MIT students and West Philly middle schoolers are working together to preserve the Mill Creek neighborhood

If you want to hear the rushing water of Mill Creek still buried beneath the ground of West Philly, ask a student from the Alain Locke School. They’ll know to take you to the red Subaru always parked at 47th and Brown Streets — that’s the best spot.

You won’t be the only person in the know; the Locke kids take their friends on Mill Creek tours now, too.

These middle schoolers are experts on the legacy of Mill Creek and its surrounding neighborhood, thanks to a unique partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since January, a class of MIT graduate students has been working with two dozen seventh and eighth graders at Alain Locke to learn Mill Creek history and develop project proposals for community groups interested in preserving the neighborhood as it battles gentrification and displacement.

“We [have] kids who are becoming activists and agitators and who are being exposed to this really amazing curriculum.”

On Wednesday afternoon at the Lucien Blackwell Community Center, the Locke and MIT students presented what they learned and developed over the past several months to a group of community members and stakeholders such as nonprofits.

“I think young people are not given the opportunity that they deserve to plan for the future, to have a say for the future,” said Anne Whiston Spirn, professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT, who led the partnership.

“We [have] kids who are becoming activists and agitators and who are being exposed to this really amazing curriculum,” said Jared Beck, community schools coordinator for Alain Locke.

“I think that it’s really special,” he said.

At the beginning of Wednesday’s presentation, Spirn addressed the obvious question:

“Why MIT? Why come all the way from Boston?” she said.

Spirn explained how in the 1980s and 90s, she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her classes first started working in the Mill Creek neighborhood in 1987, under the West Philadelphia Land Project.

WPLP partnered with gardeners to develop the Aspen Farms Community Garden and transform other vacant lots into productive space. In the ‘90s, WPLP worked with Sulzberger Middle School, teaching its students about neighborhood history and community development while also supporting staff and administration.

In 2000, Spirn left for MIT, but still kept her Philly connections. Her classes continued to focus on West Philadelphia, and once Zoom became standard, she brought in Frances Walker, a Mill Creek community organizer for over 60 years, to co-teach the class.

“That’s when I first appreciated how brilliant so many of these kids are.”

But it was working with middle schoolers that forever shaped how she thought about the Mill Creek neighborhood and her relationship with it as a white academic. When the opportunity to work with young students again at Locke arose this year, she jumped at it.

“That’s when I first appreciated how brilliant so many of these kids are. How they think outside the box. Their ideas aren’t constrained,” she said about the previous work.

The MIT students met with the Locke students every week over Zoom this Spring, teaching the middle schoolers about the history of the neighborhood and how that influenced what it looks like today.

They told them about how Mill Creek was buried in the 1880s, the impacts of local institutions like the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, and how the Great Migration helped make Philadelphia a majority Black city.

The Locke kids asked to learn more about redlining and gentrification, and the MIT students added to their curriculum.

But the learning went both ways; the Locke kids were teaching the MIT students about their home neighborhood and gave their feedback on what preservation projects should look like.

Then, the MIT students came to Philadelphia in March to meet in person and tour the Mill Creek area together.

“If we were making proposals without actually talking to the kids, it would be so far removed ... these are the people that are going to be here for a lifetime as the space develops and exists,” said Simone Delaney, one of the MIT students.

“So I think that people don’t appreciate the wisdom and knowledge that youth have to offer.”

The Locke students produced a book on what they learned, titled Honoring Mill Creek — Black Legacy Through a Buried River. Students wrote about the history and neighborhood sites that most interested them, and reflected on how changes are still happening through immigration, displacement, and community development projects. The book will be available for purchase this summer through Locke’s Instagram page, @lockelions.

The MIT project proposals for the neighborhood were divided into three approaches — resourcing and networking, placemaking, and narrative and commemoration.

MIT students already began some of the lower-barrier projects, like creating a digital community resource map, to which Mill Creek neighbors can continue to add. There will also be a poster campaign, meant to educate community members on the history of the neighborhood and give more information about gentrification and communal ownership.

“I think that people don’t appreciate the wisdom and knowledge that youth have to offer.”

On Wednesday before their presentations, the MIT and Locke students started hanging some of their posters around the neighborhood. One was designed to be paired with “We Buy Homes” signs, reading, “They Buy Homes.” A QR code on the sign linked to further information about how predatory outside businesses can buy up cheap properties, spurring displacement.

Other project proposals included creating a formal network of community gardens, tracing the Mill Creek path on land with paint on the street or with native plants present at the time it was buried, and events that build communal connections and celebrate Mill Creek like outdoor film screenings and an annual festival.

CommUnity Garden @ The Creek, a community board overseeing the garden at Lucien Blackwell, will consider which other proposals to pursue going forward as it continues to work with MIT.

Beck said that the program between Locke and MIT will continue, and that he plans for the kids to visit MIT next year, including students from this year’s class.

“Their teacher actually gave me some feedback and said that they were spending more time on this than their [schoolwork],” he said, laughing. “They took it and they really ran with it. They made it their own.”

One of those students was Zarif Islam, a seventh grader. His work for the class book was focused on the Great Migration and immigration in Philadelphia today. Islam’s family immigrated to Philadelphia from Bangladesh, and he was amazed to learn how millions of Black Americans journeyed from the South throughout the United States.

He hopes that people who see the MIT projects around Mill Creek or read the Locke book are driven to want to learn more, and make changes themselves.

“I hope they get inspirations about what’s happening,” he said.