A Chinatown Banquet is a multimedia, digital art and community planning project that includes urban history education, media production training, and civic engagement and dialogue to produce three prominent public expressions of the community. The Banquet is creating: eight permanent LCD screens mounted along a new walking trail in Boston's Chinatown that allow visitors to interact with an on-going multimedia presentation about the neighborhood; a temporary exhibit at Dreams of Freedom of the International Institute of Boston that will examine and highlight the role of Chinese and Asian immigrants and Chinatown in Massachusetts; and an internet presence at: www.chinatownbanquet.org where distant visitors and neighborhood residents alike can explore, in depth, the multiple facets that constitute the sense of place of Chinatown.

The creation of A Chinatown Banquet is a response to the difficulties for Chinatown, particularly as an inner-city neighborhood of color and new immigrants, to participate in neighborhood development. For example, the Chinatown master plan, which is currently being updated by a grassroots coalition of community agencies, is fated for use as a reference document by city planners and for-profit developers. A Chinatown Banquet can serve as a companion project to the Chinatown master plan as a way for the interests of the community to be heralded. The Banquet is not just a means of engaging a wider audience for our stories. The Banquet web site will provide a visual language to understand development issues for the members of the community who do not understand English. We feel that the more people who understand our neighborhood and community, the larger the community of stewards.

As an outreach tool that creates both an exhibit and multimedia walking tour, A Chinatown Banquet will touch more people within and outside our community. As an organizing tool that engages the participation of stakeholders in a cross-disciplinary approach, A Chinatown Banquet will create a structure for the investigation and representation of community interests. As a community planning tool that supplements on-going initiatives, A Chinatown Banquet will create a compelling story to substantiate the priorities of the Chinatown master plan. As a leadership development tool that educates youth, A Chinatown Banquet will engage the next generation of activists and community builders. A Chinatown Banquet is an important collaboration among several agencies that serve our neighborhood and community. By intersecting the methods and missions of these agencies, A Chinatown Banquet creates a new resource for the community in the "interstitial" space between them.
A Chinatown Banquet is a powerful testament to the impact of civic life, policies and to the enduring and constantly shifting legacy of Chinatown. It has the ability to elucidate issues of critical consequence to Chinatown's future while forming new inter-generational partnerships to address them. It is an exploration of how decisions made in relation to the construction of the urban environment have profound impacts on a far-reaching population. It links Chinatown's history to the current physical and cultural environment in concrete and interactive ways. The links and awareness created through the project will inform the master plan and community reactions to new development proposals in the neighborhood. Beyond this, it has several intended tangible and measurable outcomes: public art presentations, education, partnerships, civic dialogue and new insight and vision for the master planning process. More intrinsically, it uses the power of artistic exploration and creative and critical thinking to create a model project that demonstrates the direct role art can play in civic issues and community development.

Learn more at chinatownbanquet.org

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