The Griot Center

The place

The 1918 JC Penney Building and the Paramount Theater sit together on Clarksdale's downtown core — two historic structures with a shared wall and a long silence between them. Griot Arts, a Clarksdale nonprofit that works with young people through the arts, is bringing them back to life as one home.

What we did

Kudzu Collective and our partners facilitated the community engagement conversations, then completed programming and preliminary design for the combined buildings. That package is what Griot Arts is now using to raise the funds for construction — the drawings, the program, and the case, in a form a donor or a foundation can read.

Why engagement first

A building this visible belongs to more people than the ones who hold the deed. Sitting down with Clarksdale first meant the program came out of what the community actually needed from the block, not what a design team assumed. The name says it: a griot is the keeper of a community's story.

Project team

• Design PartnerNgozi (Nome) Brown, NOB Architecture + Design, Little Rock, Ark.
• Design PartnerShine Interior Design Studio, Lonoke, Ark.
• LandscapeBrantley Snipes Landscape & Design, Greenwood, Miss.
• Community PartnerThrive, Inc., Helena, Ark.