Flowerings: A Framework for Mutual Growth
Abstract
A generous planning grant from the Mellon Foundation enabled JMU Libraries and the Furious Flower Poetry Center to explore and develop a relationship to support a shared digital infrastructure and to steward distinctive collections that include nearly thirty years of Furious Flower's unique archival and audiovisual history. This booklet summarizes preliminary explorations and findings in the format of an emerging framework, and offers key questions that partnering organizations similar to ours may wish to ask of themselves. We offer this document in the hope it will be of use to collaborating university and public libraries, centers for arts and culture, and community-based archives undertaking joint, reparative projects— projects rooted in equity and shared understanding, aimed at addressing historical imbalances and building better futures. Together, these five frameworks serve as a kind of trellis for what we are sowing and nurturing together.
