 Welcome to coast to coast. My name is Lily Weinberg and I'm here joined by my colleague Ellen Wong, program director from Philadelphia. Hi Ellen. Hey how's it going? It's going well and I'm super excited because our colleague Lillian Crow, which our audience members know very well, had her baby on Friday. I know it's so exciting. I know we miss you Lillian. I know we do miss Lillian but she is certainly busy doing very important things with her with her newborn, but excited to share the screen with you Ellen and to go deeper into Philadelphia and and to see what what's happening and all the cool things that are going on in Philadelphia and so as our audience knows coast to coast is really talking about the future of cities and and what that means in context of COVID and how it's such a dynamic time and we've had topics around public space or on technology, mobility and today I'm really excited to hear more and to learn more about what engagement looks like during a pandemic because that's complicated and there's different ways to engage of course safely during a pandemic and so can you tell us a little bit more about about what we're talking about today? Yeah so I'm also really excited to be here so thanks for inviting me on today's show. We have a powerhouse of women from Philly today and that gets me even more excited and we're going to be looking at the creative ways in which cities and particularly in Philadelphia how we're engaging with our communities during this pandemic. You know what are we seeing? What are we learning? What are the questions we're going to be grappling with and and so we're going to go deep into both the kind of our perspectives on what communication looks like as well as some tactical things that hopefully our audience can take away with and perhaps implement in your own hometowns and so with that I'd like to welcome our guests, Sandy Clark who is the vice president of news and civic dialogue for W-H-Y-Y and my Trey Roy the executive director of Bartcham's Garden. Hello! Hello! You guys have fun and I'll see you guys later. Yeah that's right so we're gonna spend about 15 minutes with me in dialogue and and then we'll invite Lily to come back in to post some questions from the audience so for those who are tuning in today please make sure to put your questions in a Q&A box or on Facebook and if you're tuning in from Twitter just make sure to include the hashtag nightlife. All right let's get started so just to begin let's set the context for for the conversation for today and this question is for both of you but we'll start with Sandy. Sandy could you tell us a little bit about your work and what does community engagement mean to you and your organization? Hi well good afternoon everyone and I hope everyone is keeping well. You know so community engagement to me is really is so foundational sometimes I get choked up talking about it really. You know this is about doing the work from inside out and not outside in. It's about you know asking and understanding and seeing and listening to our communities who aren't always asked and seen and heard and understood and you know and it's a it's a it's really about meeting for us as an organization meeting a real need instead of a perceived need right and it's recognizing the work that people in communities already are doing those in communities every day who are asking understanding seeing and doing and so and working together and it you know I think for journalism you know it really is about you know it's about relevancy and connectivity it's it you know we hear the trust building all the time but the reality is is that you know we have to be there and people should know what to expect from us. Yeah that's that's great thanks so much for sharing that with us and I I do appreciate you also just mentioning kind of the emotional aspect of your work you know we are in Philly together it is our community and we're experiencing a pandemic together and so when you think about how are you connecting with folks I do think there is just a lot of that emotional aspect that that goes into what drives us in wanting to serve serve each other and so Mitre would do you mind answering the same questions tell us a little bit about your work and what does community engagement mean to you and Bartram's garden. Thanks for having me this is a great opportunity to share a little bit about Bartram's garden which is located in southwest Philadelphia along the title lower title Skookill the garden has over the years been seen much more as a private estate so in the last few years we've been working hard to make the garden open accessible and to live up to its public space status which has had for years without necessarily our neighbors knowing about it and for us the community engagement work over the last few years has been really focused on building relationships the idea that a garden a park a civic space needs to mean something for its community and how can Bartram be a space that becomes the family room the classroom space for the Southwest community so that's what we've been tackling at the garden in through a number of different programmatic initiatives and at the heart of all of those programmatic initiatives is how can this garden really stand up and take responsibility and have its role be that of a public green space where everybody's welcome where our neighbors who are largely an African American community have not felt welcome in the past and have felt like they were venturing into a private estate how how can we in these times when spaces such as the garden are needed just for people's you know well-being and a little bit of stress relief how can this garden be that for the local community so in these times that relationship building and word of mouth in the Southwest has been a really big part of what we've been focused on wonderful let's stay on that topic of relationship building as a core element to communication which was just what I'm hearing from you my tray and so since the pandemics occurred you know you both are thinking a lot about you know what that relationship building looks like right you're also thinking about representation and making sure folks are staying engaged but you're both managing quite very different platforms from each other so I think maybe we could look at it from those two different perspectives one from the journalism side and thinking about the role of media and storytelling and then my tray from your perspective around doing public spaces how how's your thinking around relationship building and community engagement change during this time you know are there specific things that you started to do that are different from what you were doing before are there things that perhaps you continue to be able to sustain because it just is the best way of connecting with community I'd love to hear some examples or some things that you've tried to do or things that you've been able to continue to do through the pandemic and I'll leave it you know my train I come you know obviously from different sectors but everything she said you could have put why y in there and and it's exactly the same right what do we mean as a you know a public media station and organization to our communities and you know how do we connect and how do we serve serve needs so it's just such a you know I think this is a moment where you know the thought of you know what people are experiencing their homes and their lives and it's really kind of sharpened our focus in terms of service in a way that it's not like it's not program first but it's people first right and so when we think of ourselves in that kind of way I think it you know and I would also add you know it's also time when organizations and boardrooms and newsrooms are being held accountable for you know diversity inclusion and if we ever get to the equity part right that's usually kind of it sort of trails off before you even get there so there's just so much you know just kind of there's so many things that are kind of bringing to surface I think where we how we can best serve and one of them is that you know a lot of kind of our sort of legacy thinking and behaviors has been kind of you know it has sort of been knocked out of the way and in so many ways they you know they can be barriers to engaging with communities and really meeting needs so one example of this is that and obviously there were lots and lots of protests across the nation also in Philadelphia you know against police brutality and and racial injustice pre-pandemic we would not have been able to turn around a four-part series on police reimagined right we would not have been able to engage the community so quickly and so you know it was just an agility about being able to just say you know what here let's talk about this topic particularly defund the police right and it was a narrative that was already being carried carried in so many different ways and so to be able to engage a community on TV right on something that generally costs a lot of money but in this world we're in now where we're used to the zoom visuals and so we we did on TV across digital and then we had a community conversation after the broadcast that's just something that we would not have been able to do before and I think it was a resonant conversation right in the moment as opposed to you know all this kind of you know production barriers that come up that normally would have probably kept us from doing it so quickly yeah that's so there's a few things that I want to point out that you said that really resonated with me as people first versus program first sometimes when you're planning things you're like how do you know what can we do to get people like you know do do something with us and you know when you think about the people first that's a much easier conversation and a much easier way to approach and I think that's perhaps fundamental to community engagement is what I'm hearing from you I think the other thing that I'm hearing is the urgency that has shown up in the work that you're trying to do in community engagement it's it's been accelerated and catalyzed because of the pandemic and the social unrest that's going on as well and you've been able to utilize that momentum to be able to bring the news and information and images and engagement to folks and then the third thing was that you know because you're providing information to community and you're engaging with folks is that you're actually in people's homes and that's kind of I never really thought about that that you're you're really it's a very personal experience so I just appreciate those things that you shared my trick I turn it to you you know how how are you thinking about community engagement how's it changed how's it see the scene please share one of the things that the garden that we've always taken for granted is this idea that this space allows people to gather and all of a sudden we weren't able to gather in the same way anymore and so we had to pivot very quickly to figuring out how gatherings could happen without people actually being at the garden in in groups we also had to pivot to making sure that the casual visitor which suddenly became a huge number during the pandemic our numbers have just grown in pretty in staggering ways how do we ensure that the garden can be kept up so that it doesn't get worn down with the extra use and so on and how does the casual visitor become part of the garden's sort of way of being given the that everybody's looking for that little respite and peace and quiet and a chance to be outdoors so we very quickly pivoted to three priorities at the garden one was that we've always in the summer had about 50 student interns engage in a deep way at the garden these are students from our immediate community we didn't want to have those jobs go away this was this not necessarily pocket money for a lot of the students and so we were committed to making sure that the students would have a part virtual part socially distanced program and our youth leaders I give them so much credit they on a basically overnight re-imagined the engagement process so much so that students were taking home kits to figure out the nutrition education component and doing it virtually from home over zoom lessons meeting in groups of three to six at the garden and socially distanced programming so all of that had to happen within a matter of a few weeks and that was I think one of the biggest things that we were able to do to keep our students engaged at the garden the other big priority that we decided was going to be very important was to continue the work of the farm Sankofa community farm at the garden produces provides about 15,000 20,000 pounds of fresh locally grown produce to our neighbors keeping that farm up and running has been really a big focus for us so much so that because we couldn't bring in volunteers as we usually do we've had a rotation of staff come through to make sure that our production numbers don't decrease our way of communicating now that the produce is sort of plentiful is actually through a very ultra local text group that we are using to tell people where the produce kit will be available and what times and so on it only goes out to the neighborhood that we're focused in it does not go out on Facebook it does not go out on any other social media we're using text groups to as many as 250 300 families at once to communicate events and activities at the garden the third thing we pivoted to was just sort of well-being mental sort of recreational kinds of activities that would allow our neighbors to have a chance to you know keep their spirits up at a very difficult time so we are doing a lot of virtual programming that is about mental health you know getting out on the trail how to be on the trail safely we provide hand sanitizers now across the entire length of the trail so that families that are coming out can feel safe we are also providing a lot of sort of content that families can first engage with at home before they come out to the garden so that they can have a safe experience we're doing a lot of this through the word of mouth we also have a street team that goes out and flyers specific program elements that we feel are we want to really engage locally with one thing that the city did which i really commend them on is because our local pools and our rec centers were closed through the pandemic they sort of revamped a program called play streets so we were able to be one of the sites for play streets at barter rooms essentially play streets means that children from the immediate community have a safe place to come and play and also have access to meals so during the summer when the school you know schools weren't necessarily providing meals as regularly we felt that that was a role that the garden could play so we sort of pivoted and worked as a distribution site as well so some of this has been very much hands on very carefully thought out you know within covid guidelines programming a lot of it has been virtual and what's been amazing is to see the community response to like getting the texts and showing up at the farmers market that just gets put up like there's almost like a call and response kind of thing that's been very interesting and heartwarming in all of this yeah that's wonderful thanks so much for sharing about the robust work that's happening at barter rooms garden and i think you know both what what you're both sharing is that there is really no silver bullet to how you can engage community there's a lot of ways in which both your organizations are wanting to stay connected with folks in in in our city and so you know i make sure you kind of brushed over it but you know that even just using a platform like text messaging and pushing notifications you know it can be such a simple simple little thing but it's a very very clear tool that you've been able to utilize something that you already had in place and now it's become crucial to getting information out so i have my last question to you all is you know what opportunities do you see in the future of your community's post-covid you know what's what are you doing now that's here that you think is here to stay what are some things that you've discovered that you know this is incredible and and we want to make sure it's something that we institutionalize in the work that we do in community engagement well i think uh and i'm this is one of the questions that was in the chat you know it's about finding you know in engaging with new communities and also serving the law-standing communities that we've had you know this is a moment where frankly our membership which is you know largely white that was some of that is changing but also older and and because i think of the the unrest they there actually is a yearning to have more information right and is a yearning to engage more which which is great because i think that that sometimes can be a barrier to to new communities we're also working with community partners you know we we have just created a news and information exchange which is working with folks who are ready are in communities who are creating content who are you know engaging with their communities and and it's really about breaking down recognizing that there are people there who are doing this work every single day uh you know and so we've we asked them don't don't come to us and try to retrofit what you do for why we want to meet you exactly where you are we want to support what you do and so we've started with a number of partners and and you know we put their work on the radio talking about gun violence and exactly the voice that they capture it and i think that that's going to be you know you know very very powerful in addition to helping us build relationships that are you know sustainable in communities and not just swooping in and out i do want to add that there's you know other parts of why why i mean if you look across the whole organization you know everything's kind of kicked up and into a different realm are we expanded our education offerings um on tv uh you know there's there's you know programming for for kids all the way to and to and up right because we know that people are home with their kids uh you know and there's a desire for a different kind of programming um we've you know have been having race conversations you know well before this moment we'll continue to do so and one thing that zoom allows us to do is that you know we're planning a conversation now with some partners where we're going to have communities in different breakout rooms and then bring us all together so we can actually do a bunch of different neighborhoods in one engagement uh as opposed to you know trying to figure out physically where we all meet right and i think that's going to be really interesting of kind of you know bringing together different parts of our city into one one conversation and and i do and i want to give a nod to our media labs and you know career pathways program and these are you know you've been there ellen so so you've seen what these these kids can do this could have been a time where you know it's just like we're not going to do the summer programs we're not going to you know have students because we we haven't figured this out yet but instead we you know we created a careers the pathway paid you know summer program and so uh 22 students you know worked with various media partners uh and and and we need to know kind of how they're processing information how they're creating in the way that connects with their uh audiences too in their communities and so that was just so rich for us i mean i think just watching how they engage in conversations about being out of school for example right in virtual learning uh you know sometimes we forget that the youth voices uh you know need to be heard uh as well and that they're creating content in their own way that is very very connective so i think across the whole organization i mean we found uh we have found ways to both address kind of some of the sort of legacy mindsets frankly uh and to break down the silos internally as well so that we can engage and the other thing is that we've also engaged several community uh curators uh and so these are people that we are working with in conversation with who are creating conversations in their own communities and then we are listening and we are uh engaging and and and watching what their needs are as well yeah that's fantastic and my tripe what about you what's here to stay post-covid you know one of the things i'm really uh energized by is sort of the new urgency that we feel that i'm hoping we can hold on to that there are amazing conversations going on in southwest philadelphia about climate change right now about access and sort of the lack of access and injustices and how do we tackle some of these issues and i want to hold on to that i want to hold on to the agility that i've seen amongst some of the leaders in the southwest to jump into solving problems and addressing need i want to hold on to some of the kindness i see some of the sort of generosity i see in an environment where it's easy to retreat to you know just being about yourself and being about you know just what relates to your own personal life i see incredible generosity i see incredible kindness and i want to hold on to all of that i want to really hold on to the urgency though to tackle big challenging issues i think this is the time it's come it's here and it's gonna redefine what public spaces are in communities i think that's a beautiful note to um loop lily back in and um and i know lily you have some q and a from the audience we do this is this is a fantastic conversation um i want to elevate um a couple of questions um and and then we'll we'll close the show but but thanks ellen for for leading this um so so one one question is around um elevates the digital divide and and so as we think about engaging communities virtually um uh how how are you how are you dealing with um our communities that don't have access to internet and i know that the texting is a great example of that and there are my tray a bunch of questions about which platform you're using but i'll start with you um of how you're you're thinking about um engaging virtually um folks that don't have access to internet so um at barterums our technology has not necessarily been what we've been you know leading with texting services and old-fashioned service it's like e-texting it's really simple we um over the last few years as relationships have grown we've asked people to sign on and we've asked them if they'd like to know more about when the farmers market is up or when they when our movie nights are or things like that we've combined it with our street team we hire locally sometimes as many as 10 people to uh blast information across the neighborhood it's all old-fashioned you know sort of walk up and down the streets and let people know we go into you know local stores and things like that so it's a combination of the two and we've been you know asking people to sign up to things so that they can know when to show up and so on and it's a bit of a long haul it's taken us a few years to kind of build up the communication channels but this isn't high-tech that we're talking about and we're a very low-tech organization in fact it's one of our has been one of our challenges which is where i think the agility has come in our staff have not been about technology they've been about hands-on engagement in the garden and so we've had to pivot really hard yeah yeah sandy do you have any thoughts on on on this question yeah it's something you know i've been thinking a lot about too so you know we use ground source as a you know text through our community contributors editor and that's been very effective actually and you know i think sometimes we forget that digital is also word of mouth and so you know you could put the information out there it's still you know mean something if you're you're sharing it with your communities and then we continue to work with our partners and these are like faith leaders and others right who are very very much connected in their communities in their various ways but i think that's a really good question in terms of you know how do we how do we get to people who who you know aren't going to get on a zoom call i will say that we've had so much more engagement i feel a different maybe crowd of people you know who are coming to our conversations you know to get 200 people into a room at why y isn't that uncommon but you know that's a good event for us yeah in these conversations we're seeing two 300 people and so i think that there's something about just having kind of the you know we have our time is different right and and it's you're not planning schedules in exactly the same kind of way until people can come on their own terms and that is that is really an interesting point you know the the broader piece that the potential of that um of the outreach is is very exciting um as we think about engagement i'm just gonna have one more question um and and sandi you you you did answer this on the on the q and a but i wanted to dig a little bit deeper about this this point that you made um around the opportunity to um be more nimble um during this time and and i think that that this my try you also um kind of alluded to this too can you can you tell us a bit more about why why do you think that that you've been able to be more nimble during this time well i think that's what mitre said in terms of it's it's there's an urgency right and there's something about um you know all the layers between you know uh our communities and us i mean it's just it sort of feels like that you know all the reasons that we can get into a room and have these exhausting meetings about you know why we can't do certain things because it doesn't fit here doesn't fit there we're not worried about that anymore and and i think there's something very liberating uh and freeing about that um just being it not you know we don't have to have a lot of conversations about how we line up this shot and do all these kinds of things that actually have have been barriers and so i think just understanding the need you know understanding um our relevance and and what we should mean to our communities that do mean to our communities in many ways absolutely mitre do you have any thoughts on that i think it's what sandy says i feel like for us to be relevant we had to pivot quickly and um it wasn't i think you know done was better than perfect so we just moved into doing some things we failed at some things we sort of pivoted quickly i think getting um the staff and my board and my staff are like it's the talent pool is amazing getting everybody working together has been really uh incredibly rewarding and um out of that engagement came really creative solutions for very simple things that we might have thought were barriers before and i think as sandy says you know it just stripped away all of these layers and you sort of cut through the noise and got to the heart of it and i think when we said to ourselves that we were going to keep these three priorities for the garden it meant some other stuff had to take back burner and that was okay we made that decision collectively when we decided that this was going to be our focus and um i think that keeping everybody on the same page has been another really important aspect of this during this time we have a ton of conversations maybe even more than before about what's happening what how things are impacting everybody so i think just keeping those lines of communication open all the time big fantastic well thank you we are we are at time but um i um you know it is it is an incredibly challenging time you know uh in our world um right now and but but you too have have left me feeling very optimistic in many ways and and ellen thank you for for leading this very important conversation and sandy and my tre you are fabulous and um and so insightful um and and when i think about you know the simple things as people first people first it it you know really simplifying it um it matters and and it's what matters in our communities ellen do you want to uh uh say any final words no just that you know how much i love you both and um and we're you know we're just so thankful as a community to be able to have leaders like you um really thinking very deeply about these things and also taking um taking that chance at trying things out whether they they you know fully work out you know in the way in which we we think about them or we dream them up and sometimes they think we do fail and i think um and i think we need to take those chances especially during these unprecedented times so thank you so much for your time and like thanks for having me of course thanks and um and and for folks um who are still hanging on we did put a bunch of resources in the chat box um that that you can look at and we also will be linking to our website the resources for for both panelists um and next week we'll do a deep dive um with med daily uh the executive director of the underline and really look at what is resiliency and innovation looks like um during these unprecedented times so with that uh thank you and see you all next week Tuesday at 1 p.m eastern take care bye