Author: Kailynn Johnson

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Inaugural Memphis Hip Hop Architecture Camp to Aid in Diversity in Architecture

(Courtesy Hip Hop Architecture Camp)

The Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC) and Design Marketplace Material Bank have partnered to bring the Hip Hop Architecture Camp to Connect Music on Vance this week.

The Hip Hop Architecture Camp was created in 2016 by Michael Ford, a licensed architect. The week-long camp is designed to “introduce underrepresented youth to architecture, urban planning, creative place-making and economic development through the lens of hip hop culture.”

The camp is based on “four Cs,” which are creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. According to the DMC, students will work in unison with architects, urban planners, designers, community activists, and hip hop artists throughout the camp to “create unique visions for their communities ​​which include the creation of physical models, digital models, and the creation of a Hip Hop Architecture track and music video summarizing their designs. ”

“Downtown has to be everybody’s neighborhood,” says Brett Roler, the DMC’s senior vice president of planning and development “We’re trying to build a Downtown for everybody. … We try to make decisions through that lens. ‘Are we building a Downtown that is fair and equitable and inclusive and inviting for everyone in Memphis and across Shelby County.”

Roler says that this is a part of the DMC’s commitment to “promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in our city’s future.

“We know that diversity, it just doesn’t happen by accident. So, what we’re trying to do is take intentional steps to invite people, to encourage people to be proactive in making a Downtown that everyone feels connected to.”

According to Roler, the Hip Hop Architecture Camp is an opportunity for students to gain exposure to architecture by using hip hop music and culture as a catalyst while also showing them the many ways that they can play a role in their community.

“You might say ‘What’s hip hop got to do with architecture?’ and I think that’s a fair question,” Roler said. “However, if kids feel like hip hop and music [are] something that [young people] are comfortable with, something that is accessible to them. There are ideas and principles that apply equally to architecture and hip hop. Whether we’re talking about form, rhythm, structure, it’s all the same. I think Michael has found a way to take something that can be boring, and esoteric, and complicated more accessible and interesting.”

Only 2.8 percent of architects in the United States are minorities, according to the DMC. While a 2022 report from the National Council of Architectural Registration Board states that diversity efforts in the architecture field have improved, the DMC says that minority groups continue to be underrepresented.

(Courtesy Hip Hop Architecture Camp)

“If Downtown is really going to be a place for everyone, then everyone has to help create it,” Roler continues. “People of color are woefully underrepresented in the design field, architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture.

“What I love about Hip Hop Architecture Camp is that it gives us the chance to show kids that they can be a part of creating neighborhoods that you love. You can play a role in building great places and great neighborhoods.”

Roler says that they initially explored other options for camps, such as producing their own. However after seeing the success of the Hip Hop Architecture Camps in other cities as well as the way the experts teach students important concepts in a fun and appealing way, they decided to bring the camp to Memphis.

The DMC is also helping to sponsor an architecture camp hosted by the Memphis chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), which Roler says is geared more so to students who have already solidified that they want to pursue a career in architecture. Roler says that he hopes the Hip Hop Architecture camp will serve as a “feeder” for the AIA camp to continue diversity efforts in architecture, as this camp is for students who may be unfamiliar.

“How do we ensure that the people building Downtown are reflective of our broader community?” Roler asked. “If our broader community is 65 percent African American, I think we need more people of color building Downtown, developing Downtown, opening businesses Downtown, and that’s what we are working on.”

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News News Blog

‘For Women Who Need a Moment’

Olivia F. Scott’s Freedom at the Mat sets out to make wellness and self-care more accessible. (Photo: Courtesy Olivia F. Scott)

It’s no secret that the pandemic began a shift in conversation on wellness and self care. It opened up a dialogue on how different populations deal with their mental health, and the many ways that we choose to treat and approach it.

Wellness and self-care don’t have to be expensive, and they don’t have to consume hours of your time. That sentiment is one of the driving forces behind Memphis native Olivia F. Scott’s company Freedom at the Mat.

Freedom at the Mat is a wellness brand that provides weekly YouTube content in the form of affirmations, meditation, yoga flows, and interviews with wellness advocates.

“It’s really our mission to make sure we are getting content out to women of all socioeconomic classes throughout the world,” Scott explains.

Scott says that the content is specifically and strategically targeted to be under 30 minutes, in order to cater to women who say “I don’t have time to take care of myself.”

“Naturally, you find that women, by our nature, we are nurturers, and we take care of other people, and we don’t take time to prioritize our own self care,” Scott continues. 

Along with accessible self care, Scott’s company manufactures and retails yoga mats that are available to purchase through her website.

Fifteen percent of the profit made from Freedom at the Mat’s paid classes, journals, and yoga mats goes to nonprofits that are dedicated to serving women. One such recipient is Grace House in Memphis.

Shortly after graduating from Central High School in 1991, Scott found herself in a number of places from Missouri to Chicago and New York, where she says she was able to create a career for herself. 

Health had always been a part of Scott’s life because of her lineage. Her mother, her sister, and her grandmother all died at the age of 65, and Scott knew that from a young age, she would have to watch her health.

While she was always conscious of her health, it was when she started to experience burnout in her mid to late 30s that she decided that she needed to really figure things out.

“I was on this hamster wheel in New York, and I had this really amazing career, but I didn’t have any balance. I did [yoga] one time when I was in Chicago, and I was like, this is so boring I’ll never do yoga, it’s so so boring,” she recalls.

After taking a power vinyasa class and becoming a registered yoga teacher, Scott says she realized that yoga was her saving grace.

“Women are so busy, and our lives are also busy. You may not have another moment to yourself to actually pray or to set the intention for your day or move your body, so I wanted to make sure that I didn’t leave anything out, that I wasn’t only focusing on the physical or only focusing on the mental.”

While her own experiences helped to push her to start her company, Scott says her familial experiences are a big part of her “why.”

“My sister struggled with substance abuse for about 35 years,” she says. “When she passed away I realized that the world has so much happening every single day. I think about my sister, and I say ‘If she knew that there was a place that she could go in her home that was accessible to her, would she have been able to better combat the demons in her head?’” 

Combined with her sister’s struggles, and a car ride through Frayser, Scott realized that sometimes women don’t always have the resources to be able to figure out safe coping mechanisms.

“I saw the dire poverty in Memphis, and I thought ‘I wonder are these people thinking about their wellness?’”

Scott said she answered her own question, as, by necessity, people are often only thinking about survival. 

“The moment I saw that section of North Memphis, I said ‘I may never be able to reach those women per se … but I want to contribute to an organization that I know is contributing to their health and wellness.’”

(Photo: Courtesy Olivia F. Scott)
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News News Blog

Homeownership: Is It Out of Reach for Young Buyers?

(Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash)

A recent post detailing median apartment asking rents for May 2022 has gone viral on social media. The comments section on the story, “Rents across U.S. rise above $2,000 a month for the first time ever” by Chris Arnold, is rife with speculation, commiseration, and accusation.  

The story, which was posted by NPR, details numbers from a Redfin report that shows that asking rents for available apartments had risen 15 percent from a year ago, and had also risen above $2,000 a month for the first time. The post received a mix of reactions, with many agreeing that these numbers are “unsustainable.”

“Mainly it’s because we have a lack of housing inventory available,” explains Amy Schaftlein, executive director of United Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing agency.

According to Schaftlein, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates were low, causing more people to “rush into the market,” in order to to take advantage of low interest rates. 

She continues, “Because rates were some of the lowest that we’ve seen, you have a whole bunch of people trying to get into homeownership, and we haven’t been building new homes, especially at the starter home level in about 10 years. So the Great Recession has really stopped new home builds from happening over the last 10 years.”

Schaftlein explains that these historically low rates, combined with historically low inventory, led to a rush in demand, which in turn pushed up housing prices across the board. That is not just at selling price. The same applies for rent.

“You’re having people on the lower-rent side being able to stay in their homes because of the eviction moratorium and some of the rent assistance, but then you’re not seeing new rents or new homes coming,” says Schaftlein.

Factoring this in with inflation and rising costs, the Federal Reserve has had to raise interest rates, which causes people who are homeowners and “stuck at these low rates” not to move.

“With an overly competitive real estate market with millennials and GenZ’ers not able to get in because it’s too competitive to get a home loan, many people gave up,” Schaftlein continues. “Even millennials with a higher income represent a huge increase in the amount of rent applications.”

Those who can afford to buy, and are opting to stay out of the home ownership market, are choosing to stay out due to the highly competitive nature of the market, pushing them to move toward renting, which causes rent prices to go up, Schaftlein says.

There are a number of reasons why younger people are not qualifying for loans in a timely fashion, such as student debt, as well as new trends in employment.

“We’re working differently,” Schaftlein says. “A lot of people that are contract workers aren’t going to be able to show that 24-month work history necessarily, because they may be entrepreneurs, or do more contract type of work.”

Schaftlein says that this type of work is typically harder for loan officers and lenders to underwrite, which, in turn, makes it harder for the applicants to qualify to get mortgage loans, even if they have the income and show it in the bank.

Remote work has also removed the pressure for people to “put down roots,” Schaftlein says. This allows people the freedom to move around and have more flexibility in their jobs, which she believes also contributes to the idea that younger people are no longer considering being homeowners.

Another factor is out-of-town investment by larger companies, who can afford to invest capital unavailable to individual buyers. As the Flyer’s Toby Sells wrote in his 2019 cover story “Dream Denied,” “More and more Memphians are missing out on the American Dream, especially if you consider homeownership a centerpiece of that dream. Wall Street corporations are sucking up homes in struggling neighborhoods, spitting them back out as rentals, and — in doing so — sucking out wealth and access to upward mobility, particularly in African-American communities.”

Still, while many are postponing the dream of being homeowners, there are still those who prefer that option.

“Rent prices definitely scare me,” 22-year-old Yazmeen Berkley says.

“I hear my peers talk about how high the rent is and how they have to make ends meet or how they’re tired of bills and although that will be my reality soon, I’m really thankful right now that it’s not.”

Berkley has decided to stay home with her parents, as they told her that they weren’t “rushing her to move out of the house.” It’s an option that is not available to everyone. But taken along with Schaftlein’s comment about millennials (who are now between 26 and 41 years old) representing an increase in the number of rental applications, it helps show a change in the age at which Memphians are attempting to achieve homeownership.

T’airra Fuller, 27, has lived in Collierville for two years for “an elevation in her career.” Fuller lost her job during the pandemic, and had to move back to Mississippi. Six-months later, Fuller says that rent had gone up to $1,100 and says that she is now paying $1,200 in rent. While she is paying for location and a promise of safety, she prefers to be in the process of purchasing a home.

“The house thing isn’t going too great right now,” Fuller says. “It’s kind of hard being a single woman and you’re the only one bringing income into the household. I had to take on another job. I quit my second job [retail], but I’m working on having my own independent call center, because it’s hard. You have to make ends meet. Some people have two incomes coming in, I have one.”

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Art Art Feature

TONE’s Juneteenth Weekend Celebrates the Theme of Family Reunion

From TONE’s 2021 Juneteenth celebration at Orange Mound Tower (Credit: TONE)

Family reunions have long been staples in the Black community. Scholars are unclear as to when family reunions came to be, but many note that as a result of the Great Migration, many Black families were separated, causing them to hold large gatherings to reunite and rekindle.

With fellowship and celebration being major themes of family reunions, it’s a fitting theme for TONE’s Juneteenth weekend. TONE’s chief storyteller, Nubia Yasin, explains that the family reunion theme is reflective of the culture that TONE would like to see built “across the creative community, across the Black community in general, whether you see yourself as a creator or not.

“TONE is very special because it’s not like we’re doing this work for the community, but with the community. With that being said, we don’t know everything. We don’t know everything, and we’re going to get stuff wrong, so we’re leaning on the community to fill in those gaps.”

Yasin says it’s also about collaboration, which she believes that family is about.

“Family is about interconnectivity, it’s about collaboration, and that’s why the theme for our Juneteenth festival every year is a ‘family reunion,’ because we really want folks to feel connected to this work like they would their family.”

Yasin explains that this event serves as an invitation for those who have left the South to come back and find solace and familiarity. In fact, executive director Victoria Jones “hopes that this will be an opportunity for ‘all our cousins,’ so to speak, to come back home and celebrate with their Memphis family.”

“It is for Memphis, but the goal is for the work that we do here will make Memphis a hub for Black creatives across the country and internationally,” Jones says. “One only needs to look at the story of being Black folks in America for a couple of seconds to see how central Memphis is to that story.”

The two-day celebration is jam-packed with events starting with a sold-out Afroturism-themed Juneteenth gala, shortly followed by an afterparty on the Mississippi Queen #3 Riverboat. The weekend culminates on Sunday, June 19th, with the Juneteenth Family Reunion festival in Orange Mound.

According to Yasin, Orange Mound serves as the prime location for an event that celebrates the rich history and legacy of Black people. 

“It’s the oldest Black neighborhood, built by Black folks for Black folks, in the country,” Yasin says. “Memphis is a city that is inextricably linked to the story of being Black in America.”

The story of being Black in America can only be told best by those who’ve experienced it. It’s a story marked by continuous triumph over adversity, which is often defined by systemic challenges, and unequal protection from the powers that be.

A heartbreaking chapter was recently added to that story, when a gunman opened fire at Tops Friendly Market Store, which according to NPR, is the only Black-run grocery store in Buffalo, New York. This incident left 10 people killed, three injured, and a community shaken by domestic terrorism.

“The nature of being Black in America is like a persistent state of a mix of emotions. Whether that be fear or anger, or a lot of times apathy, because of fear and anger,” Yasin explains.

“If we stopped ourselves from shining, if we stopped ourselves from smiling, if we stopped ourselves from laughing and celebrating every time there is a threat of danger, we would never have moments to smile and dance and shine.”

Yasin believes it is important for Black people to claim moments to be happy, which is why she believes it is imperative for a Juneteenth celebration to persist, despite recent events in America.

“Systems of oppression are as evident as ever, and I think it’s important to celebrate the little things that make us smile, and build culture around that,” Yasin says. “That’s what makes the hard work of beating back those systems sustainable.”

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News The Fly-By

U of M Ranks as Safest Tennessee Campus

U of M named safest TN large campus. (Photo: University of Memphis/Facebook)

The University of Memphis (U of M) is again the safest large college campus in Tennessee, according to a new report from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

This is the seventh time in the past 10 years that the university has been ranked the safest of the state’s 10 large campuses.

“The [U of M] continues to have a strong safety record by putting students first and making campus a safe and welcoming place to be,” said U of M President Bill Hardgrave.

Crime on all Tennessee college campuses fell 4 percent from 2020 to 2021, with 3,827 offenses reported in 2020 and 3,675 offenses reported in 2021. Crime has also decreased by 32.5 percent since 2018, with 5,446 offenses reported in that year alone.

More than 28 percent of campus crimes were larceny and theft offenses, with a 4.8 percent increase of reported thefts between 2020 and 2021.

On the U of M campus, there were a total of 45 theft offenses, with 18 of those being theft of motor vehicle parts. U of M’s chief of police Derek Myers said most of those thefts targeted catalytic converters, which became a national problem during the pandemic.

Myers said his agency is working with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and other agencies to “identify and apprehend those responsible.” He said his department is also limiting access to parking lots to “slow down” motor vehicle theft parts.

TBI’s 2020 report said there were a total of 57 criminal offenses at U of M, with 17 of those being theft from a building. Myers states that these stats have gone down as a result of the pandemic, with limited people on campus from spring break 2020 until the fall of 2021.

“Last year we did a $400,000 upgrade to cameras, improving the image quality and adding advanced analytics which can help notify us of suspicious activity,” Myers said.

Assault offenses increased by 18.7 percent, with aggravated assault offenses seeing an 89.7 percent increase for the state’s campuses as a whole. U of M has reported 22 assault offenses, with burglaries (nine) and aggravated assaults (eight) having the highest reported occurrences. The report also stated that incidents on the university’s campuses decreased 14 percent from 8.1 per 1,000 student population to 6.9.

The university states that students and other members of the campus community are encouraged to download and use the LiveSafe app, which provides an avenue for students to directly communicate with police services on campus through text, pictures, video, and audio.

“LiveSafe continues to be an important two-way communication tool which allows us to alert the community quickly to any dangers whether it be a crime or weather event or other emergency,” Myers said.

“The students use it regularly to text the dispatchers about issues from suspicious people for us to investigate on down to maintenance problems that we hand over to [the physical plant department]. It can be used to send us pictures from the cell phone camera as well, which can be a great help in finding and identifying vehicles and people.”

Some of the university’s other key safety initiatives also include preventing sexual assaults and harassment, emergency alerts, and the Tiger Patrol escort program.

“We continue to monitor trends both on and off campus and deploy resources appropriately. We also continue to examine and explore new technologies and best practices in law enforcement,” Myers said.

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News News Feature

Queer Skate Memphis

Malia Brown showing off one of their skating tricks. (Photo: Rampage Photography)

If you ask any skater what their favorite moment in skate history is, you’re bound to elicit a number of responses. Some mark the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as their entry point to the skate scene. Others may proclaim that the 2020 Summer Olympics sparked an epoch in modern-day history as skateboarding made its way to Beijing.

For Alexa Zabella, Ledger Smith’s 685-mile journey from Chicago to Washington, D.C., by way of roller skates stands out the most. “Roller Man’s” destination was the Lincoln Memorial, which served as the backdrop for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

Smith joined thousands who stood in solidarity to protest injustice in the African-American community. This moment seems to serve as the perfect prelude when looking at the events that led Zabella to create Queer Skate Memphis, a skate group designed as a safe space for “queer and BIPOC skaters.”

In the summer of 2020, the Bluff City-based skater organized the Memphis rollout for Worldwide Rollout Day, where participants roller-skated, biked, and boarded through Downtown Memphis as a way to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Zabella’s group is just one example of ways that queer skaters are looking to navigate the skate scene in Memphis.

For Malia Brown, it’s been no problem finding camaraderie and solace in their online queer skate community. It’s actually a place where they feel like they’re not the minority. However, when Brown goes to skate parks, they’re instantly made aware of the current landscape.

“It’s literally just cis men just skating around,” Brown says. “Even though there’s such a large community at the skate park, it’s like I’m presumably one of the only queer skaters there.”

Skateboarding has a reputation for fostering a sense of community; however, in an article for Vice, Max Dubler argues that it has also been a sport that is heavily defined by “macho toughness” and “male heterosexuality,” which Brown says can be alienating.

Brown can pinpoint a few moments in their skate journey in Memphis that felt less alienating, such as the time they and other queer skaters placed third in a skate competition or when other skaters organized a police brutality protest on Go Skate Day. While these were moments that were comforting for Brown, they still long for a more inclusive space for queer skaters.

Brown remembers the day that their crew placed higher than some of the male-comprised skate crews in the competition. In fact, Brown still calls on some of the skaters in their crew like Jessica Davis to the park when they’re wanting to skate. But Brown says that skateboarding doesn’t necessarily have to be a community-centered thing.

In fact, for Davis, skating has been something that she approached alone.

The Disney show Zeke and Luther sparked her infatuation with skating, resulting in her creating a makeshift board out of her pillows and turning her couch into a ledge.

There were limitations that resulted in her solo approach to the sport, such as not being able to street skate as a young girl, which redirected her to parks such as Tobey Park in Memphis. “It’s where I learned the most. I learned how to hop down some stairs and some more stuff,” she says, simultaneously demonstrating some of her favorite tricks on her fingerboard.

Brown and Davis argue that there are pros to approaching the sport alone, such as the luxury of going at your own pace when learning a trick. But Brown also states that nothing compares to landing that trick and having fellow skaters be just as excited as you are.

It’s a luxury that not many are afforded to choose how they approach skating, and while celebrities like Briana King are working to organize inclusive community events, it can be harder for local skaters with smaller platforms.

Memphis has the space for it, Brown explains. They even have the skaters for it. However, they and other skaters are calling on the entire community for support.

“More women skaters, more queer skaters, more people of color skaters. Just trying to stray away from the cis, white men being all over the place.”