Koren Dennison is typically too busy in conversation or setting up food to notice when someone enters My Kousin’s House, a new community clubhouse run out of her home in Metcalfe Park.
When guests arrived at her spelling bee on Saturday, May 16, her dogs, Kyee and Laxton, happily greeted them, while other company offered a soft welcome before locking in on a screening of “Akeelah and the Bee” – a favorite tearjerker among the attendees.
Once Dennison paused long enough to look around, she smiled enthusiastically as she welcomed new arrivals, offering food and encouraging people to make themselves comfortable before the event evolved into an outdoor spelling bee.
“There were children under the age of 12 who got to observe their parents participate, which I thought was cool and powerful,” Dennison said.
The experience felt like walking into a friend’s house – or, more fittingly, a cousin’s house.
“Essentially, I wanted to scale out and scale up what if feels like to be my friend,” she said.
Dennison launched My Kousin’s House this year with the aim of creating a “third space” – an environment separate from the home or workplace, where people can relax and socialize.
While Metcalfe Park’s third spaces are limited, the new clubhouse offers a casual place where community members can develop skills, express themselves and support each other’s growth.
Through September, Dennison will host eight events tailored to an intergenerational audience, including a Double Dutch tournament and a drunk history day party.
“I think that third space call is incredibly important to answer,” Dennison said, “because a lot of other questions will be answered through that one solution.”
‘Your Kousins are waiting’
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Dennison, 28, bought her home in Metcalfe Park in 2021 shortly after completing her master’s degree in business and corporate communications at Marquette University.
Last November, Dennison lost her job and found herself with a lot of time on her hands – time to be still, grieve and reflect.
The extra time helped her determine what she wanted to do next – create opportunities that would enrich and empower others.
Prior to preparing for the launch of My Kousin’s House, she primarily spent her free time outside of Metcalfe Park, citing the lack of third spaces she is now attempting to create.
“If I’m not going to a Metcalfe Park Community Bridges event, there is no other place in the neighborhood that I’m going to even begin rubbing elbows with my neighbors,” she said.
By March, Dennison launched the clubhouse, offering her own home as a place for her neighbors to connect – a departure from commercial buildings that typically house third spaces.
Dennison’s efforts fill a gap for Metcalfe Park, where many spaces are not designed to foster community building.
Current third spaces in the neighborhood include the Center Street Branch Library, a handful of churches and a few parks, including Butterfly Park and small pocket parks like Metcalfe Park Rising and the Black Joy Farm.
My Kousin’s House provides the neighborhood with a new model for community building. Unlike other spaces that may seem intimidating or difficult to approach, the clubhouse aims to be inclusive.
“If I’m modeling my business after my friendship but scaling it up, that means guests can come here,” she said of her home.
Programming for Metcalfe Park by Metcalfe Park
So far, the clubhouse has hosted four of its eight summer events.
Each event is an intergenerational space, with dozens of attendees ranging in age from 11 to 76.
The themes of the events range from Grey’s Anatomy-themed Jeopardy to Black beauty to the adult spelling bee.
While most are held in Dennison’s home, some are held elsewhere, including her recent “Wash Day for Black Women” event, hosted at the Third Space Collective near North 29th and West Clybourn streets.
According to Dennison, the clubhouse focuses on four key areas: Black liberatory literacy building; conflict and wellness; creative expression and sustainability and food.
Nearly a year ago, Metcalfe Park became a food desert after the North 35th Street Pick ‘n Save – its only full-service grocery store – closed.
Dennison, who is a member of the Food Justice Collective, partnered with Karma Community Garden and Bridges Connect MKE to create My Kousin’s House’s Hydroponics 101: a nearly month-long series of workshops to teach attendees how to grow their own produce and achieve food sovereignty.
In August, My Kousin’s House will co-host a garden party to promote food justice in partnership with Metcalfe Park Community Bridges and Engaging Communities to Change Health Outcomes.
Eventually, Dennison hopes to move into a new home so that the clubhouse and her house are separate spaces. This, she said, would also create space for additional clubhouse features, like a studio space in what was once her bedroom.
In the future, she envisions weekly programming like Tuesday potlucks, Wednesday crochet classes and talking circles for elders, Thursday movies, and Friday game nights.
“I want to grow it into a rolling schedule where you just wake up, get out of class or get out of work early and say ‘I’m gonna go see what they’re doing at My Kousin’s House,'” Dennison said.
April Quevedo covers Metcalfe Park for the Journal Sentinel’s Neighborhood Dispatch. Contact: aquevedo@usatodayco.com.
Neighborhood Dispatch reporting is supported by Northwestern Mutual Foundation, Journal Foundation, Bader Philanthropies, Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and reader contributions to the Journal Sentinel Community-Funded Journalism Project. Journal Sentinel editors maintain full editorial control over all content. To support this work, visit jsonline.com/support. Checks can be addressed to Local Media Foundation (memo: “JS Community Journalism”) and mailed to P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: ‘My Kousin’s House’: A new kind of third space in Metcalfe Park
Reporting by April Quevedo, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By April Quevedo, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
