About the project:
Every Neighborhood Is a Star: North is a participatory, social-practice model that celebrates the spirit of place. Debuting in North Philadelphia, we ask residents a single question: what makes your neighborhood a star? In response, residents become co-curators of their community’s sensorial world, working alongside two lead artists to gather sounds, stories, memories, and found materials. Together, they will transform neighborhood histories and heritage into creative time machines that communities can own, grow, and eventually exhibit as part of a larger installation.
Lead Practitioners
Emilio Maldonado is a mixed-media artist whose practice integrates object-based storytelling, vernacular materials, and sound. He will lead neighborhood collection and the fabrication of modular cabinet forms — keeping the project spatially grounded and conceptually coherent as the primary translator of community material into durable form.
Clancy Philbrick is a social practice artist and former athlete who examines sports culture as civic memory and ritual object-making as community psychoeducation. He will lead workshops and produce sculptural works emerging directly from neighborhood engagement with sacred play, sports histories, and collective ritual.
Project Director
Dr. Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta (“Dr. Matt”) is an award-winning scholar, artist and advocate who currently serves as the Director and Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programming at Temple Contemporary gallery. His research and practice explore worldbuilding: how spaces of Black commerce and cultural heritage foster environments of joy, justice and innovation within urban communities. Dr. Kenyatta’s interdisciplinary work continues to bridge academia, art, and advocacy to reimagine more equitable and culturally vibrant urban futures. He resides in North Philadelphia where he remains actively engaged in community-based initiatives.
Temple Contemporary is a cultural hub that serves as a public beacon for art, architecture, and community imagination along the North Broad cultural corridor of Philadelphia. Powered by the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, we believe creativity should be free and open to all. Our mission is to democratize cultural production through participatory exhibitions, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and place-based storytelling. We aim for our gallery and its headquarters to be the front porch to a dream machine for public creativity in Greater Philadelphia.
Community Partners:
The Village of Arts and Humanities is an iconic, 37-year-old arts and community Development organization rooted in Philadelphia’s Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood. Their mission is to support artists and Black community residents to imagine, design, and build a more just and equitable society. The Village engages more than 1,500 community members annually through programs and projects that blend art and culture with social justice, youth leadership, and equitable neighborhood revitalization.
Taller Puertorriqueño, a community based cultural organization whose primary purpose is to preserve, develop, and promote Puerto Rican arts and culture, grounded in the conviction that embracing one’s cultural heritage is empowering. Taller is also committed to the representation and support of other Latino cultural expressions and our common roots.