I grew up in Milwaukee, in the Sherman Park neighborhood. From as early as I can remember, my life has been about community involvement. I was an only child for the first eight years of my life, so a lot of my social experiences, my social needs were met in community.
CaBeatrice Hart | Milwaukee, WI
My mom enrolled me in a Boys and Girls Club. I went to Golda Meir, a school for the gifted and talented. So those experiences really shaped how I viewed community because I was raised like the community is family. And that kind of helped me through life.
CaBeatrice describes her childhood growing up engaged with her community.
I was a teen mom and I found myself needing community the most during that time period. So I got involved with a parenting group and there was another teen mom, Nakisha Allen, and she was my mentor in that space. And just watching another person give their time in the way she did, just to support someone in the community, just to help and guide someone…well that stuck with me throughout my life.
When I was younger, I was just trying to survive and doing whatever kind of work I could do to raise my children. I went into the workforce and my profession was in project management. Becoming a mom at just 16 years old, it was a fast life transition to motherhood. There was no time for self-development, no more time to figure out who I am, I just needed to take care of my children. I worked as a project manager for a small manufacturing company for about 12 years before I had enough of that and decided I would explore my creative side. As my children got older, I really tapped back into my art. I work as a face and body artist, that is my most well-known creative outlet. People know me as the face painter in the community. So I’ve been bringing smiles for at least 10 years throughout hundreds of community events.
I am passionate about art and agriculture. So if someone’s doing a project that brings these two things together and I get wind of it, there’s a good chance I’m going to show up and support it. Because those are the areas I want to see thrive in our city. I’ve been at Alice’s Garden probably since 2017. It is a perfect place for me since it is urban agriculture and they see cultivating, preparing and preserving food and food traditions as a cultural art. At the time there weren’t as many community gardens and there weren’t as many people practicing in herbalism. So when I heard that there was a space that I could go and visit, where they had 2 acres of land and to see things growing, that was attractive to me.
Rural Urban Flow started with a set of exchanges between Milwaukee and Sauk County participants in 2015 and 2016. The group was gathered. In the 2016 election, we saw so much divisiveness within Wisconsin counties and communities and we wanted to discuss what those divisions were about and begin to heal them. People in the Wisconsin Farmers Network that were worried about this division came together to do something, these were people already connected through agriculture and rooted in the farming community. The first thing they did was a bus tour from Milwaukee to Sauk County, to experience Wormfarm Institute’s Farm/Art DTour, the signature program of Fermentation Fest. This gave people a chance to see what was going on in the land such as…. And then a bus tour from Sauk County to Milwaukee to visit Alice’s Garden. People from Sauk County on the bus tour had a meal at Café Amaranth, visited artist Muneer Bauhaudeen’s ceramics studio, Fondy Food Market, Evelyn Patricia Terry’s home/gallery, Milwaukee’s only cheesemaker at the Clockshadow Building (who also runs Cedar Grove, a cheese factory in Sauk County), a community garden at Journey House and Alice’s Garden.
It was through my relationship with Alice’s Garden that I connected with Rural Urban Flow. I had been a farmer with Alice Garden for a few years, so I got invited. And then of course I was interested. Just that whole exchange experience, how immersive it was to bring a bunch of urban dwellers into rural Wisconsin country. It was like a different country. I believed the work was inspired so I hung around, and started participating in meetings and exchanges. Now here I am helping lead and organize a lot of the work that takes place within Rural Urban Flow.
What I like about Rural Urban Flow is it is a network of culture and agriculture producers that love and honor and respect the land. And we gather and exchange ideas, opportunities, resources amongst each other and learn from each other. We have formed meaningful connections. All are welcome within our network, but we're primarily located, grounded in Milwaukee County and Sauk County.
CaBeatrice discusses her experience bringing her family into rural spaces.
There are so many great examples of information exchange and how we have learned from each other. Sometimes it is a resource exchange, especially with our farmers getting seeds. We recently had a seed exchange between Milwaukee and Sauk County and the Ho-Chunk Nation. The Ho Chunk Nation gave us some of their original indigenous seeds to cultivate. That exchange had such a deep meaning because those seeds weren’t given to us lightly, because this was their heritage, their history, their future. Two elders from Ho-Chunk came down to Milwaukee and met with two farmers at Alice’s Garden. That’s where the seed exchange took place. From the cultivation of those seeds, we birthed new plants, which would then give new seeds to feed the generations to come. These types of cultural exchanges are very big and that one was really meaningful.
The following season was the harvest, and there was a dinner, there was a fire and drum circle. And so you saw the full circle of the experience from the gift of the seeds to the gift of the harvest. We shared a meal together and that furthered our connection and further instilled those relationships. This is the point of rural urban flow, to get past those things that we think are dividing us. Come together on the common ground of agriculture, the love of the land and appreciation for culture. We have such diverse cultures in Rural Urban Flow and it is a space where you can participate and bring whatever cultural experience, cultural knowledge you want to share within the network. It is welcome in the space.
I think there is a crisis of disenchantment and disengagement in my community. It is very important for people in my community to feel like they’re connected, so I think about how to engage members so they feel like they are a part of something. When I was a teen mom I benefited from someone who was willing to help and guide me. So now I think about what do I have to give and to help guide another. I’m used to moving into spaces where I’m the only one there who looks like me, who talks like me. It feels like a duty, a responsibility to me, to make space for members of my community in these areas. To build trust so that as a whole we can come together.
CaBeatrice talks about how important it is to engage with community members so they feel they are a part of something.
One time we went foraging for stinging nettle at one of our network partners at Rural Urban Flow, and it was just a lot of fun seeing people from my community, just running free in the fields. Running and gathering nettles, something that could sting us, but now having the knowledge on how to handle them. That’s change.
Someone in the Rural Urban Flow network may reach out and say, ‘Hey, I have hazelnuts blooming, anyone interested in coming harvesting.’ I like to take my family with me on some of these exchanges, traveling to the various exchange events, to a predominantly white neighborhood, can challenge the status quo. When you show up with a family of six African American standard city, urban dwellers, with our locks, and all the stuff that’s associated with blackness, it definitely challenged the status quo. But we’re welcome in the space. I’ve been there enough that people in the community know me. There’s never been an unwelcome feeling. I haven’t had that experience out in those spaces, but it is just to pave the way and show others that there are spaces that are serious about inclusion, that welcome diverse individuals in their spaces.
A lot of the work we do, around Rural Urban Flow, it revolves around the land. You’re going to be outside, you’re going to be experiencing the land, you’re going to be experiencing culture. So my art has started to reflect a lot of that. I do art with community gardens here in the city. I lead some programming around nature-based arts for youth called Blooming Creativity. I am a mixed media artist and I’m starting to narrow that down into using more nature-based materials. This has definitely been birthed by expanding my knowledge of all the various types of plants. When you talk to farmers, you find out real quick, it’s not just a tomato, it’s not just a seed. It’s not just this or that. So having those experiences and conversations has definitely impacted how I view my art. I’m using a lot more natural materials based upon the things that I see when I’m out in nature, out exploring land.
Cabeatrice’s story was produced by Jen Rubin. Her story is part of our “Civic Health Heroes” series produced in collaboration with Urban Rural Action and the Civic Health of Wisconsin Initiative, with support from the Schlecht Family Foundation.
Urban Rural Action brings together Americans across divides to tackle our nation’s most urgent challenges
The Civic Health of Wisconsin initiative is dedicated to strengthening current civic health efforts around Wisconsin, to spur innovation and foster more connected and engaged communities.
