The Holding Project at Toledo Library

This past fall, the Toledo Lucas County Public Library (TLCPL) hosted The Holding Project workshops for community members to participate in a community art installation. Now, TLCPL is proud to host an artist talk to get an inside look of the project and hear from the talented artists.

The Holding Project  is a large-scale, concertina book structure that consists of multiple panels that hold individual responses from the community to the questions: “What makes you feel safe?” “What makes you feel unsafe?” The structure of the book allows it to expand infinitely as individuals add responses, cumulatively creating a picture of our community’s sense of their society.

The Holding Project: A Community Art Installation Artist Talk –April 20 from 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Main Library – Large Glass Meeting Room

Artists Ashley Pryor Geiger, Barbara WF Miner, and Lee Fearnside created The Holding Project as a response to the rise of anti-AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) violence in the past few years. The Holding Project consists of an ever-expanding concertina book structure that holds community responses to the questions, “what makes you feel safe?” “what makes you feel unsafe?” Aware that three white artists could not speak for a community to which they did not belong, namely AAPI, they invited community participation to encourage dialogue about feelings of safety and unsafety, and how these feelings about community shape individual’s lives more broadly. The community’s anonymous responses are the core of the project and reflect directly the concerns of the participants, whether they address the global, headline issues confronting society or the very personal issues of food insecurity.

This past October, The Holding Project distributed kits to the 20 TLCPL locations and gathered over 150 response cards from members of the community. A portion of the concertina book will be on display at Main Library this May and reproductions of the response cards made into 200 small hand-stitched books which include facts and resources in support of education and advocacy, will be exhibited at all 20 Library locations.