Find out how Latrobe shaped Fred Rogers
Lessons from everybody’s favorite neighbor will return to the forefront with “Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Again?,” a new community programming series based on the life and legacy of Fred Rogers.
Saint Vincent College, the college’s Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media and Latrobe Art Center are teaming up for the project aimed to increase public access and awareness of the important cultural and intellectual legacy of the renowned advocate for children and humanity, according to a release.
Slated to begin in February 2022, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Again?” will include four community events exploring resources from the Fred Rogers Archive, the history of Latrobe and local programming in the Latrobe community.
“We want to tell the story of how a small town helped shape the man who would become America’s favorite neighbor,” said Dana Winters, Rita McGinley Chair of Early Learning and Children’s Media, director of academic programs at the Fred Rogers Center and director of the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Again?” series. “Latrobe has always held a deep connection to and a strong sense of pride in Fred Rogers.
“But the question this project will help answer is how the man who would influence generations of children was himself influenced by a town he called the neighborhood, and, more importantly, how the small town of Latrobe — and many small towns like it across the country — can continue to help children and families thrive in a culture of kindness, compassion, humanities and arts.”
Threefold approach
The project will enable “students and the community to learn about and engage with the legacy of Fred Rogers in new and unique ways,” said Latrobe Art Center Executive Director Michael Tusay. “Program participants will not only have the rare opportunity to examine notes, speeches, books and other archival documents from Fred’s life firsthand but also apply what they learn by performing acts of kindness and spreading love throughout their local communities.”
“The programs will take shape in three ways,” Winters said. “First, there will be a curated collection of Archive materials on display at the Latrobe Art Center to be viewed by the community. Second, our students will develop an in-person community sharing event with elements for adults and children to engage with the selected topic. Lastly, there will be a virtual component where the students present their research through a recorded presentation that will live on the Fred Rogers Center website.
“The students will be assigned a theme for their research, but will work with Fred Rogers Center Archivist, Emily Uhrin, and with me to develop their own expression of that theme using research from the Archive,” Winters said. “Themes include broad topic such as kindness, celebration, love and community.”
The archive contains more than 20,000 items related to Rogers’ life and work, including photography, original scripts and production books, handwritten correspondence, awards, citations and viewer mail.
“The programs will be for popular, community consumption. Our hope is that we highlight items and messages related to Fred Rogers and the chosen topic to engage the community. There will be elements of the programming for children and for adults,” Winters said.
The significance of the word “Again” in the series title, Winters said, is “to serve as a reminder of the importance of Latrobe and Western Pennsylvania to the life and enduring legacy of Fred Rogers as well as a reminder of Fred’s values and principles.”
“While ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ was a children’s television program, Fred Rogers’ messages and principles have value across all of human development – no matter if we are children or grown-ups,” she said.
Hidden potential
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Again?” will be supported by a Humanities Research for the Public Good grant from The Council of Independent Colleges, according to a release. This grant program is a national incentive to promote student research and public engagement at private colleges while showcasing the archival, library and museum collections held by these institutions.
The Saint Vincent College/Fred Rogers Center project is one of 24 from across the U.S. that will be funded by the program, led by Anne M. Valk, historian and executive director of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the CUNY Graduate Center. The grant supports a year-long undergraduate research project that draws on institutional collections to address a topic of interest to the local community.
“I was impressed by the good work that faculty and staff are already doing to support community engagement and humanities research,” Valk said. “So many independent colleges are committed to public-facing scholarship and exploring the hidden potential of their collections.”
Additional information on the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Again?” series, including discussion topics and event dates, will be released when finalized.
Details: fredrogerscenter.org
Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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