 2: GOAL REACHED!!!!

  Posted on April 11, 2020

   

  WOW, and THANK YOU! 

  We have reached our $5000 goal with 5 days to spare!

  I appreciate eveyone of the 52 donors who have given to bring this campaign across the finish line. Gratitude to all of you for believing in this work's vision. (More soon on rewards!)

  We still have a few days left to give. Every dollar goes to support the production of the staged work and community programming, stipends for presenters/facilitators, and to pay our production and planning team.

  Our incredible community planning committee has come together with new dates for June 19-28 (and a second window of Sept 2-13 if we are still under stay at home orders). We are connecting with Garfield Park and Greater Westside residents, urban planners, community organizers, and cultural workers to create a rich slate of performance, conversations, workshops, and opportunities to fellowship over food as we consider what a healed, healthy, and transformed Westside looks like.

  Like our Fifth City Project Facebook page and find us on IG (@fifth.city) for updates, share the word with your networks, and/or save the date and come out to see the work and participate in some of the community programming this June (or September, if need be!). I look forward to sharing this work with you in the near future when we can all come outside to celebrate together. 

  All my best, 

  Meida

  Update 3: Adapting Fifth City Revisited under COVID-19

  Posted on May 30, 2020

   

  Hello! I have updated news on the project. Due to the ongoing pandemic and our current public safety guidelines, we have decided to postpone the live performance and community programming until Spring 2021. However, this does not mean that our work on this relevant project stops.

  The performance is about more than the staged work itself. It is meant to revisit the lessons of history so we can learn from them as part of our present and future actions. It is meant to uplift the good work going on right now in Westside communities as people gather their resources, mobilize together, and make change to heal and strengthen these neighborhoods. 

  The amazing team working with me is dedicated to the vision of Fifth City Revisited. They inspire me to continue on. 

  This Summer, we will launch a virtual edition of Fifth City Revisited as we prepare for a much hoped for public experience in Spring 2021. We will continue the Fifth City Revisited project by documenting Westside community histories, highlighting community creativity, and exploring visions for what community investment and wealth can look like now and in the future. Our virtual platform includes a digital exhibit, a neighborhood response salon, and a collection of stories from folks committed to a healthy, well resourced, and revitalized Westside.

  All rewards will still be available with the Spring 2021 production. In the interim, I invite you to visit and engage in the virtual edition of Fifth City Revisited once it goes live this summer.

  I will send you another update when it launches, but you can also look out for announcements here: https://www.honeypotperformance.org/fifthcityproject

  Thank you again for your support of FIfth City Revisited. 

  Meida McNeal

  Update 4: Fifth City Revisited Film Premieres Saturday, Oct 12, 2024

  Posted on September 29, 2024

  

   

  Greetings!

  It has been a wild ride to get Fifth City Revisited from the stage to its filmed adaptation. I never imagined I would share the work in this way, but the pandemic led us to all sorts of roads we might have never walked in the name of necessity and what was possible at the moment. Thank you for your patience as I brought this project to completion. 

  One of the joys of this "slow cook" in the making of this version of the work is the collaboration it nurtured with First Church. What started with an invitation to stage Fifth City Revisited in the neighborhood bearing its name became a long-seeded partnership. Several collaborations later, Honey Pot Performance has become a space partner with offices, our growing Chicago Black Social Culture Map archive, and programming and performances throughout the year. We look forward to continuing to work with First Church to add to the Westside's growing arts and culture scene. And, we hope you will join us as we build.

  In this moment, however, I invite you to a viewing of Fifth City Revisited on Saturday, October 12 at First Church of the Brethren. The evening includes the film screening and two conversations including community voices committed to a revitalized, well-resourced Westside. You can register here. 

  You can also check out the gorgeous online exhibition curated by Adia Sykes and Victoria Sockwell here: https://fifthcityrevisited.net

  Best
  Meida

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Katherine Dreher

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  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Vitaliy Vladimirov

  • Jon Satrom

  • JeeYeun Lee

  • Kristin Larsen

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