The story of creating the initial content:

The actual process of creating the Tent Cities Toolkit was as important as the content it provides. Kwamba worked collaboratively with Dignity Village, creating the Toolkit in a way that was democratic, liberating, equitable and empowering for everyone involved, not to mention a lot of fun.

Kwamba (Wendy and Heather) met with Villagers around a large, round, colorfully painted table to write the content for the pages in the Toolkit. We drank coffee and ate donuts as we discussed and wrote the content for each page on the laptop that Wendy brought with her. We all added something to the writing, whether it was clarity, a more welcoming style, or some humor.

On other days, Wendy and Heather set up a makeshift sound studio in the Dignity Village commuter bus (donated by a generous supporter) that typically functions as the non-mobile Village library. Villagers call it “the bus that goes nowhere but takes us everywhere we’d like to go.”  The bus made a pretty good sound studio except for Tim’s small friend, the hidden tree frog, who croaked every time Tim began his narration.  It was amazing timing; when Tim stopped, little croaky stopped too.  Many Villagers participated in narration, and we ended up recording everyone who wanted to be involved, and then later, selecting voice-overs with both quality and diversity in mind.

Part of creating the Toolkit also involved lots of interviews and filming around the Village and on the streets in Portland. Villagers were both in front and behind the cameras. As experts on Dignity Village and with first-hand experience with homelessness, many Villagers were interviewed for the Toolkit.  Kwamba held a filmmaking workshop and individual trainings at Dignity Village so that Villagers could get involved in capturing their community and the message that they wanted to tell the world.  Villagers used both professional and consumer level digital video camcorders, were boom operators, gaffers, assistant directors and producers.  With many of the Village cats and dogs taking part, you could call us one big motley crew!

The graphic design, video editing and DVD programming was done at Kwamba Studios, and the products were taken back to Dignity Village for feedback and review until we all liked the end result.

Kwamba has been working with Dignity Village since 2001, and is their media partner and archivist. Kwamba maintains an extensive media archive on Dignity Village and other tent cities, with more than 400 hours of video footage, nearly 2000 photographs, and numerous print documents and other materials.

Continuing to build the Toolkit online:

We intentionally designed the Tent Cities Toolkit in a way that allows it to grow and change as users give us feedback and provide new content. We encourage collaboration and input from everyone interested in grassroots organizing around issues of homelessness, and we will continue to make updated materials available for download from the website, so check back often and tell us your thoughts!

If you would like to participate and add your writings or poetry or photographs or drawings or anything else to the Tent Cities Toolkit, please contact us and we will post your materials, and let us know your name so that we can credit you appropriately. Click here to contact us about this.

Volunteers from the Portland area also generously contributed their time and skills at various stages during the project, for interviews, editing, photos, graphics, and a variety of other tasks too numerous to mention but critical to the success of this collaborative project. In addition, theproject Advisory Board includes members of the broader Portland community with diverse perspectives on homelessness who provided valuable feedback at important stages in the Toolkit development.

We are grateful for the support and contributions of everyone involved!

Volunteers:

Advisory Board:

Villagers:

Image Credits: Laura Brown, Orion Gray, Jason E. Kaplan, Kwamba.