By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation
You may have noticed that somewhere around a year ago, Rachel and I stopped telling you what we were doing each week and started showing you what it feels like to do it.
There’s a reason for that.
Telling is boring. Both for the teller and, I suspect, the tellee. Showing is much more fun.
So now we show. Snippets of our lives, our work, our projects, our values. Sometimes that means houses and excavators and community meetings. Sometimes it means frogs, video games, family, mud or whatever else happens to wander into our week.
Over the past year, that showing has also grown beyond this column. We started a podcast…in all its low-tech, irregular glory.
That podcast needed a name, and initially we played around with variations on our existing River Roots branding. The trouble is…the phrase “River Roots” is used by a LOT of folks for a lot of different reasons. There’s a Cleveland whiskey company. A British folk duo. A catering company. Even a few river outfitters, if you can believe that.
All up, there are about a gazillion River Roots doing all manner of things out there, which makes it rather difficult to build an identity of our own.
So, we started without a name.
Then we tried Reaching for Roots on for size. Which was nice, but not quite right.
Then my sister-in-law watched a couple of our early videos and suggested Roots & Renewal.
And that…that fit.
Thank you, dear sister! (Yes, I did thank her properly already. I’m bad about texting and calling, but not THAT bad.)
And the more we used it, the more we realized it fit the way we see the world.
River Roots Redevelopment has been the name above this column for years. It has history. People around here know it. I occasionally meet someone who says, “Wait, YOU’RE Selina?” which always makes me wonder if I should be flattered or worried.
But River Roots started as the name of a redevelopment initiative, and then became the name of the column about that initiative.
And both kept evolving.
The work evolved, step by step, into Pellere. And this column, and now the podcast, have become the places where we share our work, our world, with all of you.
So, drum roll please…
Starting now, this column is Roots & Renewal, too.
This column is where we start a lot of conversations and occasionally finish one. The podcast is where we ramble, ponder, ask questions and sometimes even make a bit of sense.
They belong together.
The old River Roots website isn’t going to disappear in a puff of rebranding smoke, either. It tells part of the story of how we got here, and we’ll keep using it as an archive while we gradually move things where they belong. The Pellere website is gradually being updated to reflect the changes as well.
Gradually being the operative word.
There are, after all, still houses to fix, proposals to write, meetings to attend, videos to make, articles to finish and only so many hours and functioning brain cells available at any given moment.
For now, though, one thing is done.
Welcome to Roots & Renewal.
Roots & Renewal is where the Pellere Foundation shares the people, projects and occasional mud behind our work. Read along here, check out the podcast on YouTube or Spotify, or find us at pellere.org.
👉 Want to help us rethink what redevelopment can look like—together? Follow the conversation and share your thoughts with us on Facebook and LinkedIn, or reach out directly to rachel@pellere.org. We’d love to hear from you!
🔗 Looking for more ways to connect? Our Linktree has all the good stuff in one place: blog updates, community polls, upcoming events, and more.
