Precious Places

Every community has a story to tell

We want you to share yours

This is a critical time when many neighborhoods are undergoing significant change. Precious Places is an opportunity to record the story of a "precious place" in your neighborhood through the production of a short documentary video.

We are looking for ten community organizations to participate. Each group will be paired with a filmmaker and a humanities scholar to mentor them throughout the video-making process. This program is provided free of charge to organizations in Philadelphia and Camden.

We encourage neighborhood groups from across Philadelphia to apply, but are looking for projects from areas of the city that have not previously taken part in this regional community history - in particular Olney, Logan, Feltonville, Southwest Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia and Camden.

For more information please contact Boone Nguyen at 215-222-4201 or email at boone@scribe.org.

You can also scroll down to the bottom of this page to download an application and guidelines, informational flyer and a Precious Places FAQs sheet.

Application Deadline is May 23, 2008.

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Precious Places DVD's Available for Purchase!

While tourists head straight for the city's official "Historic District"? and native Philadelphian's think they have seen it all, Scribe Video Center's Precious Places Community History Project reveals bypassed neighborhood sites as bright landmarks that surprise and inspire residents and visitors alike. Using the video documentary as a storytelling medium, neighborhood residents have come together to document the oral histories of their communities. In the past three years Scribe Video Center has collaborated with community groups to produce 42 community histories. Philadelphia now joins the ranks of other cities such as New York and Los Angeles to have a citywide oral history what is unique here is that it is the neighbors telling their own stories about and the people and places in their hat make their communities unique.

Order DVDs of Precious Places
Community History Project

The complete 3 DVD series seen on WHYY TV 12 is available for purchase.

Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 1
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 2
Precious Places Community History Project Vol. 3

Conceived as a way to mark the 20th anniversary of Scribe Video Center, the Precious Places video documentaries would celebrate not only Scribe's history of innovative programs in the media arts, but also Philadelphia's richness of neighborhoods, buildings, public spaces and landmarks. They would record community memories and help define where we live at a time when so many of the city's memories are undergoing so much change.

Scribe had long felt that Philadelphia lacked but deserved a compiled oral history of its streets, squares, monuments, buildings, where social and cultural richness have led to the development of complex, diverse and vibrant communities. Through our work with individuals and groups through more than two decades, teaching and guiding people as they made documentaries that brought their dreams and visions to life, we knew how many more stories were out there just waiting to be told. And we shared with others concerns about the disinterest, deterioration, gentrification, unfamiliarity and even misinformation that endanger so much of the region. Community oral history, we thought, was an ideal way to spread the words and the sights of these precious places and to celebrate them and the people who cherish them.

Funding for Precious Places Community History Project is provided by
the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, the Claneil Foundation, Independence Foundation, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, National Endowment for the Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Equipment and In-Kind Support came from Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc., Temple University-Film and Media Arts, University of the Arts-Communications Department and Swarthmore College. The United States Geological Survey provided use of aerial maps.

Special thanks to Philadelphia Folklore Project, Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Center for Africana Studies- University of Pennsylvania, Third World Coalition of American Friends Service Committee, Maxine Griffith, Helen Cunningham, Elijah Anderson, Tukufu Zuberi, Carol Davis, Susan Phillips and The White Dog Cafe.