Pawtucket Paper is a creative place-making, community papermaking project that has a completed prototype phase.

The project asks: How might hand papermaking create positive change for Pawtucket, Rhode Island?

Currently

Regenerative Papermaking is a research initiative to grow plants and a responsible regional paper economy—helping to build a sustainable future for New England communities and our natural world.

My goal is to revitalize the Pawtucket RI community and ecosystems, and change the regional paper industry by redefining sustainable papermaking materials through growing plants.

About

Pawtucket Paper uses papermaking to grow intersecting movements in arts education, climate justice, and a sustainable future.

2017 - Interesting Beginnings

Hello there, my name is May Babcock.

I’m a papermaking artist and founder of Paperslurry.com, a blog dedicated to sharing and expanding the art and craft of hand papermaking around the world. I’ve traveled to teach for years, and in 2017 the Pawtucket Rhode Island community started to have a chance to learn, too.

I’ve taught at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where students pay nearly $70,000 annually to attend, and workshops at renowned art centers that cost $800.

I question why making paper by hand, an environmentally sustainable craft, cottage and small business industry, and engaging art form, is generally limited to those with time, money, and resources.

Families and children from Galego Court started learning papermaking from plants during after school programs at the SCLT Galego Community Farm. Participants were mainly families living at Galego Court, the Weeden/Barton neighborhood, and Pawtucket residents. A majority of people in the immediate neighborhood are low-income, and Pawtucket also has a higher than average immigrant population.

Eventually, I offered a ‘more official’ arts, craft, and plant science education project—Pawtucket Paper. We dug up and removed Japanese Knotweed (an invasive plant in the garden) and other garden weeds such as mugwort, garlic mustard, and bird vetch. Then we turned the plant fiber into paper.

This wouldn’t have been possible without:

  • a RISCA project grant

  • collaboration with the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT) Galego Community Farm

  • collaboration with the Pawtucket Housing Authority.

  • volunteer effort

Since then, various free public events and workshops have been held, including a fall harvest festival, volunteer days, and even a collaborative hula-hoop ‘pulp painting’ event.

Volunteer Days

Volunteers pull and process Japanese Knotweed, a pervasive and invasive plant in Galego Community Farm. Through hands-on demonstrations, volunteers make their own pure plant handmade papers from this waste fiber. Knotweed, mugwort, and bird-vetch paper were used for place cards at a SCLT 2017 fundraiser dinner, and donor gifts in 2018.

2018 - A Warm Embrace, and Nudge Forward from National Arts Strategies

In 2018, I was awarded a Creative Community Fellowship, a program by D.C. based National Arts Strategies that brings together cultural trailblazers for six months, to learn life-changing skills and to see dreams become reality — and drive transformation through arts and culture.

2019 - A Prototype Space, and Important Questions

From August 2019 to March 2020, this project idea and its various programs were piloted in a brick-and-mortar location in downtown Pawtucket Rhode Island, thanks to a generous grant from NAS and Barr Foundation.

As a result, we held: 4 Community listening sessions, with around 15 people attending each session, 12 weeks of Open Studio Sessions for free use of the papermaking studio for a limited test group of community members, and:

  • Co-design sessions - 3, three-hour co-design sessions with SCLT Summer Youth Staff who learned the design thinking process, and collaborated with each other to co-design and make handmade paper notebooks from the Japanese Knotweed they had been removing from Galego Community Farm. They made the paper, brainstormed product ideas, voted to make notebooks, and hand-bound a set of prototypes.

  • Partnership Events - 4 public-facing partnership events in collaboration with local environmental groups, grass-roots arts organizations, neighborhood businesses, and a culinary job training program for youth. Events included Japanese Knotweed papermaking at the Blackstone River Watershed Council, a free papermaking plus dinner event at Harvest Kitchen, hula-hoop papermaking for the Pawtucket Arts Festival, and a free make ‘n take papermaking table at East Bay Bike Way Art Day.

  • Fall Harvest Festival - We demonstrated papermaking from garden plants at the Galego Community Farm annual fall festival, held for residents at Galego Court. Festival attendees get their hands wet, and make their own sheet of paper and stenciled pulp painting to take home. ‘Pulp painting’ is an artistic technique where one paints with different colored pulps, making paintings that are 100% paper.

  • Workshops - 3 hands-on papermaking workshops for creatives in the greater New England region. Students had the opportunity to take hand papermaking workshops, including recycled papermaking and vegetable papyrus.

Here’s the question the project continues to ask:

How might we use hand papermaking to create positive change for Pawtucket?

In response, Pawtucket Paper Center’s goal is to establish a hand papermaking center that:

  • Increases quality of life, economic opportunity, and professional arts access for Pawtucket RI residents.

  • Offers accessible papermaking space and educational programs for the New England region.

  • In its first year, uses 2000 lbs. of waste and invasive plant fiber to make and sell paper products, amplifying existing local programming through equitable co-design of paper products.

  • Encourages stewardship of the local landscape through innovative partnerships with local environmental groups

This would be the only facility of its kind in the nation.

Everyone has different starting places, and all programs, structures, and processes will ensure that everyone can have equal say and equal outcomes.

2020 and COVID-19

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and because community papermaking spaces necessarily involve many people in closed spaces for long periods of time, the prototype phase was ended to prioritize the health.

Now: A Blueprint for Your Community

Countless hours of research, planning, conversation, and testing of activities has happened (definitely a labor of love).

If you are interested in using this prototype studio structure for leveraging the power of hand papermaking to create positive change in your community, please do! And please link to this Pawtucket Paper Center webpage.

Send me an email at may@paperslurry.com telling me about your project. I’d like to hear about it, and offer you additional resources and support depending what you’re interested in doing, and what you need.

The Future

In-person workshops and events are cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Currently, May is researching, connecting people, and networking to build new initiatives based on the prototype data, immediate community needs, and climate justice and crisis resiliency efforts.