Experience the opening of the “Peoples Moving: Stories & Action from 50 Years of the Over-the-Rhine People's Movement” in the Cage Gallery. This exhibition is a collaborative project between Storefronts, an artists group of Over-the-Rhine residents and activists, the Miami University Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine, and Architecture + Interior Design faculty John Blake, Elizabeth Keslacy, and Jeff Kruth. Developed under the auspices of a Humanities Lab grant, the installation premiered at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center in May 2022. The installation team is excited to augment some of the materials for the Cage Gallery opening here on campus after its recent de-installment at the Contemporary Arts Center. The reinstallation of People Moving in the Cage Gallery of Alumni Hall will feature additional material, including student design work from the Lab courses, documentary film from People’s Movement filmmaker Barb Wolf, and photography and video documenting some of the MUCCE’s 20-year history of community engagement in the neighborhood.
The Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement is a decades-old alliance of community members, activists, non-profit organizations, and scholars emerging from the anti-war, civil rights, and women’s liberation movements of the 1960’s and 70’s that pursues social, distributive, racial, and ecological justice. Through grassroots organizing, the People’s Movement has engaged in dozens of “struggles” with a diverse set of tactics that include protest, media campaigns, lawsuits, non-profit work, and property acquisition. “People Moving” is an installation that combines community history and art to celebrates the living histories of the People’s Movement and its fight to ensure equitable access to the city. For more than four decades, the People’s Movement has used artistic expression as a central component of its activism, often using the phrase “the first step out of oppression is expression.”
