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Starting in 2021, Isidor Studio served as lead consultant for a community visioning process to develop a memorial to commemorate and celebrate the legacy of Charlotte Forten in the park that was dedicated in her name at 289 Derby St in Salem, MA. The consultant team included Mel Isidor, Keshia DeLeon, and Claudia Paraschiv in partnership with city staff. Our team deployed a bilingual community survey, postcard campaign, and pop-up events located in the park. In addition to generating vital community networks, these engagement activities surfaced and clarified community preferences for the future of the park and memorial.
Beyond the initial visioning, Mel continued to engage with the city on an advisory and technical assistance committee from an initial call for proposals to the final memorial installation. Through an open commission process for a life-size bronze sculpture, Ai Qiu Hopen of Humanity Memorial Inc. was selected by our advisory committee, guided by a public voting process.
Furthermore, in the summer of 2024, Isidor Studio led the research, content development, and design for two permanent bilingual signage panels to complement the memorial installation. The signage serves to inform the public of Charlotte Forten’s legacy alongside highlighting the project and artist's background. The content on both signage panels is featured in both English and Spanish to improve accessibility given the park’s proximity to a large Spanish-speaking community.
The final monument and signage were permanently installed and announced at a dedication ceremony in November 2024, marking the accomplishment of this community-informed memorialization process. As stated by Regina Zaragoza Frey, Salem’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and member of the Charlotte Forten Advisory Group, “This bronze statue commemorating Charlotte Forten is historic in many ways. It marks Salem’s first statue of a Black woman, celebrating her life, legacy, and the hope she inspires for the future. It is also the first statue in Salem created by a woman of color, artist Ai Qiu, of Asian descent. Her work, Moving Spirit of Love, symbolically embodies hope and justice.”
Memorial unveiling image by https://salemnews.com/.
Preserving African American Places seeks to understand the implications of place-based injustice and their impact on the preservation of African American cultural heritage, as well as to identify preservation-based strategies for equitable growth and development that respect the historical and present-day realties and conditions of African American Neighborhoods.
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In the summer of 2018, ten students at universities across the United States were selected as AACHAF Research Fellows and were commissioned to research and write essays on neighborhood change and historic preservation in ten study cities.
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