Celebrating the #LiteraryLifestyle

Arts Coast Journal has asked me and a number of others to follow for a year the activities of area arts organizations that have received a Pinellas Recovers Grant from Creative Pinellas (via a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts American Rescue Plan). The idea is to gather stories about these groups for a book promoting the importance of fundings for the arts. I'm proud to be part of this project. 

I was assigned two organizations: The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation and TheStudio@620. Cultured Books is a children’s bookstore in a predominantly Black neighborhood which champions stories that provide positive images for Black kids. Through its foundation, it is encouraging reading as a community activity. TheStudio@620 is a unique center that for the past 18 years has promoted inclusion in all of the arts. I look forward to learning  more about both of these institutions.

Below is the first in my series on Cultured Books, posted on the Arts Coast Journal site earlier this month. 

                                                                                                -- Margo Hammond

“Fostering a #literacylifestyle by exposing children to the world -- through art, music and books!"

                                                              -- Cultured Books founder Lorielle Holloway

 

The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation is a nonprofit, book-promoting organization with an unusual mission. Unlike most literacy programs which look to the needs of individual children, CBLF is interested in fostering literacy throughout an entire community — the Black community of South St. Pete.

“It’s not just about focusing on the children,” the foundation says on its website, “It’s about supporting and involving parents as well.”

    

For CBLF, literacy is a lifestyle.

The anchor of the foundation is Cultured Books, a pop-up children’s bookstore and art gallery in South St. Pete. Sharing the space at number 833 with Green Book of Tampa Bay, another non-profit, and The Well, a mental health center directed by LaDonna Butler, it looks out onto an historic corridor -- 22nd Avenue S. Dubbed "The Deuces" after its double 2s, it  was the heart of the African-American community when Blacks were not allowed to live in other parts of the city.

Instead of dwelling on segregation, however, the bookstore  is “curated to foster a love of self by highlighting Black joy narratives,” says Cultured Books founder Lorielle Holloway. It is  stocked with multicultural volumes written to empower children to believe in themselves and create a sense of community, to foster pride by showing positive images and telling inspiring stories about people of color. Reflecting perfectly that mission is the image, shown above, of an exuberant Louis Armstrong on a mural by Herbert Davis at the Creole Cafe, right next door to the bookstore.

“To show our children our stories don’t begin with struggle,” says Hollaway (above) who is a mother of three girls ages 3-12. 

The bookstore’s art gallery, dedicated to exhibiting art rooted in literacy, also is community-driven. It includes the paintings and collages produced by kids who have participated in the foundation’s Book Report Project. 

The Book Report Project gives kids the chance to create a book report about a book they have read and then use it as currency to purchase another book. The book reports can be in any form. Kids can choose to submit a traditional written report but they can also create a musical composition, poetry, visual art (a drawing, painting or collage) or a podcast. Kids just fill out a survey, pick a book, read it and when they hand in their report on the book — in whatever form they have chosen – they can get another book of their choice at Cultured Books. 

The goal of The Book Report Project, says the project’s mission statement, is “to build children’s positive coping skills in the face of adversity by providing reading and creative outlets.” Hollaway calls herself a Founder, a Dreamer and a Book Pusher. Every second Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. she pushes books in front of the store at the Deuces Sidewalk Market, organized by Deuces Live, the nonprofit advocate organization for the Deuces corridor. 

Hollaway also pushes books out into the community — to help foster the “lifelong journey of literacy” in south St. Petersburg. Currently one of the most popular events offered is Breakfast.Literacy.CommUNITY -- known as BLC -- a party in the park held on the first Saturday of every month at the Thomas "Jet" Jackson Recreation Center in Wildwood Park, where books are served up with breakfast from Pop Goes The Waffle, a Black-owned business, and Jug, a local farmer. 

Since May, thanks to CBLF’s The Art of Literacy Residence Program, breakfast and the book readings are followed by a workshop created especially for the event by visiting literacy artists. May’s theme was “Affirm” and began with a reading of "I Affirm Me: The ABC's of Inspiration for Black Kids" by Nyasha Williams, illustrated by Sóf’ya Glushkó, followed by a poetry workshop created by visiting literacy artists Yuki Jackson and LaTreca Ali.

The June BLC was postponed, but in July participants — Cultured Books calls them “bookworms” — came to the park for a reading of "Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America" by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Jamey Christoph. 

After a breakfast that included waffles from Pop Goes the Waffle, visiting literacy artists St. Petersburg photographers Tre Butler and Byron Boykins led kids around the park to take photographs à la Gordon Parks, the first African-American to work as a staff photographer for Life magazine. 

Each child was given a Polaroid camera and instructed to take five photographs of anything that struck their fancy. When they returned to the picnic area with pictures of trees, fences, cars and, in one case, a flower held aloft, everyone took a Polaroid selfie. Then they were given a picture frame so they could mount their park pictures with that selfie. Finally, they were asked to write down six words about their experience on a slip of paper and include that in their framed montage.

The Art of Literacy Residence Program that creates these workshops is made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Pinellas and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners.

Community partnerships have been the key to the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation’s success. 

Before the pandemic hit, Hollaway pushed poetry books in the garden at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African-American Museum as part of the SunLit Literary Festival's Kid’s Lit! Poetry event. 

Her bookstore also partnered with The Deuces Live to present an International Film Series at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Suncoast, showing films, bringing books and providing snacks at the historic Royal Theater down the street from the bookstore.

During the pandemic Hollaway paired with Tamia Iman Kennedy, founder of Black On the Scene, a production company that guarantees space for Black creatives, to launch Read About It, an unscripted web series that takes viewers on literary trips around Tampa Bay to promote reading and literacy. 

In the pilot episode — Read About: Art — then 11-year-old Nadia and 9-year-old Ava Hardy, two avid readers (and daughters of Hollaway) are inspired by their reading of Kimberly Drew’s book "This Is What I Know About Art." The sisters board a bus to seek out art spaces in the Tampa Bay area where they can find Black representation in art.

They meet up with digital artist Nick Davis to see his Black Is Beautiful portrait series, view the murals of Ya La'Ford (who lives in St. Petersburg’s Kenwood district) and tour the Derrick Adams: Buoyant exhibit held in 2020 at the Museum of Fine Arts. Produced by Kennedy and directed by Moji Wilson, the pilot was an official selection of the Sunscreen Film Festival in its Web Shorts category in 2021.

From the 2020 MFA exhibit Derrick Adams: Buoyant 

The Read About: Art pilot is available for rent for a 24-hour streaming period on Vimeo for $1 – but, lacking funding, no other episodes have been produced.  “We have so many episodes in mind,” says Tamia Iman Kennedy who produced a trailer to promote the series. Take a look at it here.

Many of the partnerships between the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation and other nonprofit groups have been ongoing and going strong. The WORD! Initiative and Keep St. Pete Lit still fill book boxes in South St. Pete with purchases from Cultured Books as part of their Word! Book Boxes project, a free book swap. 

Cultured Books also supplies books for the Barbershop Book Club, a project spearheaded by barber Antonio Brown which holds book clubs for kids every Wednesday at nine Pinellas County barbershops.

Earlier this year The Barbershop Book Club along with Shaping The Early Mind partnered with the foundation to conduct a mixed-methods study called St. Pete Reads! The study addressed the literacy gap between Black students and non-Black students in Pinellas County and how community plays a role in closing it, concentrating on family literacy engagement in south St. Petersburg.

Ninety-minute paid focus groups were held at The Well, and the Enoch Davis and Childs Park Recreation Centers throughout April and May. “Ambassadors” recruited from the community — young people, caregivers (parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents and older siblings), and literacy stockholders (educators, mentors, community leaders and youth pastors) — addressed how family reading programs and community engagement in literacy could contribute to the success of early learning and social development among Black youth and families, to point out the obstacles and barriers to literacy head-on and offer solutions. Participants received a $15 gift card, meal and swag bag. 

The data that was gathered will be used to better understand how to improve reading programs in support of Black youth and families in south St Petersburg.

. . .. . .  

In November — which is National Family Literacy Month — the group is planning to celebrate its first St. Pete Reads! Literacy Day, offering an opportunity for youth and families to learn what literacy resources and programs are available to them locally. Also in the fall Hollaway hopes to revive a popular Cultured Books’ program that has been on hiatus – SLC or Skate. Literacy. Community – a gathering at Campbell Park Skatepark at Campbell Park Elementary School, 600 12th Street South, that combined reading with skating on skateboards and roller skates.

Hollaway likes to quote Edward Hale, grandnephew of Nathan Hale, the American spy during the Revolutionary War: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” 

Her own resolve to do something began in 2012 after George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges for shooting Trayvon Martin because he claimed to have felt threatened by the 17-year-old unarmed boy.

“Something was not right,” she told herself. The non-guilty verdict “lit a spark in me to do something,” she said, speaking online at CreativeMornings/St. Pete, an organization connecting creative communities in more than 210 cities across the world. Cultured Books eventually became that something. 

Born out of protest, the bookstore – and The Cultured Books Literacy Foundation that has grown from it – looks to promote positive stories about Black people and people of color.  “We have so many episodes in mind,” says Tamia Iman Kennedy who produced this trailer to promote the series.

“We are, can and we will be the stars of our stories,” says Hollaway. “We are no longer the token, the afterthought, the sidekick.” 

Want to Help? Hit the support button on the Cultured Books Literacy Foundation site to partner or collaborate, to volunteer or to become a donor. A donation of $18.69, the average cost of a children’s book, would help keep the Book Report Project funded. Would you like to see more episodes of the Read About It series – or as Hollaway describes it, “this dope show about Black kids reading books while exploring their city”? Donations can be made on the Cultured Books website.