Rosine 2.0 facilitated harm reduction through the development of new artistic works and a community-based archive.

The socially engaged works served as a lens through which others could seek to understand their neighbors from marginalized communities who are also involved in the street economies of Philadelphia.

Rosine 2.0 was inspired by the original Rosine Association, co-founded in 1847 by Mira Sharpless Townsend, a Philadelphia Quaker activist. The organization was run by women for women to help “females who have wandered from the paths of virtue” (i.e, engaged in sex work and substance use, facing physical abuse and exploitation). Townsend’s papers, acquired by the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College in 2019, contain her correspondence, poetry, and other materials related to her activism, including two casebooks documenting the lives of the women she sought to help. The Lang Center provided vision and leadership in activating these archives within living communities through an interdisciplinary collective of artists, harm reductionists, scholars, and community members.  

The original Rosine focused on serving white cisgender women; Rosine 2.0 sought to expand beyond its predecessor by emphasizing women, trans, and non-binary people and continually working to de-center whiteness in the project. The Rosine 2.0 team also recognized that the original Rosine Association is freighted with outdated judgments they did not share. They did not gloss over these differences but confronted them.