hello@streetroad.org
610 869 4712

725 Street Road Cochranville, PA 19330 

7000 Acres: a residents' history of Londonderry Township
5/21 - 7/30/2016 (T/F/S 11am-4pm), Closing reception 7/16, 1-7pm

Instagram @7000acres :
From Breou’s Farm Atlas of Chester County. 1883.
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. 

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Street Road Visiting / Hours:
Open Friday 11am - 3pm or call 610-869-4712 or email to set up a visit, or, if you are driving by and see cars outside, just drop in. If you are far, far away, and can't visit in person, we do visits by Skype - email us to set up a virtual visit. We are on site multiple days a week and can accommodate most times. 
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Directions here.

A word about 'here':
We acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Lenape, original people of the mid-Atlantic area, forced west by British and US governments. Most Delaware Indian tribe descendents are now located in Oklaholma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. Lenni Lenapes in Pennsylvania are not officially recognized as tribes by the United States, though an estimated 5000 Lenape Nation descendents live in the Delaware River area. We pay respects to the Lenape people both past and present. Please consider the many legacies of violence, displacement and settlement that form part of our collective histories. While increased public recognition of these legacies and processes of redress such as Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission are positive steps, concrete focus on return of land and land rights remains a distant horizon.
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