By Rebecca Greenwald, Photo: Stephanie Alvarez-Ewens, Bloomberg City Lab, August 4, 2022
In fall of 2019, Haus of Glitter — a queer BIPOC art collective and performance lab based in Providence, Rhode Island — moved into a nearly three-century-old homestead tucked into an easy-to-miss park tucked between a freeway and an electrical substation in the city’s Oakland Avenue neighborhood. The 1756 Esek Hopkins House had been built by the naval commander commemorated locally for his role in the Revolutionary War, but his less-publicized history was as a key figure in the transatlantic slave trade.
Thus would begin a truly unique example in an emerging field referred to as trauma-informed placemaking. Over nearly three years, the members of Haus of Glitter have used the space to sift through layers of trauma — from their own histories and personal experiences, from the legacy of American colonialism and racial violence, and from the pandemic and ongoing political turmoil.
Haus of Glitter’s unusual arrangement was made possible by a partnership between Providence’s parks department, which didn’t know what to do with the underused parcel, and its culture agency, which saw an opportunity to pilot a new form of affordable housing for artists. Together they issued a call for the city’s first “Park-ists in Residence” to steward the property and carry out public engagement, working to reanimate the site and reimagine its relationship with the surrounding neighborhood.
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