Event attendees and organizers at PSH are asking “what is going on at the back of People’s Solidarity Hub?” The PSH team members answer excitedly, “A pavilion is coming!”
Amongst the mounds of clay and construction equipment at the back of the PSH campus, there is a cement platform that announces the pavilion’s impending arrival. The pavilion will be an outdoor gathering space available to the PSH community. The construction process, which will finish by fall of this year, will include more than just a covered structure for outdoor meetings and curated experiences.
The project will also include the construction of a short, greenery adorned path that will connect both PSH buildings to the pavilion. A ramp (like the one found behind the white building on campus) will be added to the back of the teal building to ensure ADA accessibility to the pavilion from the 1805 Building.
Next to the Pavilion will be a natural cutout that will provide outdoor “breakout room-style” gathering spaces and meditative paths. These green enclaves will serve as a grounding location for analytical, healing, and reflective conversations to start, continue, or end.
PSH has begun inviting community members to daydream about the kinds of outdoor events that could be hosted in the space. The invitation has sparked conversations about outdoor documentary screenings, COVID cautious community meals, theatre of the oppressed performances, and so much more.
The PSH Pavilion is a major investment by Southern Vision Alliance to expand the types of settings that change-work is happening in. Organizers need and deserve the ability to gather together in natural spaces. The PSH Pavilion will create space to explore the questions: “What happens to movements that are able to organize and facilitate themselves amidst natural elements, outside of the constraints of four walls? And what is returned to us when we hold political space together outside, where we are more easily accessed by our neighbors and the greater community?”
The SVA and PSH team hope the Pavilion will support the political and local community by providing an accessible and green third space where people can strategize, connect, act, and reflect.
Stay tuned for announcements PSH about a PSH Open House that will bring together the PSH community and serve as an official launch of the Pavilion.
To support SVA and PSH in rolling out the pavilion project, please consider making a donation or becoming a sustainer of the PSH. You can begin that process by clicking here or sending an email to hubs@southernvision.org
