Once a month throughout the 2025-26 academic year, Slow Digest will feature an episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…C21 podcast series, produced by C21 Graduate Fellows Jamee N. Pritchard and Yuchen Zhao.
In this episode of 6.5 Minutes with C21, Symphony Swan, a C21 Story Fellow, interdisciplinary artist, and archivist, discusses loss, grief, creativity, memory, and communities of care. After the loss of her parents in 2019 and 2022, her grief became the catalyst for building something transformative: The CR8TV House, a space dedicated to radical imagination and sustained support for Black and Brown artists. As she reflects on returning to her childhood home, Swan shares how memory, dreams, and personal artifacts revealed the house as more than a physical structure but an archive, a site of remembrance, and ultimately the foundation for a new kind of arts institution.
Reflecting on Milwaukee’s North Side, Swan challenges dominant media portrayals that focus solely on violence while erasing everyday Black life and joy. She explains:
“Oftentimes, the media tells stories about the north side and the violence and things, but I grew up on the north side. And yes, that exists, but I also have tons of memories of my dad showing me how to ride my bike up and down the sidewalk, or teaching me how to drive…When we’re able to pull and lean on the archive, we can remember those stories, too. And I think when you remember those stories, you just move different. And that’s what I want the legacy to be, that Black families exist here, Black artists exist here, and our stories are worth being held as sacred.”
This commitment to memory and care extends into her personal practice of slow care, which is taking time to write things down, sit with photographs, make art without urgency, and remain curious about the past. Slowly revisiting her parents’ photos led her to create digital collages that bridge past and present, transforming remembrance into a living, creative practice.
This episode was recorded during a memory activation workshop at the CR8TV House in November 2025.
Notes:
Guest: Symphony Swan, C21 Story Fellow, interdisciplinary artist, archivist, cultural strategist, storyteller, and founder of The CR8TV House
Host: Jamee Pritchard, Graduate Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)
Upcoming Event:
Story Cart with Symphony Swan – (W)rites of Spring on March 21, 12-2pm, at Havenwoods State Forest, with guest artist Mia Rimmer.
As the land transitions out of winter into bloom, W(rites) of Spring calls us to communicate at the speed of a flower’s unfurling. Rooted in the implosion work central to Mia Rimmer’s interdisciplinary practice, the project invites us to notice the changing of season as both external and internal ritual. The project halts the urgency of our technological correspondence, asking us to instead transcribe emotion to paper in three forms: long form letter writing, found object collage, and postcards featuring artwork from THE CR8TV HOUSE pen pal project.
Click the button below for details and registration.