12

Jul

HUB Student Films

Films titles like Farewell My Summer Love, The Nightmare, and Dormitory of the Dead were recently rediscovered while working on the Horizons-Upward Bound (HUB) digitization project. The 8mm film reels were unmarked, but cross-referencing with film festival entry packets and faculty reports in the HUB Records, along with viewing the first few frames of each reel, revealed their origin.

Produced in 1984 by HUB summer students in John Prusak’s class, these films had been submitted to The Michigan Student Film and Video Festival, held at Friends Auditorium, Detroit, MI in 1985.

Opening scene from The Nightmare, 1984.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Top section of film evaluation sheet for the Michigan Student Film and Video Festival, 1985. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Digitizing film for today

When applying for the grant that is allowing digitization of the HUB Records only one student film, The Great Dictator, from William H. Moran’s 1969 summer class, had been labeled and identified. So it was indeed a nice surprise to find that there were more! Along with the 1969 film and a fifth film, Together, produced in John Geoghegan’s Advanced Film Class 1972 summer class, the 1984 films were sent to a lab for digitization.

Title Title screen and scenes from Dormitory of the Dead, 1984.
Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Scene from Farewell My Summer Love, 1984. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Viewing the digitized films helped further identify the students involved and corroborate the information listed on the entry forms. With this information in hand, we have eagerly begun sharing this newly accessible resource with the HUB community.

Head archivist, Deborah Rice, screens two films during Cranbrook Schools Reunion Weekend June 2024. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

Future Discoveries

The summer film elective class was offered sporadically throughout HUB’s history beginning in 1969. It is yet unknown how many films have been produced over the years. Other titles listed in the 1985 festival entries alone include six films: Money, Spectrum, Street People, That’s Life Kid (It’s Gonna Be Lonely II), The Mix, and Class of 86 – Memories. Together, the films are invaluable documentation of the student perspective.

Please reach out to archives@cranbrook.edu with any information about the films mentioned above or other HUB student films. We’d love to know more!

—Courtney Richardson, Project Archivist and Deborah Rice, Head Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

HUB digitization is funded by a NHPRC Archival Projects Grant for projects that ensure online public discovery and use of historical records collections. The NHPRC was established by Congress in 1934 as a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration and chaired by the Archivist of the United States.

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16

Feb

Revealing Horizons-Upward Bound History

Cranbrook Archives is excited to announce the launch of a historical digitization project, made possible by a generous two-year grant from the National Historical Publications & Records Commissions (NHPRC). The Archival Projects grant “supports projects that promote access to America’s historical records to encourage understanding of our democracy, history, and culture.” One of 21 awardees in 2023, alongside the Amistad Research Center, NYU, and others, we have begun full digitization of Cranbrook Schools’ Horizons-Upward Bound Program (HUB) records in an effort to facilitate discovery and use of material that documents one of the nation’s oldest and largest college access programs. The new online collection promises to elevate the visibility of HUB’s important story, and by extension, experiences of under-represented youth, primarily African American, in the U.S. educational system.

Cover of Horizons-Upward Bound’s first annual report, 1965. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

HUB historical materials include approximately 18 boxes (20.4 linear feet) of material relaying HUB’s history from its founding in 1965 through the year 2000. Material includes paper, news, photo, and film media primarily generated by HUB administration and HUB students. During the first year of the grant we are focused on digitizing all paper material. The second year will be devoted to digitizing photography and film, including images taken by local photographer Jack Kausch.

Photo of Archives workspace inside Thornlea Studio. Desks covered with archival boxes and material.
Digitization workstation where paper records are currently being scanned.

What we’ve done so far…

Digitization began in-house at the Archives in Summer 2023, with two HUB student volunteers who scanned a selection of newsletters and annual reports and drafted initial keyword/descriptions of the material. Later that Fall, I was hired to dedicate full-time attention to the project for the duration of the grant period. I continued the students’ work by first conducting quality control of the scanned material and digitizing the remaining publications in the collection. So far, I have digitized and quality checked over 7,500 pages of paper material. Currently, I am writing descriptions and creating keywords for these items and transferring the digital files to our online collections website, where they will be made public at the end of the project.

Collage of HUB paper publication covers. Primarily green, black, yellow, and red.
Selection of Horizons-Upward Bound publications spanning from the 1960s to 1990s, including annual reports, literary magazines, brochures, and newsletters. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

More to come!

In honor of HUB’s founder and first director, Ben Snyder (1965-1989), we hope for this digitization project to help realize the desire he expressed for HUB’s records in his 1977-1978 Annual Report:

Annual Report cover, featuring HUB’s first cohort to include young women, 1977-1978. Courtesy of Cranbrook Archives.

“One hopes that these annual entries will, at some point in the future, be useful to the educational historian or, in a narrower sense, to someone reviewing the Cranbrook scene as it relates to community involvement. Should that time come in say the next century, the task would be far happier if the nation had in the meantime eliminated the need for compensatory education.”

–Ben Snyder (pg. 34)

Initially self-described as “An Experimental Enrichment Program,” in conjunction with representatives from Detroit Public Schools and Oakland County Schools, HUB was the only program of its kind at its inception. The artifacts and stories found within its historical collection have great potential to inform and inspire continued community-building and educational programming that span across metro Detroit and the nation. We hope you will share in our excitement about this project and we look forward to sharing more updates about the Horizons-Upward Bound collection!

– Courtney Richardson, Project Archivist, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

Editor’s Note: The NHPRC was established by Congress in 1934 as a statutory body affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration. Chaired by the Archivist of the United States, it is composed of representatives of the three branches of the Federal Government and professional associations of archivists, historians, documentary editors, and records administrators.

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22

Sep

Summer School: HUB Architecture Edition

On this, the last day of summer, I thought we’d look back at the Center’s second-annual Architecture Elective for the Horizons-Upward Bound Summer Component. It was a real highlight of my summer!

A grant from the Society for Architecture Historians enabled Nina Blomfield, the Center’s Collection Fellow, and me to co-teach the six-week elective. Each Monday and Wednesday morning from June 28 to August 2, we met in Gordon Hall of Science at Cranbrook with fifteen enthusiastic HUB students, grades 9 through 12. While we started most mornings in the classroom with our textbook or a slideshow of images, the real excitement came on class trips.

I mean, what better way to learn about excellent architecture than to study the buildings of Cranbrook?

Head Archivist Deborah Rice showing our HUB students architectural treasures from Cranbrook Archives. Nina Blomfield, photographer.

To orient ourselves, we started with a morning spent in Cranbrook Archives, studying original sketches, renderings, blueprints, photographs, and even fundraising literature about Cranbrook’s many architectural treasures. We saw the great diversity of how our buildings were imagined, represented, and constructed, and how an architect moves from a loose, gestural sketch to formal construction documents that communicate complex structural systems.

Then, we spent a class period each at Cranbrook House, Saarinen House, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House. In each location, students carried their sketchbooks and made notes and drawings about the architecture. I was especially impressed at the students’ analytical skills. In fact, while I usually love talking about the nitty-gritty specifics of Saarinen House, I found myself sitting much more quietly, asking students questions about what they noticed, liked, or disliked in each room. Listening to their observations and conversation helped me see each space anew.

At Smith House, Nina led a phenomenology exercise, where, instead of telling the students the story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Smiths, she simply asked each student to find a spot in the house to sit in quietly. Then, they wrote or sketched what they observed and sensed. Having such a tactile experience with the architecture and nature proved to be more memorable than a conventional tour.

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11

Aug

Photo Friday: Rosa Parks at HUB

Last weekend, Cranbrook’s Horizons-Upward Bound program celebrated the completion of its fifty-eighth annual six-week summer residency program. Students and their families spent Theme Day on campus learning about the academic and artistic successes of the summer (including a display organized by the Center about our Architecture Elective, and a performance in the Greek Theatre by students and the Autophysiopsychic Millennium collective).

Rosa Parks addresses Cranbrook’s Horizons-Upward Bound graduation, held at Cleveland Middle School, July 11, 1989. Cranbrook Archives.

But did you know that in 1989, HUB celebrated the end of the summer with a special graduation address by legendary activist Rosa Parks? The “mother of the freedom movement,” Parks spoke to Cranbrook’s HUB students in a ceremony held at Cleveland Middle School in Detroit on July 11, 1989.

A speaker at the HUB graduation stands beneath a banner welcoming Rosa Parks, July 11, 1989. Cranbrook Archives.

While we couldn’t find the subject matter of Park’s HUB address or too many details of the special occasion, I am confident we will learn more about this moment in HUB history (and so many others) as Cranbrook Archives embarks on an exciting, multi-year digitization effort of the Horizons-Upward Bound Records made possible by a grant from the National Archives and Records Administration, through the National Publications and Records Commission’s Access Program.

In fact, the work has already begun! During the summer months, two current HUB students worked in the archives, digitizing more amazing materials like these images of Rosa Parks! Look for more Cranbrook Kitchen Sink posts drawn from the HUB collection in the future!

—Kevin Adkisson, Curator, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

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02

Oct

Welcoming Our Two Archives Assistants!

Prior to volunteering at Cranbrook Archives, I had been studying history and had become aware of the importance of primary sources for historiography, and the value of preserving heritage for the wider community. I began volunteering in 2012 which helped me decide to pursue a career in archives, and I began studying for the MA Archive Administration with Aberystwyth University in Wales (distance learning) in 2013. As part of a university assignment, I processed the HUB (Horizons-Upward Bound) Records, and am currently researching George Gough Booth’s interest in tapestries, which he purchased and commissioned for Cranbrook institutions and family members. I am interested in Booth’s involvement in the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the way in which the movement used medieval themes and techniques as a response to the social experience of the time. The Edgewater Looms, Herter Looms, and Morris & Co. tapestries are an ideal focus for exploring these ideas. I am looking forward to learning more about scanning/digitisation/digital preservation/cataloguing. The university modules emphasize access as the flip-side of preservation. I tend to have the latter foremost in my mind, so it will be great to see how the archive is used.

– Laura MacNewman, Archives Assistant

Correspondence, George Gough Booth Papers, box 16, folder 11.

Correspondence, George Gough Booth Papers, box 16, folder 11.

As a graduate student mid-way through the Library and Information Science master’s program at Wayne State University, I’ve been given a healthy dose of libraries, archives, and the world of information over the past year. My interest in archives administration began while I was volunteering at the Cranbrook Archives last fall (2014). Here, I was introduced to the process of digitizing manuscripts, taking inventory of donated artist materials, and sifting through photographic negatives for future digital preservation and storage. I’ve also been working on the Cranbrook Archives’ Oral History Project. Much of my work at Cranbrook corresponds to my studies at Wayne State. In fact, this past week Head Archivist Leslie Edwards spoke about Cranbrook Archives’ oral history project in my oral histories course. As a new employee, I am keen to expand the number of digital images available online, help preserve the negative photograph collection, and understand what it really means to be an archivist.

– Danae Dracht, Archives Assistant

From left: Carleton McClain, Henry S. Booth and Margaret Russell interviewing former Cranbrook School Headmaster, Harry Hoey at his home, 1964.

From left: Carleton McClain, Henry S. Booth and Margaret Russell interviewing former Cranbrook School Headmaster, Harry Hoey at his home, 1964.

Both Laura and Danae are working for us as part-time Archives Assistants, an entry-level archival position for graduate students. They will be working on a variety of projects during the coming year while gaining experience to propel them in their careers. Look for future blog posts from them in the upcoming months!

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