Trash Academy of Culture Trust

Mission and History

Earning it the title of ‘Filthadelphia’, the trash and litter that defaces the streets of our city is an apt metaphor for the systematic devaluation of underserved communities. Litter and dumping is both an environmental and racial justice issue, disproportionately affecting black, brown and marginalized communities. In response to this pervasive injustice, Trash Academy, is an effective intergenerational “collaboratory” co-led by engaged residents of diverse backgrounds, artists, activists, and organizers to address the issues of trash.

Collectively, Trash Academy designs projects that deepen people’s understanding of litter, consumption, and the wastestream. Through innovative, creative methodologies the projects:strengthen the movement for environmental justice promote specific policy and/or regulatory change divert materials from incinerators, landfills and accelerate circularity

Trash Academy educates through participatory research, teach-ins, and workshops, and uses games and public art as a disarming point of entry to build campaigns that drive proactive transformation of the waste stream to reduce its impact on people in specific highly impacted neighborhoods here in Philadelphia and the surrounding area.

Our objectives include:

* Advancing environmental justice
* Nurturing grassroots leadership
* Affecting policy and regulatory change
* Expanding education and outreach
* Strengthening strategic alliances
* Raising media attention to environmental justice issues

Grant Summary

Trash Academy will hold reciprocal knowledge exchanges with local neighborhood organizations in Kensington, Fairhill and Harrowgate. There are four parts: engagement, knowledge sharing, a collective/shared action event and coalition building.

* Engagement- is a meeting with representatives from neighborhood groups to share our dumping learnings and plan how to best present it to their community.

* The knowledge sharing -will be whatever suits each group: we can attend a meeting, go to an event or have a special zoom meeting to share dumping data and resources. We will listen to residents best success stories and greatest dumping frustrations. Our upcoming campaign will serve to highlight and uplift the stories of people burdened with repetitive cleaning. Community members will be invited into the campaign (coalition building).

* Based on the feedback, we will put the learnings into an action event-a solution to a specific need that has been identified by the participating groups and residents. In partnership with Team Nas, the event will be held in Collazo Park sometime in the fall in coordination with an already established event they host.

Clean Philly NOW: Trash Talk with Teea
The link goes to a page of videos for the Campaign to End Dumping https://www.trashacademy.org/#/campaign-videos/

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