Make no little pints: Bringing taste and memory into community storytelling with Watershed Ice

What’s the next level of community reporting?

For many, printed text and visuals make complex issues clear. Others absorb information best with audio and video. And the internet brings news to screens we touch.

PlanPhilly decided to bring stories to life by tapping into another sense, taste, as well as memory.

We focused on two public parks: Tacony Creek Park in the Lower Northeast and Bartram’s Garden in Southwest. PlanPhilly worked with Little Baby’s Ice Cream, the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF), Bartram’s Garden, and the Circuit Trails to understand the essence of these culturally distinct places and tell their stories using traditional and new ways of spreading information. And we consulted longtime residents to identify the flavors that best represent the demographics, environmental heritage, and immigration patterns that shape their neighborhoods. Out of this unique collaboration, two water ice flavors were born: Cocochata for Tacony Creek Park and Bissap for Southwest Philadelphia.

Naturally, it had to be called Watershed Ice. The flavors were unveiled last week during two signature events in the communities that celebrated the parks.

The conversations that resulted in Watershed Ice started in October 2017. The challenge was to take something vast and comprehensive and bring it down to how it affects us at the community level.

In this case, that vast thing is the intricate networks of neighborhoods and watersheds in Philadelphia. The city itself is in the Delaware River Watershed, within which there are seven sub-watersheds. Tacony Creek Park, not surprisingly, is situated in the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed. Bartram’s Garden is situated in the Schuylkill Watershed.

Read the rest of the story here…

Dominique “Peak” Johnson is a North Philadelphia journalist. He is one of the founding editors of the North Philly Metropolis. Currently he freelances for WHYY, Billy Penn and Citywide Stories. Click here to learn more about Peak.