What happens when you get a couple of brilliant, creative, visionary community organizers together around the kitchen table for tea? Great things begin to grow--literally! We are so thrilled to welcome the efforts of Julianna and Brenda to the Huss School property for the coming growing season. It was a delight to walk with them through the first couple meetings about a community garden and we look forward to seeing where they take the project as they run with the idea on their own. The basics: plots will be tended by neighborhood youth and adult mentors, using sustainable agricultural methods like compost tea, organic pest control and rainwater collection. This project has enormous potential to tie in with the vision for the school property in a myriad of ways and bring an abundance of hope, creativity, beauty and good food to the neighborhood. Watch for more reports on the gardens soon...and get in touch if you'd like to be involved!
Recently in Space Category
On the way to work this morning, we heard two stories from Michigan Public Radio that sparked connections for me with the Huss School project. One was about an old school building in Detroit that's being converted into artist studios, retail space, offices and more. The other was this week's edition in a series of interviews that Christina Shockley is doing, with each interviewee suggesting three things they think could be done in Michigan to help get the state back on its feet. I especially liked how hip hop artist Invincible, this morning's interviewee, suggested that creativity needs to be woven into our problem-solving in order to expand people's imaginations and push the boundaries of what's considered possible. Makes me even more excited to try to recruit local artists to submit renderings of the space's potential...
Kirstin offers a few ideas in her catapult magazine editorial for what she'd love to see at Huss School as we move forward with the Imagining Space project. Check it out and then add your own!
We'll be hosting a film class and a spring break trip--both from Calvin College--at Huss in the next few months and we're going to do quite a bit of preparation if we're to be properly hospitable. The school is currently winterized (no heat, no running water), so we're going to treat it a bit like indoor winter camping. We'd ideally like to get one room operable with electric space heaters, coffee makers and some comfortable seating.
Toward that end, we've started a list of things we're looking for to help stock our hospitality room. If you'd be able to donate any of these items, please contact us!
We're also doing a workday next Tuesday, December 29, to get the room set up for the film class in January. If you're in the area and would like to help, drop us a line and show up around 9:00 in the morning. We'll have some coffee on!
On Friday, June 12, we closed on Huss School. On Tuesday, June 16, Rob and I hit the road for a two-week speaking tour. The two weeks since our return from the tour have been a whirlwind of trying to catch up and stay on top of the many projects that have converged on us all at once this summer, in addition to trying to negotiate a shaky housing situation for us here in Grand Rapids. And so, finally spending two hours tending to (part of) the lawn at Huss School this past Saturday felt like a great accomplishment.
Rob worked with a borrowed mower while I trimmed and weeded. Even though we were exhausted from an already-full day of physical labor, it felt good to begin to engage more intimately with the property than just the tours we and others have taken of the building itself. The next few years will definitely be a process of getting to know the cracks in the sidewalk, the curves of the lawn, the species of weeds that spring up naturally when no one is looking. My work gloves once again bear the familiar scent--I think it smells like peanut butter--of the Tree to Heaven sprouts that I used to pull from my great grandparents' property in Indiana. I had brought a metal bucket with me for collecting weeds, but soon realized that it was way too small. In the school are a number of blue plastic bins that were used for storing teaching supplies, so I hauled one out and filled it up. Half-joking, I told Rob that this box would forever remain with the Huss School property and heretofore be known as The Weed Coffin: where weeds go to die.
I've been feeling stressed out lately about caring properly for the property, especially when it seems to be such a draw for vandalism. There have been three more broken windows since we closed and imagining what's happening there beyond our control keeps me up at night. But as repetitive labor often does, I had some clarity while I was pulling out the tallest weeds along the front of the school: I need to pray for God's protection around the space as we work to transform inclinations toward destruction into a sense of community ownership. I met Officer Huhnke from the Three Rivers Police Department while we were there and he kindly offered to let his shift know about the change in ownership and help watch over the property.
Over the next few weeks, we'll be working on finding a donated or reduced price mower--riding, as it took Rob two hours to do just the front with a push mower and, if we're really fortunate, a diesel model so we can work with biodiesel for fuel. Once we have the tools in place at the school, someone has offered to help supervise volunteers or perhaps folks from the local probation office for ongoing maintenance, which will be a great start for the community ownership we need, both for us personally and for the good of the project in the future.
One of the big ideas for the space that results from the Imagining Space campaign is an off-campus program for college students. In the course of shared meals, grocery trips, concerts and other activities with our student friends at Calvin College, we've come to realize the value of simply doing life together as a means of collaboratively learning what a richly formed, Kingdom-oriented life might look like. Building on these experiences, we'd like to cultivate a space in which inquisitive students can have these kinds of formative encounters with each other and with mentors and teachers.
While we've spent a lot of time brainstorming about this program, we haven't fully developed a specific plan; in part, this is because the program will look different depending on the space we're able to secure for it. Assuming, though, that we'll be able to purchase Huss School, here are a few ideas for what that program might look like:
- The second floor of Huss would be a residential space with a variety of housing options, from dormitories to apartments. Students in the program would stay in the dorms and visiting faculty (with, perhaps, their families) would occupy the apartments.
- Students and faculty would share a communal kitchen and eating area; in addition to private living space, there would also be a shared living room. In this way, learning can extend beyond classrooms to the informal conversations that happen over meals or after watching a film together. This kind of student-teacher interaction will be a hallmark of the program.
- The curriculum will focus on exploring deep faith commitments and how these commitments might look in various areas of life. The program will seek to connect piety (worship, prayer, spiritual disciplines) with cultural engagement, as these are often compartmentalized and therefore incomplete.
- The semester will be broken into 2- or 3-week long intensive units, with each unit exploring a different aspect of biblical and/or cultural analysis. For example, units may include issues of race and power, contemplative practices, community development principles, local and global peacemaking initiatives, and many others.
- Each student will also intern during the semester at a local organization, church or business. Ideally, of course, this placement would be tied to the student's interest. Assessment and evaluation of their intern experiences will be incorporated into classroom learning.
- Some of the opportunities for internships might include working with a community partner to tutor grade school children, tending to the community garden with neighbors, working in a downtown store, and many others.
There will be many more hours of brainstorming and visioning ahead for an off-campus program, but hopefully the list above helps you envision the potential program a little better. If you have any questions or ideas, please post them below!
This question is a good one that we've heard a couple of times lately from some folks who are considering contributing to the Imagining Space campaign. There's a brief answer in the FAQ section of the web site, but I thought it would be good to go into a little more detail.
The current phase of fundraising, with only about a week and a half to go (yikes!), is an attempt to raise $20,000 as a down payment on the historic Huss School, per the terms of our accepted offer with the current owner. Falling far short of that goal would mean we'd have to back off of our offer on that particular property. It would also communicate some important things to us about our fundraising capabilities and donor base that we couldn't know without putting this vision out there to see what kind of support we can gather behind such a project.
Letting go of Huss School because we can't meet the $20,000 goal does not mean letting go of the overarching vision for Imagining Space--that is, for a place in Three Rivers that can serve as a hub of service, study and community development. Failing to meet the goal for Huss would guide us to consider a more modest space or another arrangement that would allow us to honor the project vision without such an investment of capital. The money we've raised in the first phase of the Imagining Space campaign would be directed toward work in keeping with the campaign vision, just not at Huss School.
Admittedly, a more modest space sounds less scary to us sometimes than does a 22,000 square foot space. However, over the past weeks as we've looked into funding possibilities and talked with potential community partners, we've realized that even though Huss School would take a larger amount of capital to renovate, the programs such a big space would be able to contain will make it more broadly appealing for certain grant opportunities. What we're coming to see, counter-intuitively, is that a larger space might be easier to fund.
Is that helpful? Hopefully so, but please don't hesitate to contact us if you have additional questions (the contact form sends an e-mail directly to me and Rob).
Rob and I had several exciting meeting with local Three Rivers folks this weekend about the potential of Huss School and the ideas that are swirling around in the larger vision for a space in Three Rivers. Several themes emerged from formal and informal conversations:
- People want to see the Huss School building renovated and put to good use, rather than torn down.
- People want to see life-giving, creative opportunities for those who are on the margins socially and economically, especially youth.
- People want to see something that will contribute to the aesthetic and economic value of the neighborhood, city and county.
Admittedly, we've been more than a bit intimidated lately about being pursued by such a huge project, but we came out of this weekend feeling even more committed to doing everything we can to fill the halls and rooms of Huss School with creativity and community once again.
There's so much history and emotional energy surrounding Huss School for many people in Three Rivers and beyond and we feel that if the possibility for this particular building does come to fruition, we'd have to be gentle stewards of those stories and emotions. (For example, check out this blog post Rob stumbled on a couple of weeks ago.) Those in Three Rivers we've spoken with so far--and there will be many more, including property neighbors--have been cautiously hopeful about our vision for the building and give their blessing for this radical journey. Re-purposing Huss School would not be re-purposing just any old building, but one that's a powerful symbol for several generations. We look forward to the opportunity to serve a community that's looking for inspiring signs of hope and imagination for the good of a city we all love.
As we've noted in the property section of this site, we currently have an offer in on Huss School in Three Rivers, Michigan. I thought it might be helpful to upload a few more photos of the building and the property to help visual folks (like myself) get an idea for the space.
The second floor hallway:
A typical classroom:
The backyard (Huss sits on four acres):
Those should give you an idea of the kind of building Huss is. It's roughly 22,000 square feet (including a gym) and holds infinite possibilities!