Community Design Fort Worth Receives Sid W. Richardson Foundation Grant to Launch Historic Northside

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Community Design Fort Worth Receives Sid W. Richardson Foundation Grant to Launch Historic Northside Cultural Asset Mapping Initiative

FORT WORTH, Texas — Community Design Fort Worth has received a grant from the Sid W. Richardson Foundation to support a new community-driven cultural asset mapping initiative in Fort Worth’s Historic Northside District.

The project will use walking (or “go-along”) interviews to document the stories, lived experiences, traditions, and cultural assets that define one of Fort Worth’s most historically and culturally significant neighborhoods. The initiative advances recommendations from the Urban Land Institute Advisory Services Panel process and will support the ongoing work of the Historic Northside District Main Street program.

Community Design Fort Worth will partner with Dr. Brian Christens, Professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University; Randy Hutcheson at Community Design Fort Worth; and Dee Lara O’Neal with the Historic Northside District Main Street program to help facilitate the cultural asset mapping process and develop findings that reflect community voice and experience.

The go-along interview methodology centers residents as experts in their own neighborhood, capturing the places, relationships, businesses, traditions, and everyday experiences that shape Northside’s identity and sense of place.
“Northside’s history isn’t just written in buildings—it lives in the stories, traditions, and everyday places that residents know best,” said Randy Hutcheson, Past Board Chair at Community Design Fort Worth. “This initiative gives the community the tools to document its own cultural identity and ensure that future planning and investment decisions honor the people who built this neighborhood. We’re grateful to the Sid W. Richardson Foundation for helping make that possible.”

“Unlike most approaches to participatory planning, this go-along interview method will let each resident who participates determine the geographic contexts of their conversation about their neighborhood,” said Dr. Brian Christens, Professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. “This will enable us to collectively identify, examine, and compare spaces and the meanings that they hold for residents. The Northside’s Community Action Committee will be collaborators on this project, operating as community-based researchers. The project is also intended to contribute to their leadership in the neighborhood and the city.”

“Fort Worth's Historic Northside is one of our city's greatest cultural assets, and it deserves to be documented, celebrated, and protected,” said Ericka Garza, President and CEO of the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “This work centers the voices of the people who built this community, and that is exactly the kind of investment the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce stands behind. We are grateful to the Sid W. Richardson Foundation for making it possible.”

A key goal of the initiative is to develop a replicable framework for community-led cultural asset mapping that can help inform future planning, investment, preservation, and community development efforts across Fort Worth.