Oakland culture and history lovers now have a new way to explore the city's historic Swan's Market with a new self-guided tour launched last month.
The new free digital audio tour can be easily accessed online or while walking around the historic Oakland market using a smartphone app. The oral history of the market and the accompanying map and zine, "Oakland Belonging: The Voices of Swan's Market," were created by a group of seven youth participating in a program of the same name that's a project of Chapter 510.
The project was co-led by teaching artists Elena Botkin-Levy, who identifies as queer and lesbian, and Vernon "Trey" Keeve III, who is nonbinary, along with producer, editor, and sound engineer Alicia Crawford, who declined to state her sexual orientation. Keeve was not available to comment for this story.
The tour includes an overview of the market's history that "explored the idea of community and how Swan's has told the story of community," said Botkin-Levy, a 39-year-old oral storytelling expert.
Oakland Belonging's tour also features a poem about the market, information about the Friday Old Oakland Farmers Market, and a conclusion. The zine is currently on sale at Chapter 510's store, the Dept. of Make/Believe, at 546 Ninth Street.
Chapter 510 is a Black, Brown, and queer Oakland youth writing, bookmaking, and publishing center in the "bright side of the bay."
Swan's Market, which takes up an entire city block, opened in Old Oakland in 1917, according to the market's website. It closed in 1983 after decades of serving generations of Oakland residents. In 1998, the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation bought the building, restored the market, and added residential communal living space above it. The market reopened in 2000. The market has been further revitalized by the Old Oakland Farmers Market that has attracted shoppers visiting the food vendors, and arts and crafts stalls, for more than 25 years.
In 2021, the $1.3 million award-winning Chapter 510 organization opened its new writing center at the historic Swan's Market at the corner of Ninth and Clay streets in the heart of Old Oakland. Since 2013, the organization has provided free writing workshops for more than 4,000 youth, including New York Times bestselling author Leila Mottley, who wrote "Nightcrawling," and former Oakland youth poet laureate Tova Ricardo.
Chapter 510 program director Jahan Khalighi and program manager Marabet Morales wanted to get to know the new space, neighbors, and neighborhood, and find a way to belong in its new home. The only way they knew how to do that was to create a project for youth to tell the hidden stories of the market, said Botkin-Levy.
Belonging
"It's really been an incredible journey," said Botkin-Levy about the project that launched in January. "Swan's is a particular historic landmark with a particular history in a particular part of town that's at the intersection of a lot of different neighborhoods. So, that makes it ripe with story and history."
Botkin-Levy and Keeve, who led the writing instruction of the project, and Crawford helped the youth who participated in the project to bring the market's stories to life over nine months.
The next phase of Oakland Belonging is marketing the tour and zine, and for Chapter 510 to identify any other storytelling opportunities that were included in the second phase of the grant funding, Khalighi said.
Oakland Belonging was funded by a $20,000 grant from the California Humanities and a $58,000 grant from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
The students were introduced to historians, urban planners, writers, and community activists who were guest speakers at the project, and were supported by six mentors.
Oakland Belonging was the first project Botkin-Levy worked on with Chapter 510. It was also the first time the organization ventured into audio storytelling.
"It's just been beautiful to watch the young people" through the process of developing the stories, she said, "and also reflect upon these ideas of belonging and past, present, and future of this particular space" that is "a place full of stories and full of history."
It was particularly special, Botkin-Levy noted, because the project happened when Chapter 510 moved into its new location at the market. Many of the youths who grew up in Oakland had also never been to the market.
Botkin-Levy explained to the B.A.R. that the project happened while Chapter 510 built out the space when it moved into Swan's Market, "so that was a fun piece of it too."
A queer youth who participated in the project responded anonymously (to protect their privacy) to the Bay Area Reporter's questions and stated they joined the group to continue developing their writing. Despite growing up in Oakland, they had never been to the market before going to Chapter 510.
"I loved the community in Swan's and working on this project just allowed me to become a part of it," the youth stated.
The project was broken down into three "chapters" and launched virtually in January due to COVID. In the first chapter, the youth came together in person in February to start learning about story-centered design, how to gather stories and interview people, and use the tools to put the stories together exploring the question: "What does it mean to belong?" The youths met and listened to several guest speakers.
During the second chapter, which Botkin-Levy dubbed the "summer jam," the youth identified the stories they wanted to focus on, interviewed people, wrote, and recorded narration for the audio stories.
Two of the students profiled the market's local businesses, Taylor's Sausage, which is the oldest business in Swan's Market even before its rehabilitation, and the newer Lucky Barbershop.
One student wrote a poem about what she observed standing at the corner of Eighth and Clay streets, the entrance to the farmers market and Swan's Market.
Botkin-Levy said during one of the writing exercises, Keeve brought the group to a corner around the block from the market to write.
"We just stood on a corner," she said, and then wrote. "Just this idea around observing and learning about [the] place, and then identifying ourselves in that place, I think is so valuable."
In the third chapter, called the "exhibition phase," Crawford worked with the youth to produce the audio tour and zine that were revealed at a listening party on October 1.
A week later, Chapter 510 released the tour and zine to the public.
Botkin-Levy hopes that the tour and zine prompt visitors to the website and to the market to think about some of the same questions the youth explored in the program. What it means to belong in "the environment around us, both the built environment and people in place," she said, adding that she hopes people will think about "how do stories inform bigger city processes?"
Oakland Belonging is part of a broader project, "Story Centered Design: Moving from a Sense of Place to a Sense of Belonging," in collaboration with San Francisco-based SITELAB Urban Studio, whose urban designers Lauren Wong and Ashutosh Singhal are advisers of the project and are guest speakers in Oakland Belonging.
Laura Crescimano, co-founder and leader of SITELAB, wrote in a statement to the B.A.R. that the students' work and "the bigger outcomes of this course — how the students experienced and reflected on belonging, and how we can have a voice and shape place as a model for filling the gap between lived experience and the often alienating process of urban planning and development."
"We see deep ripples for how it can influence real estate, development, and design," she stated.
Outgoing California Humanities President and CEO Julie Fry told the B.A.R., "Our goal is to speak to the human experience and it's to all human experience," about being able to "lift up voices that don't often get to be heard."
"It's a really important thing to really be able to appreciate and share the richness of the people who inhabit California," she said about why Chapter 510's Oakland Belonging project received a grant.
Oakland Belonging wasn't an LGBTQ-focused project but has queer leadership and participants. The California Humanities also funded two queer-specific projects this year, San Diego's Queer Mvmt Fest, and is bringing the "Queer Threads" exhibition to San Jose's Museum of Quilts & Textiles in the spring of 2023.
The key thing Fry and her team look for in grants are unusual stories that haven't been heard before or that are being presented in a different format, she said.
This year's grant recipients are "really the cream of the crop," she added.
At the end of the Oakland Belonging project, the youth stated, "Swan's is physically very beautiful and well taken care of, but it's also been through many tough times. Swan's has stood strong through it all. I hope that people are able to see the inner beauty in Swan's Market."
To listen to or download the "Oakland Belonging: The Voices of Swan's Market" tour, click here or visit Chapter 510 and the market and scan the QR code to be taken on a journey around the market.
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