Poets, spoken word artists, and musicians gathered last week for the neighborhood’s first Virtual Coffee House sponsored by Kensington / Windsor Terrace Mutual Aid (KWTMA).
The event drew over thirty people from the neighborhood and beyond. The atmosphere was unusually relaxed for a large online gathering. Both live and video performance was featured. Artists shared original poems and songs as well as jazz-poetry pieces they had composed. Some read pieces by artists they admired. Many just came to listen.
Coffee Houses have hundreds of years of history as venues where innovative, even revolutionary, art and ideas have converged. Saturday’s coffee house seemed to fit that tradition, using online technology to bring artists and activists together in order to build community, inspire one another, and raise money for KWT Mutual Aid’s program of food support at a time when, as one organizer put it, “the neighborhood is experiencing glaring inequalities amid the ongoing pandemic.”
As messages flew through the chat, “Thanks for all the love and support!” seemed an overriding sentiment. After the event, about a third of the participants stayed on. Several expressed that they simply didn’t want to “leave the room” after spending so much time in isolation without access to festive gatherings.
