This year Walnut Hill Community Association (WHCA) turns 50 and its annual Community Day will be a great way to mark the anniversary. All neighbors are invited to join the celebrations this Saturday, July 16, from 11:00 a.m. to 7 p.m., at 50th and Locust Streets. There will be live music, free food, moon bounce, raffles, and other fun stuff. See the poster for more details.

Scribe Video Center (4212 Chestnut Street 3rd Floor) presents a special Storyville screening of short films about Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. tonight at 7 p.m. The films Arab American Road Movie (2005, 14 min), Tales from Arab Detroit (1995, 45 min), I, Too, Sing America and 9-11 Moments (2002) are produced by Detroit-based filmmaker Joan Mandell who will be at the screening in person.

Tickets are $5 for general public, free for Scribe members, Muslim Voices participants and Al Bustan Seeds of Culture staff, students and members.

Mandell will also present a workshop on oral history tomorrow, July 9, at 11 a.m. You can register online here or by calling 215-222-4201. Tickets for this event are $20 for general public, $10 for Scribe members and free for Muslim Voices participants.

To read more about both events click here.
 

Erik Ruin, the current 40th Street Artist-in-Resident, invites neighbors to the opening of his new exhibition tonight, from 7 to 9 p.m., at a temporary storefront gallery at 4212 Chestnut Street (below the Scribe Video Center).

The exhibition, titled “Staring at the Cracks,” features a combination of prints, projections and sound to tell stories of solitary confinement. Ruin managed to construct a unique environment to share the emotions and experiences of formerly incarcerated people.

Some rooms are populated with wall-size print installations, other rooms – by shadow-puppet and video projections by Ruin and award-winning Toronto filmmaker Brett Story.

Along with the installations speakers throughout the space will play snippets of audio interviews with men and women describing their experiences in solitary confinement. Finally, innovative klezmer and jazz trombonist Dan Blacksberg will play a unique and haunting bed of sound to enhance the dramatic atmosphere.

The exhibition will run until July 23 and will be the last in a series of exhibitions presented by Ruin as a 40th Street Artist-in-Resident. On July 23, Ruin will be bidding farewell with an all-day studio sale, live music, and closing reception (3 p.m.  to 11 p.m.).

To read more about the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence program click here.

Community members are invited to attend a groundbreaking ceremony and reception to mark the start of renovation and construction of Mariposa Food Co-op‘s new location today at 3 p.m. at 4824 Baltimore Avenue.

The co-op has raised over $2.37 million and is ready to start the construction in the first week of July. If all goes well, the new store is scheduled to open in October.

Mayor Michael Nutter is expected to attend the event, along with representatives of the project’s major supporters, and other honored guests. Food and refreshments will be served.

Living in a city as big as Philadelphia, and not having enough gardening space, doesn’t mean you can’t grow and harvest some crops of your own.

Want to learn how to do it? Come tonight, June 15, at 6 p.m. to Cedar Park (50th & Baltimore) for a workshop on urban gardening. Erica Smith of Philly Rooted, an organization specializing in urban farm development, will teach you the basics of starting and tending a vegetable garden.

The workshop is organized by Cedar Park Neighbors. Please let them know if you are coming by phone 267.531.4147 or email: contact [at] cedarparkneighbors.org.

For more information download the flyer here.

The first in a series of public forums on the development of 40th Street is Wednesday. Community members are invited to share their ideas on the design and character of development along the street, which has become a key commercial corridor between residential neighborhoods to the west and academic campuses to the east.

One of the event organizers, the “Friends of 40th Street,” was formed in 2004 to bring the members of neighborhood communities, businesses, and anchor institutions together for a discussion on the planning principles of the 40th Street corridor. One key idea that will be discussed is transportation along 40th street.

That conversation started seven years ago continues this month with the forums. Here’s the full schedule:

Wed, June 15 – 7:30 a.m. – 3901 Market Street
Mon, June 20 – 7:00 p.m. – Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street
Wed, June 22 – 7:30 a.m. – Christ Community Church, 4017 Chestnut Street
Mon, June 27 – 6:00 p.m. – Greater Faith Baptist Church, 4031 Baring Street

For more information visit: www.40thst.org.