Standing on the former Gorham site looking north toward Mashapaug Cove in the fall. photo credit: Becci Davis
Unpolished Legacies Online is a digital resource rooted in the landscapes and layered histories of Providence, Rhode Island. Using Mashapaug Cove and its surrounding landscape, once home to the Gorham Manufacturing Company, as a focal point, the project connects the city’s Indigenous, industrial, and ecological past with the present through art, storytelling, and education. Gorham’s legacy of craftsmanship and contamination left lasting marks on the cove and its shores as well as local, national, and international communities. This platform builds on years of work by local artists, educators, and students, many connected through UPP Arts, a community organization dedicated to socially engaged art, public memory, and learning anchored in place and care. This site honors Providence’s creative legacy while inviting new forms of learning grounded in place, memory, and community care.
Students from Central High School visiting Unpolished Legacies, a pop-up exhibition on Westminster Street, Providence in September 2019. photo credit: Becci Davis
Home: Narrative intro + timeline of the project
Learn about the origins, goals, and major collaborators
About: Mission + development background
Why Mashapaug Pond and Gorham matter.
Contributors: Artist and educator profiles
Voices behind the work—bios, interviews, audio
Resources: Classroom-ready materials
Lesson plans, field guides, and student tools
Each tab opens a window into the living histories of Mashapaug Pond where industry, environment, and community continue to intersect.
Portraits of artists, social scientists, educators, and historians who contributed to
the original Unpolished Legacies project. graphic credit: Bella Cook
The heart of Unpolished Legacies Online lies in the people who made it possible. This page highlights the many contributors—artists, educators, scholars, community leaders, and individuals working in government—whose insights shape this website. Click on a contributor’s name to explore their bio, view their contributions, and listen to interview excerpts that share personal reflections on place, history, and community.
Looking north through grasses in front of Mashapaug Cove, pictured here is a monitoring well access pipe used to extract and analyze toxins in the ground water on the former Gorham Manufacturing Company Site. photo credit: Bella Cook
“Mashapaug Pond contains all the lessons we need to teach.”
~ Brendan Haggerty, Curriculum Coordinator, The Greene School, West Greenwich, RI
Whether you’re an educator planning a lesson or a student curious to learn more, this page is your starting point. Here you will find tools to support place-based learning through the lens of Mashapaug Cove and its surrounding landscape as well as the community that cares about it.
Portraits of educators, interns and web designers who helped to create additional content to translate the Unpolished Legacies project into a website for middle and high school students and teachers. graphic credit: Bella Cook
This page offers a deeper look into the collaborative roots of Unpolished Legacies Online. Learn about the artists who conceptualized and created the project’s visual and narrative elements, as well as the educators, students, and organizations who contributed through socially as well as environmentally conscious art-making, place-based learning, and storytelling centered on Mashapaug Park, formerly the site of the Gorham Manufacturing Company.
AS220
Jacques Bidon
Janaya Kizzie
John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities & Cultural Heritage
Neal Walsh
Rhode Island Labor History Society
The City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism
UPPArts
