Leslie Tom and Neil Barclay, August 21st, 2024

Leslie Tom and Neil Barclay, August 21st, 2024

Leslie Tom and Neil Barclay discuss the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History's sustainability efforts.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

en-US

Leslie Tom and Neil Barclay

Leslie Tom is a native of Tucson, Arizona and received her education at the University of Arizona and UC Berkeley. After working in the architecture and software industries, she became Chief Sustainability Officer at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in 2015. She lives in the Piety Hill neighborhood in Detroit.

Neil Barclay has worked in various roles in arts and cultural institutions across the United States, and has been President and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History since 2019. He lives in the LaSalle Gardens neighborhood in Detroit.

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo

8/21/2024

30:37

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo: I'm Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo. It's August 21st, 2024 and I'm here with. Please say your names.

Neil Barclay: Neil Barclay.

Leslie Tom: And Leslie Tom.

DLT: Please spell your names.

NB: Neil N e i l Barclay B a r c l a y.

LT: And Leslie L e s l i e Tom T o m.

DLT: Thank you. And do you both live in the city of Detroit?

NB: I do.

LT: I do.

DLT: What neighborhood do you live in?

NB: I live in LaSalle Gardens.

LT: I live in Piety Hill.

DLT: How long have you lived there?

NB: It's my fourth year.

LT: I moved to Piety Hill about two years ago.

DLT: Have either of you lived elsewhere in Metro Detroit?

NB: Yes.

LT: Yes.

DLT: And where else have you lived?

NB: I lived on East Jefferson, near Belle Isle.

LT: I lived in the Detroit Riverfront Towers when I first moved here.

DLT: And what careers are you in?

NB: I'm the director of the Wright Museum.

LT: And I'm the chief sustainability officer at the Wright Museum.

DLT: And how did you become involved in sustainability work?

NB: I've always been interested in environmental issues, generally speaking, but when I came to the museum, I was really interested in preservation issues in particular, as it related to our own collection and artifacts. We've had a couple of floods, you know, in the building, which caused me to want to pay more attention to those kinds of issues. But also, when we did our strategic plan, we included sustainability as one of our major strategic objectives that's related not just to preservation, but conservation of all of the resources that are used and animated, within the museum setting.

LT: I feel like it's sort of been a lifestyle for me to focus on, well, what people call sustainability. But I grew up with my grandparents a lot, and they had gardens and just lived a little bit through the— They’re part of the Greatest Generation. And I feel like there is an ethos there, just caring for the planet and for each other. And, it probably also helped that my background is in architecture. So buildings as being one of the biggest contributors to carbon footprint, and working at a brick and mortar place like the Charles Wright Museum of African American History. My skill set helps to be able to address real issues of climate change.

DLT: And you mentioned that sustainability is a strategic objective for your institution. What are the reasons behind choosing that as one of your strategic objectives?

NB: The practical reasons are just making sure that we're utilizing our resources, both financial and physical, in the most efficient way. So there is certainly that. Also, within the museum setting, the preservation of artifacts, articles, artwork is an important part of the work we do. So clearly, that was part of our thinking when we made that a strategic objective. But also, wanting to get our community more interested and knowledgeable about environmental issues became an important strategic mission for us in that we live in a community that has, you know, has some flooding that happens from time to time. It has had water issues in Flint, etc. So we really did think that that would be part of what we could contribute to the community. It's making them more aware of environmental issues, sustainability issues and how they might, as individuals, approach those issues and be part of the solution.

LT: That’s a great answer. The origin story of all of this was that we, originally, almost ten years ago, installed variable fan drives to make our motors stop running 24/7. We almost, in that first year, were able to save about $35,000 for our energy bill, because our motors were not running 24/7. But as a result, it was behind closed mechanical rooms, and no one could really understand or connect. There's no tangibleness to our energy footprint. And so it was sort of this moment when you were at a museum at a third public institution and, how can we make the invisible visible? And how can we consider our visitors, our staff, our vendors, our volunteers? And so we started to kind of work at understanding what is the role of museums in climate change? And I think exactly what Neil said. Some of the ideas of activating people to take these pieces of information about water, energy, soil, the trees, to their homes and communities and really helping to connect the dots in tangible ways on how we can all start to look at the environment differently. And especially here, with such a rich history of African American people, characters, people, histories that, bringing that to the forefront of how we think about these.

DLT: You've talked a lot about these educational goals. What does the educational work look like, working with the community about all these different topics, whether it's water or sustainability?

NB: Wanna take that?

LT: So we created this framework, where we're saying that we want to expand the triple bottom line, which is how typically sustainability l looked at in business situations. But we want to expand what that is. So the triple bottom line is People, Planet, Profit. We want to expand that to what cultural institutions are, so that’s People, Planet, Prosperity, and Programs, because this is what museums do well, is convene people. One of those examples is the d.Tree Studio project that we worked with the College for Creative Studies on. We basically, in 2018, found three dead and dying trees on our campus. And instead of throwing them away or mulching or adding them to landfill, we reached out to our neighbors to the north, the College for Creative Studies, and sort of said, what can we do to extend the life of these trees? And how can we answer “What did the Detroit tree see,” from curriculum that the Wright museum created, as well as, CCS has a beautiful woodshop. And so we worked for about a year during Covid to really define and refine what that looks like. So some of the takeaways were, we were able to give away seven community scholarships where we were interviewing makers from Detroit, Highland Park, Hamtramck, and brought them in. We were able to organize something called the Treeposium that the museum did, which is a tree symposium. We partnered with Design Core’s Month of Design, and probably about nine hundred people came to that to hear from elders, landscape architects, African American makers like Dabls, from the African Bead Museum, Native American viewpoints.

And it was this ability to sort of extend the curriculum and experience for twelve students to the whole community. And then what was amazing was this is what museums do well, is being able to interpret and convene people. CCS had a little exhibit. And then we took that and made a larger six-month exhibit here at the Wright Museum. It just closed maybe four months ago? But the amount of people that were able to see the past, present and future of Detroit trees. We were able to convene partners during that exhibit, like American Forest, the City of Detroit's tree department, Greening of Detroit, U of M’s, met with Naim Edwards and his growing projects, that it was just sort of really a beautiful expression on how we can learn from nature and how we can interpret that into museum and art and design sort of projects. So I think our goals, we're, like, how do we touch people that may not be thinking about trees? How do we bring a cultural lens? A critical lens? And then anyone who came to this exhibit, because we had these partners, were able to sign up if you lived in and around Metro Detroit for a free tree. So really kind of thinking about, how does a museum interact with with future climate actions?

DLT: And what were the responses like to this project? What was the responses you got from the community, from people who were involved with it or viewed the exhibit?

LT: Yeah, anecdotally—and there's a number of articles written about this project—people haven't seen a collaboration between an art and design school and a museum, an African American museum, like this before. I think it's inspired other projects in and around town to focus on trees. I know there's dialogues of even bringing back some of the tree mills on Belle Isle. So I think, you know, I'd like to think that the dialogue of trees and the importance of trees, that the museum is helping to facilitate a lot of that, museum in the art school. And not to mention, the students had a phenomenal experience. A number of them— One of them got to Cranbrook to get his graduate degree. Another student who never had worked with wood before became the woodshop monitor after this class. And then later on, we actually hired her to be an intern to help put on the exhibit, the larger exhibit that just closed. So it was sort of like, three trees had such a huge impact on our community. And not to mention, at one of the CCS exhibits, one of the elders, she brought back the Treeposium and the tree information to her elderly housing community, and they started to plant more trees on their campus as a result. She shared this story in front of everyone during the exhibit. And Ian Lambert, the dean of CCS, offered to take the CCS vans to pick up her and her neighbors to have a tour of the tree and then have a tour of our museum. So it's just sort of like, there's just so many co-benefits that happened as a result of just thinking about, you know, what three trees can do and how does it start to create community.

DLT: That's amazing. And can you telll me a little bit more about those tree mills on Belle Isle that you mentioned.?

LT: I'm not very familiar with where it is in the process. But historically, there were tree mills on Belle Isle, and historically there was a vibrant kind of urban lumber project in and around Detroit. I think it would be great to be able to see if some of these threads can continue. Or I know there's a group out of Grand Rapids that are piloting some urban lumber mills, and I think they're the people who are connected to the Belle Isle mills.

DLT: So you've mentioned flooding earlier. From your perspectives, what are the main ways that climate change is affecting Detroit right now?

NB: Well, so many of the flooding issue comes from, you know, an old infrastructure underneath the earth that Detroit has. Older cities, I'll just say, in the United States, right? So the sewage systems, all of the drainage systems are quite old, now. And what they tend to do in periods of heavy rain is back up. And so for us, what that [] twice within a few months of one another, actually, our entire ground floor would flood. And that would be bad in and of itself. But it's also where our collection was housed. And in the first flooding, if you will, that happened, where the sewage sewage system did back up. We were fortunate enough that when we saw the forecast of the rain, our executive vice president decided to move the entire collection offline and did that within a matter of hours. And sure enough, we came back up to the museum, the ground floor was under about four feet of water. So if we hadn't done that, we would have lost some very valuable art and artifacts that were In our collection. So, you know, these issues are recurring within Detroit and frankly, around the country in various ways. And so it did really heighten our sense of really wanting to pay more attention to these issues. Wanting to make sure that we could be involved in some kind of active way in mitigating the effects of that. There's also the paver system, that maybe you could talk about a little bit more, in front of the museum. That we did, the Sankofa Pavers.

LT: Yeah. So, as you know,Detroit is charging a drainage fee for all of our water for our stormwater events, because we are a legacy city with combined sewer overflow infrastructure. And so when it rains, it combines with our sewage. And this is why sewage sometimes goes, spills out into the Detroit River. And so I think the Wright Museum is wanting to help people connect dots to how we can start to think about our infrastructure differently. So the Erb Family Foundation approached us in 2017 to start to think about green stormwater infrastructure, which is infrastructure that will start to mitigate green stormwater. And so we were able to work with community voices and members to think about how can we create a green stormwater infrastructure on our campus that might reflect the mission of our museum, to open minds and change lives from African American history and culture? And so, through that process, we now have a seventy-foot Sankofa of permeable pavers, which is a West African Adinkra symbol, which is a symbol of a bird that's able to turn its head both ways, which indicates that it can look back to history before it moves forward. We worked with some of the elders to help site the bird head so that the head is facing the museum, and so that starts to indicate that the journey of learning starts here at the Wright Museum to start to understand, you know, even our main permanent exhibit, ‘And Still We Rise,” starts to get into the history and where we're heading in the future. And so adding a sustainability lens to some of that, is really blossoming into more and more projects.

DLT: And can you talk a little bit more about what you mean when you talk about green stormwater infrastructure?

LT: Sure. So, these are engineered infrastructure pieces that the city is beginning to add more throughout the city. So the water department doesn't need to create another combined sewer overflow infrastructure. So you'll see, across the city, in various spaces like rain gardens. Or we're using permeable pavers. There are bioswales and other kind of engineered interventions that can start to capture the rainwater. Either slow it down, retain the water, or be able to slowly bring the water back into the water table, which is what we're doing. But as a result of some of our work to this date, we are able to hold about 19,000 gallons of water per year on our site. And we have a whole plan to continue to do more. Like Neil said, with that 2021 huge five-hundred-year-flood that happened, and the fact that our museum is sort of at the bottom of the hill for the whole cultural district, we are starting to work with Jeff Anderson, the City of Detroit, to really think about closely how to mitigate some of the the stormwater on our site. So it doesn't affect the art, and so that we can express this in artful, historical, cultural ways on our campus.

DLT: And, speaking more personally, would you say that you as individuals have been affected by climate change?

NB: For sure. I mean, the difference in, you know, just the weather, [Laughs] the amount of rain we've even had this summer. In the summer months we’re so, we’re looking forward to sunshine and had quite a bit of rain. It's very different, I think, for Detroit. When I came to Detroit about six years ago, I remember very distinctly on both of my interviews, I had been snowed in. So [Laughs] I had one interview and then a few months later I came back for my second interview, and both times I couldn't get out of Detroit because of the snow. And this past winter we had very little snow, right? And so I could definitely see the effects of climate change. But I think for me, what's been interesting is in Detroit, if you have a home that's next to a vacant lot, you can buy that lot for very little money. And what I've started to do with a lot is begin to think about growing my own food, and more gardening, and becoming part of that sort of urban farming movement that’s so present in Detroit. So I'm really loving learning more about that and getting into that more, and it's been really rewarding. I can't, my friends could not imagine me being a gardener. [Laughs] They're, like, dumbfounded by that evolution of my personality. But it's really fun and really interesting, you know?

And also, I think once you've had food that you can grow by yourself— We went to a farmer's market and got some things, the taste is different. You really do know the difference between things that has been grown organically, if you will, and some of the food that you would buy in a grocery store, that's just from god knows where. And it's a really interesting story. I have a contractor working on my house now who came to me after working on the house and presented me with three ears of corn. And I was like, well, what is this about? He said, well, today is the official corn day. I said, there's an official corn day? [Laughs] He said yes, every summer on this day, we harvest corn and we give it out to all our neighbors. I think it's from Belleville, maybe? Maybe that area here in Michigan. But his friend has a huge corn farm, and every year on a certain day, he gives a bunch of it to this contractor, and everybody that he works with that day he gives corn. And it was the most delicious corn! [Laughs] So good! So anyway, that's ways that it's certainly effective. I have been always aware of the issues, but being in a place where you can actually grow— I mean, I lived in Los Angeles. It's possible to grow your own food there, but really not that practical, always. [Laughs] So being here, that's been a great gift of living in Detroit.

LT: I agree with Neil. Like, watching the weather change and how it's affecting people. And I was living on Joy Road and Livernois Road at one point in time—

NB: Really?

LT: Yeah, in the hood. [Laughs]

NB: [Laughs] Yeah, I was going to say.

LT: But we had this beautiful garden there, but during the five-hundred-year-flood, everyone's basements were flooded, and it just sort of really brought to attention how powerful water is. And I can't imagine how hard it would be for some of the people who are living in the floodplains every time it rains, like how much worry that would be, on how it would affect people's homes and their furnaces and all of these different things. So I think, really being able to think holistically about the solutions. So, you know, if everyone is putting up infrastructure that's blocking water in their own personal homes, and the one person who isn't adding that infrastructure, all the water is going to be flowing to that person's home. And so I think, like, how do we address climate change more communally? Because the solutions need to be helping everyone, because the people who are not being given the solutions on how to either add solar power or mitigating their water, these issues actually affect people in real ways. And we're partnering with Tammy Black and the Manistique Community Treehouse. We did an Energy Earth Month solar powered concert in 2023, with Supercoolwicked and Ash Arder, two artists and curators that helped to put this event together. And Tammy Black had some of the neighborhood people come out and speak during this event, during Earth Month. And she currently, in Manistique Community Treehouse area. Jefferson Chalmers, is adding solar to a number of the homes. And there were neighbors who were standing up talking about how, now that the solar power, solar panels are— Their electric bill is about thirteen dollars a month now. And it seems like these are true ways to really help the community. And I know our museum is just really wanting to be in the intersection of how, you know, policies and engineering projects and possibilities can help to be interpreted within a context here in this museum.

DLT: You mentioned solar panels. Do either of you use solar panels or any other sort of renewable energy for your homes, or have you looked into doing that?

NB: I definitely looked into it. I would love to do it within the next year at my home, to add solar panels to the home and generator and all those kinds of things.

NB: Yeah. And we have a green initiatives plan here at the museum that we've developed and that we have, we've identified that solar could possibly be added to our roof. I know that we've done a number of off-grid projects in the museum and at our African World Festival, and that all uses solar panels to charge batteries to create an off-grid sort of solar energy source. So, yeah, I think we're trying to walk the walk around here.

DLT: And moving briefly to a different kind of environmental issue, how has Covid-19 affected your institution?

NB: Well, of course, we were closed right at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, for several months. We laid off, I would say, the majority of our staff, two-thirds of it. And we're just now right-sizing to the size that we were before Covid, several years after that. Also within the African American community, the community was really devastated. Some of our key leaders, thought leaders, and individuals within the community died, and were adversely affected by the pandemic. So it's definitely left a mark on the institution. I remember during Covid we would actually make announcements of people who had passed, and it got to be so many people that would have passed in a period of time, we were barely able to keep up with it. So it's definitely something that we will not long forget. I think that’s the right expression, right? But it was very challenging. I suppose the silver lining for us was that it did allow us to kind of rethink and reimagine what the institution could be long-term, and that has resulted in some really great, I think, initiatives around sustainability around all of our work. I think it’s improved exponentially because we had that time to think about what we really wanted to do, what was really important to us. And to plan for it.

LT: I think we still have things where it's like, people need to order tickets online before they come here. And we have new mechanical systems here because we were all at the end of life with most of our things, but like, considering the indoor air quality and these sorts of things are much more prevalent, and I think we were able to make this institution a little bit safer with some of these, with some of this work, and with the pandemic, and knowing there's probably going to be other pandemics that come down the way. So, yeah. Neil and the executive leadership team were great at being able to navigate that whole situation.

DLT: And was there anything else you wanted to discuss, regarding either Covid or climate change, that none of my questions so far have brought up?

NB: Not for me.

LT: I think it's just an opportunity to be able to work at an African American museum to grapple with some of these issues of our natural environment. And I think as we keep getting deeper into this work, there is a difference on the lived experience for African Americans. And when we are centering nature in a lot of our work, that we can pivot into history, we can pivot into the future, and the conversations. And really, what surprised me about a lot of this work is how our entire institution, with all the various departments, are starting to climb on board and voice ideas and thoughts and actions on how we are starting to be a greener museum. I think it's really— We're starting to even have partnerships that are coming our way at a national level, local levels, community levels. It's really exciting to see that, because we're actually doing this good work, that people are recognizing that and seeing that and then we are starting to have conversations on what collaborations and partnerships look like. And really, that seems like the future for how institutions need to address climate change, is create partnerships and collaborations. And it's exciting to sort of see us right there, doing the real work, and navigating how this all helps our visitors, staff, vendors, and volunteers.

DLT: All right, if you've no other final thoughts, then that was all the questions I had for you today. Thank you so much for your time.

NB: Thank you. Appreciate it.