May 2026: Behind the Scenes
Building a Curriculum With Community
Behind the scenes at DiasporaDNA Story Center, something deeply intentional is taking shape.
A diverse Education Advisory Council of Philadelphia educators, artists, students, teachers, and cultural organizers has been gathering to help shape a new curriculum rooted in festivals, celebration, community memory, and joy. This curriculum is being developed as part of DiasporaDNA’s broader commitment to public memory, cultural preservation, and community activation—but just as important as what is being created is how it is being created.
Because this curriculum is meant to serve local Philly communities, DiasporaDNA knew it could not be built in isolation. It needed to be shaped alongside the very people whose lived experiences, expertise, and care would help guide it.
“We are not building this curriculum for community, but with community—with every aspect of lived experience, educator access, and youth empowerment in mind.”
That belief has guided the process from the beginning.
Drawing from DiasporaDNA’s Save Philly Festivals platform and citywide festival tour, the curriculum uses festivals and cultural celebrations as entry points into learning about place, tradition, storytelling, identity, collective care, and community life. Rather than focusing on a single event or subject, the curriculum asks a broader question: what can festivals teach us about who we are, how we gather, what we remember, and how communities continue to create spaces of joy, belonging, and resilience?
Philadelphia’s festivals are more than events on a calendar. They are living expressions of neighborhood history, cultural pride, intergenerational memory, creativity, and collective care. They carry stories of migration, resistance, family traditions, local leadership, foodways, music, movement, spirituality, and celebration. For young learners, these festivals offer powerful opportunities to see their own lives, families, and communities reflected in what they study.
At the heart of this work is a commitment to helping youth understand that their stories matter. Their neighborhoods matter. Their traditions matter. Their memories, questions, observations, and connections are all part of a larger living archive.
The Education Advisory Council has helped keep that purpose at the center of the process. Across sessions, council members have offered thoughtful guidance on how the curriculum can remain accessible, adaptable, and genuinely useful for educators. Again and again, one theme has surfaced: access.
Council members have advocated for clear language, flexible tools, and activities that educators can easily navigate and adapt. The goal is not to create “one more thing” for teachers, facilitators, or community educators to manage. The goal is to create a resource that feels supportive, joyful, and easy to bring into different learning spaces.
That care is shaping the design of the curriculum itself. Rather than creating a rigid, one-way resource, DiasporaDNA is developing a flexible menu of learning opportunities with multiple entry points and minimal preparation. Educators will be able to move through the curriculum from beginning to end, or select the activities, themes, and learning connections that best fit their audience and setting.
This flexibility matters because the curriculum is meant to live beyond traditional classroom spaces. While the fall pilot will focus on elementary youth, the vision reaches across generations and learning environments. DiasporaDNA imagines this curriculum living in local schools, libraries, afterschool programs, community centers, homeschool settings, cultural spaces, and intergenerational gatherings.
The curriculum is being designed with the understanding that learning does not only happen at desks. It happens in neighborhoods, on sidewalks, at festivals, around kitchen tables, in archives, through memory, through movement, and through conversation. It happens when young people are invited to ask questions about their own communities and recognize themselves as part of the story.
Throughout this process, the council’s feedback has been essential. Ideas are presented, discussed, revised, and brought back again. Each conversation builds on the last. Each component informs the next. This iterative process has allowed the curriculum to grow with care, shaped by the voices of those who understand both the possibilities and the realities of bringing educational resources into community spaces.
What continues to emerge is a curriculum grounded not only in content, but in feeling. Joy. Agency. Belonging. Empowerment. Collective care. The work is about helping young people connect to festivals and celebrations as cultural knowledge, but also as invitations to participate in community life.
Through this curriculum, youth will be encouraged to observe, document, reflect, create, and contribute. They will be invited to think about the festivals and celebrations that have shaped their own lives, the people who make those gatherings possible, and the histories that live within them. In doing so, they become more than learners—they become storytellers, memory keepers, and active participants in the cultural life of their communities.
This work is still unfolding, and the curriculum will not be ready to pilot until the fall. But the foundation is already clear: DiasporaDNA is building a curriculum with community, rooted in joy, shaped by educators, and guided by a commitment to ancestry, archives, and activation.
It is a labor of love, and a living process. One that reflects the heart of DiasporaDNA’s work: honoring the past, activating the present, and creating pathways for future generations to see themselves as part of the archive.
By Jelivet Perez, Partnerships Advisor