A Celebration of Connection and Discovery: Kenton County Public Library
Kenton County Public Library (KCPL), CCDI’s inaugural Libraries, Archives, Museums awardee, began their project in April 2022. Ann Schoenenberger, a Digital Librarian at Kenton County Public Library, and Jameela Salaah, a Program Manager for the Center for Great Neighborhoods, worked in partnership to bring the project together. They also enlisted the assistance of Artists-in-Residence with ties to the Eastside Covington, Kentucky community.
Their project, “Crafting Stories, Making History: The African American Experience in Covington, KY” preserves and centers the experiences of residents from Covington’s historically Black Eastside neighborhood. The project supported artist residencies, mini-grants, and community fellowship programs. Through school activities and community events, residents created works inspired by Eastside and its relationship to Library materials.
School Activities
The H.A.T. (History, Art & Technology) Lab, a weekly after-school program conducted at Eastside Covington elementary schools, allowed students to make personal connections to the Library’s digital collections. The team developed activities and paired Library materials based on students’ interests. In one of the schools, the team focused on photography and explored Gordon Parks’ photographs.
Jameela, who led the program, says that one of the goals for the Center for Great Neighborhoods is to “help Covington kids see themselves as leaders who can positively influence their community, regardless of age.” By using the VIA Character Strengths tool, youth can identify strengths and develop them together with others in their community. Support from CCDI gave students “access to a vast database of knowledge and information” and allowed them to “pair these learnings with character strengths.”
Connecting their strengths to Library items helped students see how their strengths aligned with historical figures such as Rosa Parks. These materials served as inspiration for students, who created collages, comic books, and other works as they drew their own connections to history. Some students learned about the methodology of oral history storytelling to “explore the meaning of audio to record history.”