7000 Acres: a residents' history of Londonderry Township
5/21 - 7/30/2016 (T/F/S 11am-4pm), Closing reception 7/16, 1-7pm
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Instagram @7000acres :
From Breou’s Farm Atlas of Chester County. 1883.
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With the help of the Londonderry Township Historical Committee, Street Road organized this exhibition on the history of our roughly 7000-acre township in Southern Chester County, Pennsylvania. A participatory work, the project centers on the collection of memorabilia and artifacts. All township residents were invited to contribute items. Their personal stories and artifacts are displayed alongside a broader history that looks at sites such as the Daleville Store, St. Malachi’s Catholic Church, and Derry Meeting, and that also takes in European settlement, pre-colonialism First Nations (in particular the Leni Lenape), and even earlier, pre-human settlement. The project is very conscious of its own title as an arbitrary and problematic but nonetheless evocative organizing principal.
Items are displayed in a traditional exhibition, where visitors can view them in a physical setting; but they are also reiterated on Instagram, at @7000acres, where anyone who connects to a particular artifact can comment, respond, like or link to it, and can add their own hashtags, actions that parallel those of the traditional archivist. The project thus proposes social media as an explicitly non-objective and self-consciously collaborative alternative to traditional archival methods, and as a unique tool for expanding the definition and influence of community and regional identity in the 21st century. A continually evolving platform, social media's contemporary popularity and global reach contrasts with simplified definitions of regional identity, prompting fresh engagement and reflection. As a multilayered exhibition 7000 Acres aims to provoke dialogue around our understandings of the idea of community and to consider evolving concepts of “place” and their impact on individual identity today. Calling Londonderry:
We are collecting materials up to and throughout the exhibition. Please get in touch at info@streetroad.org and on @7000acres on Instagram - to share stories, photos, maps, your own work, etc. Any connection to Londonderry Township, Chester County PA is reason enough to get in touch. All materials will be handled with utmost care and either returned or donated to the Londonderry Township or Chester County Historic Society archives. To participate, or to find out more, call or email us, or simply drop by: Street Road Artists Space 725 Street Road Cochranville, PA 19330 Phone - 610-869-4712 hello@streetroad.org You can also get in touch by emailing Diane Henryson, chair of the Londonderry Historical Committee . Visit the Londonderry Township history page here. 
Thank you to the Chester County Historical Society for supporting this project.
Check out http://chestercohistorical.org/ for more information and upcoming events. |