The "Drop Downs", a beloved local rock band, perform at the Walter P. Hyde Fleet Ave. music festival, the first in 18 years.

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Slavic Village StoryProject

Mark Silverberg | Ohio, United States

Visual images shape the narratives people and communities carry, whether based on illness or healing. This narrative framework forms a lens through which we view the world and has a powerful impact on how people view themselves, each other, and their possibilities, choices, and potential outcomes.

The purpose of this visual and narrative story project is to be a mirror and amplifier that helps the people and community of Slavic Village see their beauty, strengths, resilience and commonality. Through generative storytelling I seek to assist people to see themselves and each other more compassionately, evoke their gifts and needs, weave beloved community and create positive change together.

This project explores how storytelling and asset-based community development reinforce and amplify each other. It will identify, lift up, and share community assets. In cooperation with community partner organizations, this work will continue to be shared at a series of community engagement meetings to evoke the community’s wishes. This project will support the community to shift their narrative from one based on illness, isolation, and alienation to one based on healing, agency, resilience, diversity, connection and a shared future.

Mark Silverberg is a visual and narrative documentary photographer who works with communities and non-profit organizations to support them to view themselves through a strength and asset-based lens. His purpose supports residents shift from an illness and scarcity-based community narrative to one based on healing and abundance. This generative storytelling assists the people and organizations he works with to create positive change together.

Mark has documented the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Global Trauma Relief Program in Haiti, The Yesod Jewish Community Center in St. Petersburg, Russia for the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the El Sistema Cleveland Program, and Neighborhood Connections in Cleveland, OH among other projects over many years. His work explores the intersection between visual and narrative documentary storytelling and asset-based community development.

  • Southeast Cleveland Resource Center organizes many community events I have documented and has helped introduce me to many community members and organizations. I have made images, and provided print and digital copies, of hundreds of community children with Santa or the Easter Bunny. Meeka, a team leader, invited me to document the birth of her granddaughter.
  • University Settlement has been a consistent supporter, inviting me to events, making introductions to residents, and is planning to display images from this project in their new facility.
  • Neighborhood Connections Network Weavers is a resident dialogue space. Several presentations and dialogue sessions have happened with them regarding the direction and learnings of the project.
  • Slavic Village Stakeholders is an umbrella group of community businesses who have seen the project evolve and provided valuable suggestions.
  • Slavic Village Development co-sponsored a major exhibit of this work in community the weekend of September 13-15, 2024.

Mark Silverberg

242 Springdale Lane

Moreland Hills, OH 44022

216-533-2778

marksilverberg@mac.com

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