Explorations of Milwaukee

An artist is equipped with a creative mind offering a new perspective to problem solving. While the arts itself has potential to make immense contributions to society by impacting or informing, we take it one step further challenging creative brains to tackle difficult social and cultural issues affecting our community. Often this results in unique inferences deduced through sensation, experience, mindfulness, and innovative thinking. Below are conclusions to research we have conducted in the Milwaukee area.

History of a home

This research began fall 2016 and started with the overall idea of foreclosure in the Washington Park Neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The mission of this project was not to make differences that the community could see, but to make the community heard in small ways. Researchers Chelsey Becher and Carly Broutman examined risks of how foreclosed houses affects the people living in it, the people owning it, and the neighborhood that holds it. Having this general guideline they hunted down a home that was foreclosed in Washington Park. This home was then used as a case study to delve into the history of a specific home in order to raise awareness of the importance of each and every house in a neighborhood.  Throughout the year, they spent numerous days at the Milwaukee Public Library looking at microfiche after microfiche of city documents, to find tax documents on this house. They were able to discover the owner, value of land, value of improvements made, and total value of property. The information was then crosschecked with the city directories, which disclosed who lived in the home each year. This house changed hands many times within a 50-year span, in both owner and resident. Researchers then found the history and story of specific residents that stayed in the home for an extended period of time. Although everyone’s story that lived in the house could not be found, the lack of this knowledge makes the house so important and interesting because the secrets hidden in the walls will never be revealed.  Only the home itself can hold that, making the house irreplaceable.  However, with a single decision a neglected foreclosed home like this one can easily become a pile of wood, a plot of land. Once the home is destroyed the stories it holds will be destroyed as well. This is just a single home that occupies a single neighborhood, in a single city of the United States. 

What is a “Home” to Current Washington Park Residents

Sherman Park Through Embodied Research

Milwaukee is comprised of a wide variety of neighborhoods, all different, all with their unique history, people, cultural background, dynamics, and atmosphere.  The Sherman Park neighborhood is no different.  However, in recent years it has been displayed by media overwhelmingly as a poor, dangerous part of Milwaukee.  Our research is to show the true characteristics of the Sherman Park Neighborhood and its people, which greatly contradict the characteristics displayed by the media. 

The bulk of our research this year has been done through interviewing residents, property owners, and employees of the Sherman Park neighborhood.  The relevance of this research is seen in each and every person we interview; there is a passion and care for the betterment of their community and this is what defines the community.  The people of Sherman Park are who currently make it, and will continue to make it a safe, growing community.  We as researchers are just here to make their stories and efforts more widely known to other residents of Milwaukee, through creating dance performances, websites, and presentations for the community to have access to and learn from. 

Sherman Park is beautiful example of the importance of community involvement and how it can impair or benefit a community and all of the people in it.  Why is this important to share to a larger audience? Because the misconceptions that surround Sherman Park are not Sherman Park or its people.  However, they control what the community receives from the city of Milwaukee and all of its other residents, from the allotment of resources to the perceptions people hold. Sherman Park is a concrete, zoomed-in example of the struggles that neighborhoods and people in Milwaukee, and the United States in general, face currently in our society. 

What is the central research question/purpose of the research?

-       To broaden people’s understanding of communities/neighborhoods in Milwaukee, WI. 

-       To share people’s stories and experiences in the Sherman Park Neighborhood

-       To show the true characteristics of the community opposed to the stereotypes that have been placed on that specific neighborhood due to its recent history

What is the relevant context for this research? Why is it necessary or important?

-       The importance of communities and community growth within a city

-       Why? Milwaukee has so many problems regarding segregation and the allotment of resources to different communities

What is the research methodology being used in this project? What are the important details of the protocol that can help the audience understand the scope of the project?

-       Interviews, talking to current or former residents, property owner, employees, etc of Sherman Park

What are the conclusions of the project, either final or anticipated?

-       To display the importance of individual stories in community and the importance a community holds on these stories and the people within the community

-       To show the care that people are putting into neighborhoods of Milwaukee that need help

-       The importance of community involvement and how it can impair or benefit the community and all the people in it

What are the overall implications of this study?

-       The real world significance is that Sherman Park is just one example of neighborhoods throughout Milwaukee and every large city in the United States

-       It is a concrete, zoomed-in example of the problems in neighborhoods of Milwaukee and the United States in general we face as a society

The conclusion to this observational study has been concisely summarized through the video below.