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Storytelling to Preserve a  
Community’s History

Authors 
DESMOND L. KEMP Doctoral Student, American Studies, IU School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI,  
LATOSHA ROWLEY Doctoral Student, Urban Education Studies, IU School of Education, IUPUI ,  
STACIA MURPHY Doctoral Student, American Studies, IU School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI 
  

keywords 
community based participatory research, 
storytelling, community, gentrification 

 
abstract 
Community based participatory research 
(CBPR) can inform researchers of the latest 
trends, policy issues, and business practices that 
impact community members' everyday lives. 
The Center for Research on Inclusion and Social 
Policy (CRISP) at Indiana University Purdue 
University—Indianapolis (IUPUI) invited five 
graduate students from different disciplines 
at IUPUI to participate in a collaborative, 
community-based participatory project with the 
Harrison Center for the Arts, a community-based 
art gallery, near the Martindale Brightwood 
community. The art center strives to preserve 
the culture of the neighborhood, in the face of 
gentrification, by allowing its members to act as 
storytellers through community arts. Through 
discovery, the CRISP researchers found that 
storytelling is essential not only for preserving 
history but also for addressing inequalities from a 
community-centered perspective. 
 
introduction 
Storytelling has the power to send a message, 
preserve culture, history, and influence change. 
In the 2019-2020 school year, The Center for 
Research on Inclusion and Social Policy (CRISP) 

at Indiana University Purdue University—
Indianapolis (IUPUI) invited five graduate 
students from different IUPUI disciplines to 
participate in a collaborative, community-based 
participatory project with the Harrison Center for 
the Arts (Harrison Center), a community-based 
art gallery, in Indianapolis’ Martindale Brightwood 
community. As CRISP Fellows, it was our goal to 
hear and make sense of the stories about residents’ 
perceptions regarding the Pre-Enact Indy program 
as well as understand the impact of changes that 
were happening in their Martindale-Brightwood 
neighborhood. We visited long-term and new 
residents to capture their stories, memories, and 
reflections about the neighborhood history and 
the recent changes and trends that have impacted 
Martindale Brightwood. The overall focus of our 
research was how the community engaged in Pre-
Enact Indy, a Harrison Center program that was 
instrumental in bringing Martindale Brightwood's 
history to life for its residents in an interactive, 
festive environment. 

The Pre-Enact Indy event was created to empower 
neighborhood residents by allowing space for 
them to share their hopes and dreams for the 
neighborhood and future generations. The primary 
purpose of the event was to create a new reality for 
future generations that illuminated the cultural 
and historical heritage through the arts, music, 
theatre, dance, paintings, and cultural drumming 
ceremonies. Even though the long-term neighbors 



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did not have enough economic wealth to stop the 
gentrification of their neighborhood, they wanted 
to make sure they still had ownership in preserving 
the cultural history of their community.  This 
opportunity was a breath of fresh air for graduate 
students because we rarely have the space to hear 
the true stories of the people in the communities 
that surround our academic institution. Though 
we may participate in local community events and 
affairs, vote, and visit local coffee shops and diners, 
the true history and stories of local neighborhoods 
may be undisclosed to us as outsiders coming in to 
take from the neighborhood without participating 
with the neighbors. 
 
crisp fellowship experience 
In our CRISP Fellowship Experience, as doctoral 
students, we had the fortunate opportunity to 
gather data from interviews, then collaborate 
with the neighbors to verify the information so 
that we could analyze, interpret, and organize the 
information for dissemination through CRISP. 
This community relevant research was important 
to the community and the university because it 
centered the voices of residents and presented 
some social disparities, inequities, and information 
to address complex policy issues that CRISP 
worked on in their office. This project had an 
indirect focus on race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic 
status as the residents shared their perspectives 
on the gentrification that was happening in the 
neighborhood. The project also provided an 
opportunity for us to understand the intersections 
of race, class, and gender as the long-term residents 
were mostly African American, the newer residents 
were mostly White, and the developers in the area 
were mostly companies headed by White males. 
Exploring these different identities helped us 
understand the effects on the well-being of some 
residents. 

  

The IU Public Policy Institute launched the 
Center for Research on Inclusion and Social 
Policy with Dr. Breanca Merritt serving as the 
Founding Director in 2019. The mission of this 
center is to evaluate solutions by supporting local 
organizations in understanding their programs 
that address social policy issues that affect Indiana 
residents. The CRISP Clinic Fellowship provides 
service-minded students with hands-on experience 
working alongside policy analysts and community 
organizations to develop data-driven solutions 
while also leveraging classroom skills. 

Our CRISP experience in community engagement 
research provided us with a rich learning 
opportunity. Ten students from various programs 
across IUPUI’s campus were selected for the 
inaugural cohort which began in the 2020 spring 
semester. The group was split to work on two 
projects that focused on housing issues and the 
arts. Our team was designated to study the impact 
of arts programming in a local community. As 
members of this cohort, we contributed to the 
project as Black doctoral students, experienced 
teachers, activists, and business associates.

We find it important to mention the project was 
moved to the zoom platform in accordance with 
state, local, and university shutdown orders 
for maintaining health during the COVID-19 
pandemic. We had to shift to online visitations 
between March and June 2020 until later in the 
summer months when we met face-to-face as 
outdoor activities were permitted. As early career 
researchers, this transference helped us understand 
the nature and the uncertainty of community-based 
participatory research (CBPR) when working with 
and in the community. 

In our academic process as community-based 
participatory researchers, we learned the 
procedures of research as we transcribed tape-
recorded interviews of the residents' stories. We 

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verified the information with the participants for 
accuracy to make sure we captured their words. 
After we transcribed the transcripts, we organized 
the data and interpreted and analyzed it using 
thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The 
CRISP staff worked closely with us to support our 
understanding and interpretation of the data to 
help us grow as researchers. They provided us with 
information on how to analyze and interpret data 
during our CRISP workshops and seminars. These 
seminars and workshops were valuable because 
they enhanced our knowledge and research skills. 
We were able to identify themes that emerged from 
the data: feelings about neighborhood changes, the 
art and history of the neighborhood, and building 
a sense of community between long-term residents 
and newer residents.  Each theme falls under the 
research area of social inclusion in Indianapolis. 
The African American communities in Indianapolis 
have been overwhelmingly marginalized since the 
1960s (Pierce, 2005).

As CRISP Fellows, we engaged in research for 
ten months that illuminated the perspectives 
of the Martindale Brightwood residents. In 
our community-based participation, we spent 
time visiting and chatting with up to thirty 
neighborhood residents, local business owners, and 
community leaders. Specifically, we interviewed 
the twenty-year veteran Executive Director of the 
Harrison Center, Joanna Beatty Taft. We were also 
introduced to the organization’s “Greatriarchs” 
which we will discuss later in this report. 

Through our CBPR project, we learned that 
Martindale Brightwood is a complex community 
and many of the residents in Martindale 
Brightwood valued the community as a family-
centered, historic space. But we also learned that 
other people who resided inside and outside the 
community may have only seen the space as a 
blank slate that could be molded and shaped 

into a different cultural landscape mainly for 
economic purposes as the new homes being built 
in the community would increase taxes and cause 
a displacement of some current residents who 
experienced low wealth.  
 
inside the harrison center 
On one chilly Friday afternoon in late January 
2020, with our researchers’ hats, we traveled to 
the Harrison Center for the Arts to meet with 
Joanna Taft for our first interview. Since the year 
2000, this organization has served as an advocate 
for community arts, education, and programming 
that is equitable in its approach to cultural 
development. For the Martindale-Brightwood 
community, this is a neutral space for local 
residents to meet. 

 As we walked into the ornamental space, Joanna 
and her team cleared spaces for us to meet in the 
lounge area of the art center. We immediately 
recognized this art center was a space for healing 
and a place where community members came to 
connect for well-being and rejuvenation. According 
to Sobonfu Somé (1997) community is the spirit. 

To our surprise and excitement, we met one of 
the community’s elders as she was leaving the 
art center. As she departed from the center, 
she gave Joanna a hug and mentioned that she 
would see her on the porch. Since meeting on 
the porch sounded unusual, Joanna informed 
our research team that the community members 
met at weekend porch parties. Porch parties were 
a creative space to bring community members 
together to fellowship and bond over food and 
drinks while sharing stories. This opportunity for 
neighbors to swap stories created First Friday's 
events at the Harrison Center. First Friday provides 
space for community artists to come together and 
tell stories through printmaking and oral histories 
of the Greatriarchs. Their oral histories play a vital 



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role in teaching the new community members as 
well as the youth about the rich history of their 
neighborhood. 

The Greatriarchs are long-term residents of the 
Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood. They are 
leaders, nurturers, mentors, and friends of the old 
and new residents of their neighborhood. 

Collectively, our interest grew as we engaged 
in participation with community members 
to hear their stories because the media from 
the event did not capitalize on the spirit of 
Martindale Brightwood. Our research efforts were 
facilitated. She helped us coordinate meetings 
and engagements with Mrs. Taft and community 
members to hear their perspectives on the 
Harrison Center for the Arts and the Pre-Enact 
Indy program. As a team, we initially developed 50 
questions for our interview with Joanna but with 
the allotted hour to meet with her, we knew that we 
had to revise our interview questions to ten so that 
we could navigate the interview session successfully 
and obtain valuable information about the art 
center’s history. The most significant question for 
us to pursue in this research study was to gain an 
understanding of how the community felt about the 
Pre-Enact Indy event. 
 
the martindale brightwood 
community 
The origin of this neighborhood is quite unique. 
Originally, it was two separate neighborhoods, 
Martindale and Brightwood, that were located 
near the railroad and merged in 1992 to form one 
neighborhood, which is the oldest in Indianapolis. 
According to Fuller, the residents of Martindale-
Brightwood have faced displacement and the 
emergence of industrial pollution (2016, p. 204).  
The development of Interstates 65 and 70 cut 
through and divided the neighborhood displaced 
residents. Since many residents could not get loan 

approvals for home repairs, they moved out to 
relocate on the east side of Indianapolis to more 
affordable homes that unfortunately increased 
vacant homes in the area. This change has brought 
about gentrification which according to the Polis 
Center is the cultural and racial displacement due  
to a shift in increased housing costs and income 
levels. With this change, many of the homes in 
Martindale-Brightwood were no longer passed 
down from generation to generation.  

Martindale-Brightwood is a predominantly Black 
neighborhood located in the near northeast side 
of Indianapolis bounded by 30th Street, 21st 
Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and Sherman Drive. 
Based on SAVI data, The Martindale Brightwood 
community has a population of 5,666 residents 
and the median household income is $25,972. The 
majority of the homes in this neighborhood were 
built before the 1970s. 

The original Martindale Brightwood community 
had children playing in the streets and had 
neighborhood cookouts, porches filled with 
neighbors who participated in games and dances, 
there was also attendance and support at the 
local church and school events by the Martindale 
Brightwood neighbors. Now the neighborhood 
suffers from isolation because the new neighbors 
who have moved into the area fence themselves 
and their property in which demonstrates a lack 
of care for neighbors, and it eliminates a sense of 
friendly community by stripping away a spirit of 
place and a legacy of history. 

The Martindale Brightwood community in 
Indianapolis has a rich history. Fortunately, 
many members of the community have lived 
there for over 50 years. The longevity keeps 
the neighborhood’s memories alive with the 
help and support of the Harrison Center. This 
center provides opportunities for the Martindale 
Brightwood residents to keep the spirit of  

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community in the hearts and minds of residents 
through the art of storytelling. The Harrison 
Center provides new residents with care packages 
filled with artifacts and a calendar about their 
community and its members. 
 
using stories to build 
community 
Stories help us understand and learn from other 
people’s perspectives about their experiences, 
challenges, and the impact of transformations in 
their communities. Storytelling connects humans 
by giving us a sense of who we are as people, 
cultural groups, or a nation (Del Negro & Kimball, 
2021). Transformations such as where there once 
stood a multitude of oak trees, now stand modern 
buildings taller than those trees. But the question 
is, how many oak trees can we find when there is 
a new car parking garage on the east end of the 
neighborhood block where children once played? 
Most people, especially those who are new to an 
area will only notice a space as it appears in the 
present day. But for the long-term dwellers that 
grew up in the neighborhood, they still see the park 
where they kissed their first love or met up with 
friends to play kickball. 

 
According to Richie (2014), oral history is an active 
process in which interviewers seek out, record, 
and preserve such memories. Oral history collects 
memories (the core of oral history), and personal 
commentaries of historical significance through 
recorded interviews (p.1).  Although a critique on 
oral histories offers a challenge about memory 
recall, Serie McDougal III (2017) states people 
may be more prone to make mistakes or make up 
information when asked to recall information that 
occurred in the distant past. In community-based 
research, the life experience of people is beneficial 
and can be used as raw material to provide a 
new dimension to history (Thompson, 2017). As 
we engaged in dialogue with the residents, the 
interview provided a means of discovering written 
documents and photographs which may not have 
otherwise been traced (p. 5). As well, interviews 
bring together people from different social classes 
and age groups who would more than likely rarely 
meet or get to know each other closely (p. 10).

As community-engaged researchers, we were 
able to hear the stories about the shifting and 
changing neighborhood between 16th and 25th 
streets as we attended one of the porch parties with 
the Greatriarchs. They said the changes became 

Figure 1. Greatriarchs of the Martindale-Brightwood Community



64ENGAGE!  |  c r e at i v e  a rts

apparent to residents as people moved in and 
out on a regular basis. One resident stated, “the 
neighborhood began to decline when the money 
moved out. It was not just a White flight. It was 
also Black people who had the means to move.” 
Another long-term resident of 33 years mentioned 
that the names of the streets have changed as 
things have evolved into a different neighborhood 
space. Another long-term resident commented, 
“our neighborhood has been emptied and outsiders 
are moving in, buying up homes, and taking over 
with new homes that are $200,000 or more that 
only white residents can afford so they are closer 
to downtown. Many of the original neighborhood 
residents have moved away or have passed away 
and the homes have been left to younger family 
members.” Another resident added, “it’s sad that 
they have been irresponsible by selling the homes 
that have been in the families for decades.” The 
long-term residents advised that the developers 

are renovating homes but not repairing streets and 
sidewalks in certain parts of the neighborhood. 

Even though, as a CRISP research team, we were 
supposed to find out about the Pre-Enact Indy 
program, we heard the stories from the residents’ 
perceptions that Pre-Enact Indy was a nice 
community event, but the real impact was the 

changes and trends that were happening in the 
Martindale Brightwood neighborhood was the 
bigger concern to the long-term residents. It was 
our research assignment to be the resource for 
the Harrison Center in the community to find out 
what the residents felt about engaging in Pre-Enact 
Indy and what changes needed to be made to the 
program. As with any community-based research 
project, when engaging with community residents, 
a new focus could emerge with new research 
questions that the community members wanted to 
pursue projects that would meet the real needs of 
the community.  
 
The long-term residents we spoke with were 
not as interested in the Pre-Enact Indy festival 
but were more concerned with what they could 
do to save their home, their legacies, and their 
children’s future in that neighborhood. They felt 
like they were in a constant battle with the impact 
of gentrification in their neighborhood. They felt 
their neighborhood identity had become a memory 
with the new development and gentrification that 
was happening which was causing a loss of art and 
the original history of Martindale Brightwood. 
These emotions and feelings of the neighbors are 
significant to the community members’ needs 
and concerns regarding their neighborhood. It 
was assumed that the Pre-Enact Indy program 
would be an anti-gentrification intervention to 
empower the current residents, but to many of the 
residents the program was a nice experience but 
did not fully address the needs and concerns of the 
neighborhood.

With all the reconstruction in the Martindale 
Brightwood community, some of the residents felt 
their identity was erased with all the changes. A 
few of the long-term residents advised how oral 
history is important to maintaining historical truth 
about an area. Therefore, they made sure that we 
understood how the businesses in the area have 

Another long-term resident 
commented, 'our neighborhood 

has been emptied and outsiders are 
moving in, buying up homes, and taking 

over with new homes that are $200,000 or 
more that only white residents can afford so 

they are closer to downtown. Many of the origi-
nal neighborhood residents have moved away or 
have passed away and the homes have been left 
to younger family members.'

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also changed and were not really meeting the needs 
of the long-term residents any longer. “We used 
to walk down the street to buy shoes, clothes, and 
groceries, but not anymore. We have to travel far 

to get those things now. When you don’t have a 
car, it’s hard to get around,” they said. This change 
in the neighborhood has brought attention to the 
need for economic recovery and is seeing more 
local businesses open. A resident mentioned “We 
need grocery stores, like Aldi, where things are 
affordable, and we can walk to.” The residents 
all agreed there should be more local, affordable 
restaurants for families to gather to enjoy good 
home-cooked meals as a place to foster community 
well-being, and social cohesion. They advised how 
these spaces will also develop healthy relationships 
for residents as well as support economic resilience 
for long-term and newer residents during the 
neighborhood changes. 

At the conclusion of the project, the residents 
recommended that the community liaisons 
working with the university host more community 
meetings and events to improve community 
engagement. These meetings would include 
all relevant community stakeholders such as 
community leaders, community developers, 
government officials, university leaders, long-term 
and new residents, school leaders, and the youth. 
Once the community roundtable is formed there 
could be an equitable discussion about:

1. Affordable housing to increase homeownership 
for Black residents. 
2. A quality education for all students, especially 
students of color. 
3. Provide opportunities for more local businesses 
to operate in the neighborhood, especially for Black 
entrepreneurs. 
4. Support upward mobility and access to start 
businesses. 
5. Engage youth with more history-themed 
programming including archives and artifacts, 
so they can learn the historical story of the 
neighborhood. 

This community-based research project helped 
us, as graduate students, to see the power of 
the existence of the arts in communities. For 
members of Martindale Brightwood’s community, 
their artistic expression is storytelling. As we see, 
storytelling empowers community residents to 
craft their own stories with opportunities to share 
their voices, opinions, memories, and reflections. 
Therefore, stories provide multiple ways to 
communicate histories that give a keen sense of 
place and identity such as this story about the 
vibrant Martindale Brightwood neighborhood.    

Community engaged work and the arts 
introduced us to innovative ideas and illustrated 
a community’s culture that can be instrumental 
in community research, and this was a valuable 
influence in our graduate research work. We 
found this research opportunity to be fulfilling, 
especially as we had to deal with the sudden shift in 
our learning environment due to COVID-19. Our 
vulnerability during that disrupted time allowed us 
to find creative ways to connect with the neighbors 
of Martindale Brightwood such as the “porch 
parties” where we attended an informal gathering 
with the long-term residence to hear their stories.

If given the opportunity, we recommend the CBPR 
research approach because it can teach graduate 

It was assumed that the 
Pre-Enact Indy program would be 

an anti-gentrification intervention to em-
power the current residents, but to many of 

the residents the program was a nice expe-
rience but did not fully address the needs and 
concerns of the neighborhood.



66ENGAGE!  |  c r e at i v e  a rts

students about real world situations and gives them 
opportunities to see where policy decisions may 
need to be made to create community changes for 
the betterment and well-being of some residents. 
CBPR is a research approach that seems more 
sustainable for the community and the university 
because it creates academic research that is 
impactful and beneficial while maintaining a 
community’s culture. 

Community engaged work 
and the arts introduced us to in-

novative ideas and illustrated a commu-
nity’s culture that can be instrumental in 

community research, and this was a valuable 
influence in our graduate research work.

Figure 2. Items from the Harrison Center’s care package for new residents

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