Resources
Project Resources
Historical Park Research (coming soon)
Juneteenth
Join us at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center Juneteenth celebration. Learn more about the project and sign up to participate in our Park oral history project. Pick up your SIP swag. Click her for Juneteenth info
Reclaiming Public Space: Descendant Youth Visioning for Public Parks
Reclaiming Public Space invites young people (ages 16–25) from Charlottesville’s Black descendant community to share their visions for how public parks can better serve the community. This one-time event offers an opportunity for youth to voice their ideas for transforming public parks into inclusive, accessible, and culturally reflective spaces. Feedback gathered during the event will directly inform the next steps of the Swords into Plowshares project.
The event will include interactive stations, creative expression, and community dialogue—centering youth voices and ideas. A Youth Vision Report and Action Plan will be developed from the feedback to guide future public space initiatives in Charlottesville.
Join us in this important conversation about history, community, and the future of our shared spaces.
Schedule of Events
10:00 AM – Welcome & Riding/Walking Tour of Washington Park and the surrounding landscape
11:30 AM – Light Lunch & Small Group Discussion
(Lunch includes Bodo’s, sandwich fixings, assorted chips, and water)
12:15 PM – Collaborative Visioning Activity
Using Mentimeter and open dialogue, participants will respond to questions such as:
What is an ideal public space?
What would you like to see done with the bronze?
If there could be history in every park, what stories would you want told?
What would you like designers of enduring form to know about your community?
Community Breathe
Join us in celebration of community and to observed our shared humanity and values. We celebrate Black History month and live in our desire for an equitable community
Exploring Environmental Justice: Monuments in a Cultural Landscape
Andrea Douglas, executive director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and C.L. Bohannon, PhD, FASLA, Associate Dean JEDI and Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Virginia, for an evening in conversation. The pair will discuss the notion of environmental justice: What is it? How does it operate in a built environment? Dr. Douglas and Dr. Bohannon will invite visitors to consider the ability of public art to create cultural centers and affect the possibility of just public space.
Languages of Invisibility, Devaluation, and Triumph
Alumnae Veronica Jackson (BS Arch) and Andrea Douglas (MA ArtH, PHD ArtH) and Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, come together to discuss visual culture's role in shaping Black identity. The conversation highlights three iterations of Jackson's BLACKTIVISTS series, on display in the Campbell East Wing Gallery from Nov 5–25, and Swords Into Plowshares, an innovative project spearheaded by the Jefferson School to melt down Charlottesville's former bronze statue of Robert E. Lee and transform it into a new work of public art.