Old City Arts History Project
Old City Arts History Project looks at a neighborhood in Philadelphia that was crucial to an emerging generation of artists where they created a center for cross-disciplinary arts activities, epitomized by a collection of watershed public events that took place from 1975 through 1980.
With a Discovery Grant from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage in 2018, Philadelphia Dance Projects began to research the legacy and history of artists and their activities, who were living and working in Old City circa 1975-1980.
This discovery process grew out of PDP’s Local Dance History Project (2010) which pursued an understanding of the roots of contemporary dance in Philadelphia. A significant number of dance artists were at the core of founding and/or creating and presenting work through Old City Arts during that era. Critical to understanding this evolution is the interplay with other artists in other disciplines particularly music, theater or performance art and the visual arts. By exchanging this information and ideas about this history, artists and audiences may come to appreciate the depth of work being created today, not only in terms of style and interdisciplinary interaction, but also the social and urban nexus with which art connects.
The Old City Arts History Project investigates the arts in relationship to place and considers how the work of the artists of the time sparked a physical, social, and cultural transformation that engendered the reinvention of Old City—a neighborhood that continues to evolve today.
See and learn more at www.oldcityartshistory.com
Read about the Old City Arts History Project SYMPOSIUM on Broad Street Review here
