Krystle Brown
Visual Artist
BAC Presentation_ Slán Abhaile Safe Home.jpg

Slán Abhaile / Safe Home

Pronounced slawn a-ball-ya in Irish, Slán Abhaile/Safe Home will be a community-focused, memory-driven bench in Boston's Dorchester, focused on the ongoing housing crisis impact on working-class residents.

The artwork will be a repository where Dorceshter neighbors can share collective memories of home through photography and oral storytelling.

The piece includes a seating area or bench attached to six shelves. These shelves will adorn the sides of the bench and display photographic interpretations of home from willing community members, whether that is a favorite hangout spot in the neighborhood or perhaps someone's front porch. Visitors will also be able to listen to the oral narratives of Dorchester residents facing housing and economic inequality. In a time where home is precarious and sometimes temporary, Slán Abhaile/Safe Home aims to heal generational and socio-economic divides in a city where over 45 percent of renters are cost-burdened. This project will highlight these stories while encouraging new questions about how successful Boston will be if the working class cannot afford to live where they work.

Slán Abhaile / Safe Home

Created with the Now+There Accelerator Program (Boston Public Art Triennial) this project was in Meetinghouse Hill Dorchester from September 2023 - September 2024

 
 

My mother, Kathleen Bowen Brown, grew up in Dorchester in the 1950s-70s. She faced a childhood of housing insecurity and economic hardship. Her struggle is alive and well in 2023. It is cyclical. 

Dorchester is home to people from all over the world; Vietnamese, Cape Verdean, Latine, Black, and Irish populations. Many have lived here their whole lives while others have found Fields Corner as their new home recently.

Slán Abhaile is the words my recent ancestors from Ireland may have said to one another when wishing a loved one goodbye. The Hiberno-English translation means "safe home". It is a bid to wish someone safely home.

The Irish (Gaelige) language is listed under the UNESCO Endangered Languages list. I wish to share my ancestral language to speak of home through time and generations, as a means to preserve communities and imagine better futures.

A safe home is not just the land or physical structure but is created through collective memory, community care, and opportunities for genuine connection.

Using photography, oral storytelling, and community archiving, I am creating a bench as an antithesis to hostile architecture. Hostile architecture is an urban design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide or restrict behavior. It often targets people who use or rely on public space more than others, such as youth, poor people, and homeless people, by restricting the physical behaviors they can engage in.

The goal is to create a place of belonging and shared home. 

Six protected shelves on the sides of the bench will display community members' photographic interpretations of home. 

Visitors can also listen to the oral narratives by Dorchester residents facing housing and economic inequality.

Colors are based on neighborhood architecture like the Buddhist Center for the bright yellow-orange and the nearby installation for the pink.

Community Participants

Maria McKnight

Dorchester resident and community artist

In a time where home is precarious and sometimes temporary, my work aims to heal generational and socio-economic divides starting in the neighborhood that my mother and grandparents called home.