Black HerStory Initiative is one of ten teams selected to participate in Re:Generation, anationwide participatory public art and history project initiated by the Monument Lab.The goal: to elevate the next generation of monuments that reckons with and reimaginespublic memory. The winning Re:Generation projects hail from across the varied geographies of the United States, including major cities, rural regions, tribal communities,borderlands and U.S. territories. The participants were selected through a far-reaching open call conducted earlier in 2021, which brought in hundreds of applicationsfrom every state, most territories, and numerous tribal communities. Applications werereviewed by Monument Lab and a jury of external curators, artists, educators, and collaborators. Re:Generation calls for expanded platforms and models of commemoration,acknowledgment, justice, and belonging. The cohort of teams’ projects is part of a muchlarger and still growing community of memory workers who explores how historylives with us everyday to celebrate commemoration by elevating stories embedded withincommunities that foster repair and healing.

This creative project is one of the ways that I demonstrate evidence offulfilling my stated aims when I began my teaching as an Assistant Professor in the landscape architecture department. I bring to this project all myteaching and creative skills and experiences as a landscape designer andurbanist. Understanding the landscape of the Griot Museum in relationto its cultural legacy as a memory keeper to the city is complex. The GriotMuseum sits right across the street from the new campus of the NationalGeospatial Agency. In June 2023, the designation of “blight” was formally proposed for all the properties within a 10-block radius of the newNGA campus.

The first two phases of the Black Herstory Initiative are complete. The third phase is underway and I continue to work closely with the Founderand Executive Director of the Griot Museum of Black History on the materialization of this city-wide monumental landscape proposal. This includesworking as a landscape designer and urbanist, and a local professor – mystudents conducted research interior to this project to support the process.My primary responsibilities on this project involve designing visualizationsand proposals that are used within larger targeted funding campaigns, aswell as political and community coalition building. During this project, I alsoco-organized and participated in initial strategic fundraising that specializesin impact investing and generational change in the built environment throughpublic art and landscape projects. As a participant in this project I representthe power of landscape design and our MLA program at Washington University of doing impactful work in St Louis. To represent the landscape visionsof this project and its impact on St Louis and the region, I also participateand present written statements to the full Board of Alderman in St Louis City during public meetings that advocate for the Griot Museum and further citysupport*. Importantly and transparently, I also gather advice and the perspectives of designers that work in cultural landscapes on similar projects inChicago and outside the USA. This includes speaking with large real-estatedevelopers and local business owners that I have professional design relationships through my landscape urbanism CINLAND, LLC*.

I place community impact and spatial justice as equally importantdimensions when considering the climate and biological ecologies inplace-making. In this way I reinforce and can help reinvent transformativebottom-up community based vision making in the built environment. For me,this is also the perfect opportunity to not merely espouse and agree with theexplicit message of the Chancellor and Washington University of being inSt Louis, for St Louis, but to live this message and make it real. WashingtonUniversity has a history of well-intended branding campaigns and for thepast 20-years the Griot Museum of Black History has witnessed first-handthe attempt to translate ambition into reality. I want to be a member of a university that does what it says, and this is evidence of my continuous attemptto keep our community promises in St Louis.

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