At our 40th Firstival earlier this month, Eastern State Penitentiary gave us one more “first” to celebrate. We were there to mark the history and legacy of America’s first penitentiary. Historic Philadelphia Inc. President and CEO Amy Needle and I also wanted to recognize three people who have attended every single Firstival since January and who are determined to make it to all 52.
They are part of a small but mighty group we have come to call “Firsties”: the few dozen people who have made Firstivals part of their regular Saturday routine, showing up week after week, following 52 Weeks of Firsts from institution to institution and neighborhood to neighborhood across Philadelphia. Over the course of this year, Firstivals have become part of the weekly rhythm of their lives. They know one another now. They know the great team of colleagues from the National Constitution Center, Historic Philadelphia, Inc. and others representing the Philadelphia Historic District 250th Committee, which spearheaded 52 Weeks of Firsts and coordinates the weekly Firstivals. They look forward to being together each Saturday, and we look forward to seeing them.
What these participants have shown us is that a recurring civic program can become more than a series of events. It can become a habit, a community, and a source of belonging. And that, in turn, tells us something important about how we might begin to rebuild civic life.
52 Weeks of Firsts is a yearlong, citywide celebration of the inventions, institutions, traditions, and milestones that started in Philadelphia, created as part of the city’s commemoration of America’s 250th birthday. Every Saturday, a free Firstival invites Philadelphians to a different civic or cultural institution for performances, family activities, pop-up experiences, and the story of another Philadelphia “first.”
The format turns out to matter. The programs move around the city, giving people reasons to cross neighborhood and institutional boundaries. They are free and intergenerational. They pair fun with substance, connecting participants to Philadelphia’s history, culture, ideas, and institutions. Then, the following Saturday, there is another invitation.
One event can create a memorable experience. A weekly rhythm sustained over months can create something more durable. Familiar faces become relationships. Institutions become places people know rather than places they pass. Participation becomes part of ordinary life. The value is not contained in any one Saturday. It accumulates.
Robert Putnam has spent decades describing the social capital created by networks, relationships, and habits of participation. Our repeat participants make that idea tangible. They have people they expect to see, places they expect to return to, and a stronger sense that they belong to the civic life of their city. One Firstie has even told us that she has noticed positive health improvements since she began attending regularly. That kind of connection is not created by telling people they should be more civically engaged. It grows when people have worthwhile reasons to keep showing up to do so.
52 Weeks of Firsts has also revealed something equally important about the institutions doing the inviting. For a year, museums, historic sites, cultural organizations, and other civic institutions have planned, promoted, hosted, and participated in a common effort. We have shared audiences, learned one another’s strengths, built working relationships, and become more invested in one another’s success. Forty Saturdays have connected not only people to people, but institutions to institutions.
That matters because genuine civic renewal cannot rest on a collection of disconnected organizations. Different institutions reach different people, hold different relationships of trust, and offer different ways to participate. Connected together, they can invite people into something larger than any one institution: a vibrant civic life with many doors through which to enter and many reasons to stay engaged. A visit to one place can lead to another experience, another community, another way to learn or contribute. The institutions expand one another’s reach, while the public gains a richer and more enduring set of opportunities to participate. That is the promise of a strong civic network: engagement no longer depends on a single event or organization. It becomes part of a broader civic culture people can enter, move through, and return to over time.
That is the larger promise I see in 52 Weeks of Firsts. Social capital is growing among participants while a stronger civic network is forming among the institutions that serve them. The two reinforce each other. Stronger networks create more opportunities to participate; deeper participation makes institutions more connected to their communities and better able to fulfill their missions.
Amy and I have led this effort for 41 Saturdays, with 11 more still to go. Increasingly, the question on my mind is not simply how we finish the year. It is what we do with what has been built when the 52nd Saturday is over.
The lesson is not that every city needs 52 weeks of programming or 52 participating institutions. The scale can vary and will need to in most instances. What matters is recurrence and the quality of the invitation: experiences that are welcoming and fun, but also substantive; opportunities that cross generations and communities; and institutions willing to work together consistently enough for a genuine community-wide civic network to develop, with the strength to sustain and endure.
That is exactly the kind of work civic institutions and philanthropy should support over the Civic Decade. In a city like Philadelphia, where civic institutions already exist in remarkable abundance, the opportunity is to connect them more intentionally and turn that institutional richness into more robust and enduring pathways into civic life. In communities where the civic infrastructure is thinner, the work will be different: building institutions and opportunities while also connecting them into networks that can grow stronger over time. Civic renewal will require both.
The opportunity before us is to build where civic infrastructure is thin, connect where it is strong, and invest for the long-term so that participation can deepen into belonging and individual institutions can grow into enduring civic networks.
Vince Stango is interim president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and co-chair of the Philadelphia Historic District 250th Committee.
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