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An educational and cultural bus tour will explore the traditions and architecture of Cape Verdeans in southeastern Connecticut. Guided by Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CHAP) Director Lynne Williamson, tour participants will travel to Norwich to view stone walls created by generations of Cape Verdean masons. The group will also visit the reconstructed chapel of St. Anthony in the meditation area of St. Mary's Church, and have the opportunity to attend St. Anthony's Feast Day Mass with the Cape Verdean Choir from Roxbury, Massachusetts followed by a festival dinner featuring Cape Verdean food and music. The tour bus will depart from Manchester Community College's Parking Lot C on Saturday, June 14, 2008, at noon, and will return to MCC by 8:30 pm. The fee for the tour, which includes transportation, food, and entertainment, is $75.
Several Cape Verdean stonemasons will talk to the group, including Alfred Gonsalves who recently won a citation from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation for his work in restoring St. Anthony's chapel. While visiting the chapel, tour participants will learn about its history and community-based preservation efforts, and meet with Roberta Delgado Vincent, granddaughter of the chapel's original builder, whose efforts led to the chapel being placed on the Connecticut Register of Historic Monuments in 2003.
"The chapel and the community history it enshrines speak volumes about Cape Verdean immigration, traditions, and enduring sense of place," says Williamson. "Relatively few historical structures built by African Americans remain on our landscape today, and fewer still represent a close-knit community's values and spiritual practices the way the chapel does."
Using the story of the chapel as a theme, tour participants will learn about a Cape Verdean chronicle covering movement to America through whaling, settlement in Norwich for industrial jobs, social and ethnic difficulties of assimilation, continuing immigration from the islands because of economic hardship there, maintenance of cultural traditions and language in diaspora, and Cape Verdean contributions to American society that continue today.
The bus tour will culminate with the group joining community members for food and a performance by Joao Monteiro, a master of traditional Cape Verdean music from the island of Santiago.
The tour has been developed in collaboration with A Capela do Santo Antonio, Inc., a grassroots cultural preservation organization led by Roberta Delgado Vincent. Together with the Norwich Historical Society, the organization raised funds to reconstruct the chapel when it was threatened with demolition.
This tour is the latest in a series of activities that explore Connecticut communities with fascinating heritage and culture. The bus tours are organized by ICR in partnership with Manchester Community College. The bus tour series is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. For more information about the tour, please call Lynne Williamson at 860-278-2044 x 251 or email her at Lynne.Williamson@icrweb.org. Advanced registration is required; please call Manchester Community College Continuing Education at 860-512-3232 or 860-512-2800 to register.
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The Institute for Community Research is an independent research institute that conducts applied research and supports community enhancement programs on issues of health, education and cultural heritage. Its Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program encourages and promotes traditional artists and their communities through an active process of documentation, technical assistance, and public presentations to bring their work and the history of their communities to new audiences.
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