Author: Leah Seibel, FA 2019 The Downtown Greensburg Project Intern
As I had my internship this past Summer, I have been thinking about my final project for quite some time. I wanted to incorporate some sort of personal touch of mine to make it feel authentic. But I wanted to stick to the theme of Greensburg and pull my experience from the summer. I decided that it would be interesting to put on a poetry reading at a modern coffee shop in the heart of progressive Downtown Greensburg.
Around October, I started to kick around the idea of bringing poets from my poetry workshop to read their work as well as other poet friends of mine. I wanted to have poets with diverse work that gave a good variety. In the meantime, I was trying to get in contact with the coffee shop. The White Rabbit Cafe is probably the hub of coffee in the area, with their unique pastries and wide selection of coffee. Their shop is well known by Westmoreland County inhabitants and carries a large volume of customers especially being by the art museum. I proposed the idea to the head manager about a month ago and heard back from him last week. He respectfully declined, verbalizing the space wasn’t large enough and the individuals of the coffee shop could be disrupted. With this and the help of Dr. Wright, we decided to shift my project and focus on why this event would benefit Greensburg. My whole experience working with The Downtown Greensburg Project was to modernize the city and push for events like mine.
Building Bridges 