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FLOWERINGS : a framework for mutual growth

FLOWERINGS: a framework for mutual growth

Throughout—and despite—the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, two organizations at James Madison University undertook a process of mutual learning, planning, and growth. WE ARE the Furious Flower Poetry Center—the nation’s first academic center for the study and appreciation of Black poetry, founded and led by women of color—and WE ARE the JMU Libraries, a predominantly white organization serving the library and educational technology needs of our campus. TOGETHER, we are building shared digital infrastructure and stewarding distinctive collections that include nearly thirty years of Furious Flower’s unique archival and audiovisual history.

A generous planning grant from the Mellon Foundation enabled our preliminary explorations and findings, summarized here in the format of an emerging framework and set of key questions that partnering organizations similar to ours may wish to ask of themselves. We offer this document in the hope it will be of use to collaborating university and public libraries, centers for arts and culture, and communitybased archives undertaking joint, reparative projects— projects rooted in equity and shared understanding, aimed at addressing historical imbalances and building better futures. Together, these five frameworks serve as a kind of trellis for what we are sowing and nurturing together.

first frame:

FROM ARCHIVES to FUTURES

Our partnership is rooted in an Afrofuturist understanding of archives, in which historical artifacts are not seen as fixed, still, pre-interpreted, and only available for passive “playback” of the past. We see archives as living instruments and collections as community belongings—generative of new, plural futures and transformative understandings, and perpetually being transformed, themselves, with each fresh encounter and pair of hands. Likewise, we understand our own organizations as organic entities in perpetual evolution, requiring intentionality to shape, and always interacting with the conditions around us. Furious Flower partners with the JMU Libraries as a living center, forever cultivating its past and seeding the future of African American poetry— not as a passive or transactional provider of archival material.

“

You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brothers’ and my sisters’ time. My nieces’ and my nephews’ time.

How much time do you want, for your “progress?”

”

— James Baldwin, from the documentary, James Baldwin: the Price of the Ticket

key questions: • What is the relationship in your project between center(s) and the margins? In other words, what has historically been marginalized in this work or set of relationships? • Now ask, “What has always been central, and to whom?” • Are you openly acknowledging to all partners and participants that your collaboration and your institutions will not crystallize—that they will always be works in progress? • How, despite this acknowledgment, are you building an urgency to act? To make progress?

second frame:

AUTHORITY and EQUITY

A key component of our project has been the ongoing development of mutual understanding and respect at all levels in our organizations. It’s easy to say that these exist, but trust and authenticity with each other must be tended, and are at the heart of any true, shared understanding when complex projects cross disciplinary and professional areas of expertise. Trust is a function of listening, follow-through, confidentiality where appropriate and transparency where possible, and of open and evident displays of appreciation for the differing types of authority and hard-won experience that all parties bring to bear. We understand trust as organic—always capable of growing in strength, but also fragile, subject to stressors. A truly equitable partnership between organizations or centers requires the ceding and sharing of power. To do this, existing power relationships must first be honestly acknowledged. It also requires the honoring of different kinds of expertise across complex intersections of our professional and personal lives. Knowledge workers are often expected to learn and appreciate new domains automagically—but may need guidance, support, and time.

key questions: • How have you been held back by a lack of understanding of what it takes to do the jobs of your partnering organizations? Whose labor (or burdens) feel invisible or under-appreciated? • How will you move from acknowledging the need for deepened cultural literacy—or for a deepened understanding of unfamiliar professional practices—to its active development? • How will you reckon with the complexities of power relationships, in which those who are privileged in one context may feel disempowered in another? • How will you avoid disillusionment among the people charged with working together differently, when the acknowledgment of these gaps or issues outpaces any felt change?

third frame:

GROWING SOIL

Many grant-funded projects related to digital collections have predetermined outcomes. We were blessed with a funder willing to support an extended period of shared discovery—toward a project that is ultimately more about holistic transformation and generative, sustained partnerships than about discrete, short-term deliverables. Flowerings project leaders often referred to our planning process as working in “lyric space”—a realm of poetic possibility. Indeed, part of our joint, organizational learning has been to grapple with the desire for instant gratification in moving from vision to implementation, and for clear and obvious paths to meeting pent-up needs. Building better workflows, necessary shared infrastructure, and the new relationships and understandings that will uphold and help them develop equitably and sustainably over time is the slow work of growing soil—an investment in the future.

“

A poor farmer grows weeds. A good farmer grows crops.

A great farmer grows soil.

”

— unattributed proverb

key questions: • What will you do to recognize and publicly thank the past contributors who have positioned your partnership to flourish today? How will you involve them going forward? • Can you honor the idea of lyric space and question productivity mindsets rooted in white supremacy, while also valuing colleagues who are action-oriented and positioning your organizations to get work done? • What does equity look like in shared projects between organizations with different sizes and base budgets? How can you ensure that colleagues closest to the work have a strong say in how the work is done—while also attending to these concerns? • How (particularly in our current cultural moment) will you recognize and mitigate staff burnout or exhaustion? What can you do to provide the concrete resources, dedicated project coordination, and other support mechanisms needed for sustainable participation and systems change?

fourth frame:

SEEING OURSELVES

Our capacity to imagine future partnerships between Furious Flower and the JMU Libraries benefited from an investment in increasing self-knowledge. A clear picture of one’s own organization or institution is nearly impossible to develop without engaging outside eyes. We augmented input from existing advisory groups, project staff, and trusted colleagues with that of a new, external advisory board. Advisors provided expertise balanced across our designated domains of exploration. We also employed external consultants. Lae’l HughesWatkins, originator of the Reparative Archive framework, led an in-depth workshop with key faculty and staff and provided findings from thoughtful pre- and post-workshop assessments. Bergis Jules, Jon Voss, and Lynette Johnson of Shift Collective ran multiple focus groups with campus and community stakeholders, and held a two-day visioning retreat, utilizing a community-centered design model and aimed at “Imagining Furious Flower at 50.” Shift then provided a frank and thorough report, analyzing Furious Flower’s historical position at JMU and suggesting how the JMU Libraries could be the best possible partner moving forward.

key questions: • Who should we invite to offer outside perspectives that help us better see ourselves as individual organizations and as partners? • How can we best free our advisors or outside assessors to ask us the questions we have not been able to ask ourselves? Can we position them to mitigate internal hierarchies and allow more voices to be heard? • What steps can we take to refresh the perspectives of existing advisory boards or go-to interlocutors, in the context of new partnerships and possibilities? • What kind of work is needed, within our own organizations or larger institutions, in order to face hard truths?

“ We commit to…

Educate ourselves and ask questions of all the work we do: To what end ? To whose benefit ? Whose comfort is centered ? Who has most agency and voice ? Who is silenced, ignored, or harmed ? Who is elevated, honored, and made to feel safe ? Who can experience and express joy ?

”

A Pledge: Self-Examination and Concrete Action in the JMU Libraries

fifth frame:

VISION and CONNECTION

How do you make magic? How might you replicate the compelling, early-stage feeling we had among our organizational leaders—of being the right people at the right time, ready to trust each other and make significant change? What is the origin of an instant connection of the type that suggests something big and new can happen? Both Furious Flower and the JMU Libraries benefited from strong, feminist leadership: women with visions for their organizations that dovetailed. One was a vision for deepened sustainability and continued prominence and growth as the pre-eminent center for Black poetry. The other was a recognition that transformative change was needed to create a more actively anti-racist, inclusive, and capable library organization, worthy of the responsibility of stewarding Furious Flower’s archives.

key questions: • What private conversations, and what amount of simple time spent together will lead to frankness and fellow-feeling among organizational leaders new to one another? • If the relationships in play are old ones, how can you re-set through intentional activities and exchanges (e.g., by asking the questions given in “Fourth Frame: Seeing Ourselves”) • What is shared in and different about the visions for your organizations? Do those similarities and differences offer points of overlap? Do they fill each others’ gaps? • Through what mechanisms can you translate a personal connection at the leadership level—or longstanding, individual points of collaboration within your organization— into broader systemic connections, practices, and impact outlasting any single set of personalities? • Are the organizational visions commonly understood? Is the fellow-feeling among leaders broadly shared—or sensed as exclusionary? How will you empower middle managers and colleagues throughout your organizations to adopt, adapt, and operationalize the vision?

acknowledging CHALLENGES and BARRIERS

Personalities are a factor—for good and ill. Projects like these should be deeply humane, but are also fundamentally human.

This work is dependent on varying institutional situations and characteristics. One size will not fit all.

Situations can arise where people with less power feel their jobs or professional identities may be threatened by coming change, or they may fear retaliation for undertaking this work.

Likewise, people in power throughout one’s larger institutions (or within the partnering organizations themselves) may feel a threat to their selfconception as leaders, to their history with the organizations, or to institutional reputation as reparative work gets underway.

Trends toward co-opting and possessiveness can emerge, and partnerships like ours can be used as “diversity-washing,” to cover deeper, more systemic problems.

Not every project will garner crucial funding support or benefit from dedicated allocation of staff time. We must envision and plan for abundance while still making progress within realistic material constraints.

Education and service organizations can easily fall into paradigms of “doing more with less.” Leaders can intentionally model and guide planning processes to address different levels of resourcing that support both the vision and the well-being of those charged with implementing it.

The leaders of our partnering organizations had the required institutional clout and authority to make this happen. Where visionaries and advocates for change are differently positioned in their organizations, they will need sponsors, positioned to lend access and privilege.

advisory board

REFLECTIONS

“The intentionality of having an advisory board to help frame this work gave us time and space, and helped guide us in our reflection as we got started. We don’t often do that, at least in my experience. It’s been incredibly meaningful, and as the project team starts to get into the weeds, it’s helpful to reflect on those big picture questions.”

“I think this is a great model for how and where libraries should focus attention on some of the most unique areas of work on their campuses and seek to then support weaving those unique things further into other parts of the institution.”

“The Furious Flower collaborative model did not make the error that I’ve seen elsewhere where meetings represent “inclusion” but fail to translate into participant engagement and partnership-building.”

“One major take-away for me was the possibility of bringing together a range of people at a university and beyond, many librarians, but also poets and scholars of black literature to discuss an African American project. How rare. How outstanding. Just the notion of working to expand and situate an African American poetry center firmly in a library was key.”

“I am amazed by the Furious Flower constellation. I think all of the different types of people involved in doing this work (poets, librarians, scholars, digital humanists, IT administrators and more) is a major asset. I can imagine that Furious Flower is a case study for how people with different relationships and points of entry to Black poetry can work together.”

“This gathering is extraordinary—don’t take for granted the values that have been expressed… positioning this work and the broad need for spaces where people come not just to borrow a book but where they feel a culture of active engagement around the panoply around creative questions and performances.”

“Many communities are seeking to do this kind of work but need to know how to work with PWIs or other partners in a way that is equitable. Organizations seeking partnership need to set clear expectations and know what their expectations are at the outset.”

“How important it was to reimagine the existing relationships (and to take the time to learn from each other, talk about goals and future possibilities, learn the language that various groups use, and build a framework for buy in moving forward). Administrators and leaders in various fields need to see examples of how this kind of work can be instrumental in creating change, building trust, and fueling momentum—as well as why it isn’t ever a luxury as part of a process, but really a necessity that is often overlooked/diminished.”

participant

REFLECTIONS

“I think folks pay attention or are interested in instances of a problem that was solved. In some ways, this project represents a kind of resolution of a problem, in this case, the usual distance between black and white spaces all on the campus of a PWI.”

“These spaces helped clarify the whole gestalt of the Flowerings project as one with many parts and many potential outcomes, rooted in equity, shared authority, and authentic partnership.”

“One of the exciting things about this project is imagining new ways of stewarding collections that are grounded in honoring histories and centering the Black community… I’m excited to be a part of these conversations and to support a re-imagining of the archival endeavor, from more of a decolonial framework.”

“Poet Avery Young’s performance in our June meeting was the most meaningful thing I’ve ever seen via Zoom or any other sort of teleconferencing… That performance and many parts of this project have made the reason for our work more concrete. I appreciate that.”

“I really like starting meetings with poetry, and normalizing art, integrating art into our daily work lives. That’s just so cool.”

CONCLUSION In early 2022, Furious Flower and the JMU Libraries announced receipt of a transformative, 4.5-year, $2 million Mellon Foundation grant based on the planning and thinking outlined here. Our Flowerings Project Phase II, subtitled “Seeding and Tending Furious Flower’s Digital Archives and Infrastructure,” will support Furious Flower’s internationally recognized leadership through its next decennial conference in 2024. It will also provide for archival description, improved infrastructure for digital preservation, and global access to the extensive and growing collection of Black poetry performance videos held by JMU Libraries Special Collections. The grant will help both organizations make new hires, both grant-funded and tenure-track, and will strengthen and enhance the Center’s online publishing infrastructure in partnership with scholarly communications initiatives at the JMU Libraries. We are also now planning a large-scale renovation and expansion of our central campus library, to include beautiful facilities both for the Furious Flower Poetry Center itself and for the new Libraries departments and services this grant has helped us to envision, including a Department of Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections.

FLOWERINGS : a framework for mutual growth

The Flowerings Project: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry (2019-2021) was funded by a generous $150,000 planning grant to James Madison University from the Mellon Foundation, Award #: 1909-07155.

MSC 3802, 500 Cardinal Dr. Harrisonburg, VA 22801 540-568-8883 furiousflower@jmu.edu www.jmu.edu/furiousflower

MSC 1704, 880 Madison Dr. Harrisonburg, VA 22801 540-568-6150 libraries@jmu.edu www.lib.jmu.edu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Lauren K. Alleyne, Jody Condit Fagan, Joanne V. Gabbin, and Bethany Nowviskie, June 19, 2022