A Journey Through Hollins Reflection

Our event was held on a beautiful saturday afternoon. During our last class meeting before the event we were concerned that people would have difficulty locating our building, our original idea was to find a chalkboard to put outside advertising our event, but i was unable to locate a chalkboard. I decided to go with a balloon bouquet with information on one of the balloons, i think this idea was helpful in drawing attention. We had no complaints of difficulty finding the building.  I was surprised to find that many people showed up early for our event and were extremely interested in the walking tour. I would say we had at least 25 people sign in on our log, and a pretty decent size group went on the walking tour. It was exciting to present the information we gathered to the community. De’Andre did a great job catering our went and I heard a lot of compliments from the attendees. Zachs presentation of the website went very well and people seemed to enjoy the interactive aspect. Most people really came for the tour though. During our entire event i took a lot of photographs to document this great experience. I still have to edit them but i think i got some great shots, especially during the tour. The tour was exciting, and it was great to see in person all of the buildings we did our research on. I noted that this tour was almost completely different then our original tour with Curtis. We went to a lot of new places. We ended at Hollins Place which was a great way to end the event. De’Andre and Curtis did a wonderful job for the open mic portion and we even had some community members participate. This was a great experience for one of my first UMBC classes and I actually hope to take it again as the higher level class for my graduate degree.

Semester Reflection

              AMST 422 has been one of my favorite classes this semester. The first few weeks I really enjoyed discovering the history surrounding Hollins Market. I had the 1920-1930s, I expected to find a lot of information in that time period but only found information on the remodeling of the market and crimes from the area. Once we were finished with our decade research we really began diving into more hands-on activities. My favorite class was when we went on the walking tour with Curtis. We were able to gather a lot of information about historical buildings and residents of the area. When we did our personal research on a historical building I chose to do the bottle factory Curtis had mentioned during our tour. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to find much information at all pertaining to a bottle factory in Hollins Market. My research was slim to none on the subject and I moved onto researching the Pratt Street Conspiracy. Though there were not many articles with information, the Pratt Street Conspiracy was an extremely interesting subject. IT was a local shop managed by teenagers to provide fashionable clothes at reasonable prices. I really loved that there was an option for work for the teenagers of the area, even those that had dropped out of high school. This write up was in the Light City newspaper along with other pieces done by other classmates. It was really cool to have our pieces in a newspaper that the community would see during such an awesome community event.

              After this we really began working on our class project. We had many ideas as a class which made it a little difficult to decide what our project would be. I recommended a video of the market with a voice over history, I felt this option would be more appealing to the community. Ultimately, we decided to do a walking tour, a website, and a zine full of information. We even had ideas to include an open mic portion, so community members could be involved. The open mic portion has been taken over by Curtis, as we decided we had too many things going on. I think our class event will have a decent turn out. When we handed out fliers last week many members of the community seemed intrigued by the event and expressed interest in coming.

              I worked with the group that was writing up information the past of Hollins Market. My group created the website associated with important building we plan on talking about during our walking tour. I also created most of the Hollins Market history timeline based off of the research done by each student for their decades. Since the history/past of the market is pretty much set in stone, I then worked in the future of the market. I get in contact with a representative of War Horse, War Horse being the contracting company brought in to redevelop the market. I was in contact with Jim Mills, and he gave me a lot of information on the project. The market is going to become a very modern and open community space for all members of the area. I find the plans intriguing and think many patrons will be happy with the remodeled market.

              I am excited to reveal to the community all the things we have learned over this semester. I hope our event will bring some unknown information to members of the community. During the event I will be assisting Curtis on the walking tour. I am looking forward to feedback from people that attend the event, to see if our event served its purpose, to be an informative and fun community gathering event.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with my classmates and get involved in the community. I feel like it has been a wonderful learning experience, not only academically but socially as well.