TALLAHASSEE: 'TAKING THE SKELETONS OUT OF THE CLOSET'

Our amazing partners at Students Rebuild caught up last week with Jane McPherson about the Road to Washington Tallahassee installation. See what Zac Taylor, originally from Florida himself, had to say about the installation:

After discovering the One Million Bones project last year, Jane McPherson of Tallahassee, Florida was compelled to establish a Tallahassee chapter. To date, Jane and her students at the Florida State University College of Social Work have helped to organize over 40 events at venues ranging from public schools to evening art walks to the local ice cream shop. All told, the group has crafted over 7,400 bones for the One Million Bones challenge, raising more than $7,400 for CARE’s relief work in Somalia and the DR Congo. Join us as we catch up with Jane and learn a little bit more about her inspiring efforts in Tallahassee! 

Teaching human rights through community practice 

A long-time social worker and community practitioner, Jane has long held an interest in teaching human rights through community practice. After several months of organizing bone making workshops in Tallahassee, Jane decided to incorporate the social arts practice element of the One Million Bones challenge in her spring course at Florida State University.  As a PhD student and educator in the College of Social Work, she felt the project offered the perfect platform for talking with her students about how the practice of social work is embedded in a complex world

For Jane, the universality of an arts project like One Million Bones was the perfect vehicle for her students to not only consider how foreign concepts like genocide and mass violence are linked to everyday crimes (like bullying and hate speech), but to have a conversation with the greater Tallahassee community about their class lessons through art. 



  

One of the first bone making events Jane’s students organized was in the garden at Tallahassee’s LeMoyne Center for Visual Arts. Mukweso Mwenene, a Congolese businessman living in Tallahassee, showed up at the event to make bones.

At first, Jane wasn't sure how Mwenene would feel about the project. She asked him, “Do you think this matters?”

Mukweso’s response astonished Jane: “He said, ‘In my country, the skeletons are all in the closet. The rulers and the former rulers all bear terrible responsibility for crimes and no one sees those crimes. The evidence is completely hidden. When you make these bones, take these bones and put them out in public, then people can see for the first time the evidence of these crimes… This is the way that I think change will happen.’”

April 28: Laying out the Bones

Last April, organizers in 34 states held bone laying events in their state capitals. (On the Students Rebuild blog, we’ve been sharing highlights from events across the country – check them out!) In Tallahassee, over 150 folks gathered under Bloxham Park’s oak trees to lay the 6,500+ bones crafted by Tallahassee students and their families.

Early on the morning of April 28, Jane and her students unpacked the bones and laid them in two piles. At 11:30 AM, a 60’-long black carpet was rolled through the center of the park and folks lined up and waited respectfully for their turn to lay bones.

 

 

With music playing in the background, the crowd filled the park, joined hands around the installation, and welcomed a few words from Jane and invited guests. Mukweso Mwenene joined the speakers in offering a powerful reflection on the day’s event: “Bones are like the skeletons in the closet. Our rulers and leaders have never recognized these skeletons and people are bringing them to the air asking people to ask for change.”

For Jane’s students – many of whom helped to organize recent bone making workshops – seeing the bones in public was a deeply personal and transformative experience. Florida State senior Melise Brown told the Tallahassee Democrat that “this project really set me on fire; I don’t know how anyone cannot have a heart about genocide and I wanted to bring it to (the F.S.U. community).” An inspired Melise told the Tallahassee Democrat that she hopes to find work with a human rights organization after graduating.

You can see footage from One Million Bones: Tallahassee’s event in this fantastic 3-minute clip directed by Tallahassee filmmaker Nick Staab:

So what’s next for Jane and One Million Bones: Tallahassee? McPherson is working with students to establish the chapter as an official student organization on campus. She hopes to further equip her students to lead conversations – and bone making workshops – in the Tallahassee community.

In the meantime, Jane’s looking to World Refugee Day as a way to broaden participation in the One Million Bones project. “You see these bones and you see the violence. But all of the living people who carry the scars of genocide are less visible.” We’ll be following Jane’s efforts closely and sharing the latest as it happens.




Photo: Giggle Bin Photography