The Viking Mill is one of few Artist Studios left in the Fishtown/East Kensington area of Philadelphia. The landlord David Hirsch issued a statement about the sale of the Viking Mill to the tenants via email: the sale to a developer is likely to go through in the next few months.

Hundreds of artists will be displaced, as well as dozens of small businesses and entrepreneurs, many of whom are POC: we will all struggle to find affordable rent in neighborhoods that are safe and accessible for the tenants as well as our clients. We will soon all be pushed out of the neighborhood we call home. Many have already been pushed out of this neighborhood with little recourse, as the game of Gentrification goes.

The slow but steady loss of community spaces that are dear to us has been a heartbreaking reality of life in this neighborhood in the last 15 years.

Real estate is highly valuable, and anyone with property to sell is sitting on a goldmine: it makes sense that they would sell if they could get millions of dollars for a warehouse that they want to offload. But the increasing lack of affordable creative spaces in Fishtown and Kensington (and everywhere in the city) impacts the quality of life for the residents of these neighborhoods, especially those of us who have been here, and inherently helped to gentrify the neighborhoods and community spaces that are then ripped from us and developed: a tale as old as time.

It is disheartening that this city doesn't care about communities, or the arts. There is tragically little funding, care, or concern. Community members who pour our hearts and time and energy and everything we can into our neighborhoods are then priced out. It seems nothing can stop the power of capitalism and greed.

How many of us would it take to ban together and buy this building? How many donations from wealthy charitable folx would make this possible? How many signatures on a petition would help city council to even bat an eye at this issue? How many artists have already started moving out, giving up, trying to move on and survive? How long will we endure this lifestyle? Please sign, share, and be in touch if anyone can help with securing this building before the sale goes through likely at the end of July. It would take a miracle.