ARTSblog

Tim Mikulski

“Something big is going on in American cities. It is urban. It is real. It is transformative.” “It is a golden time for an urban renaissance.”

Those are just short soundbites from former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former Mayor of San Antonio Henry Cisneros during his introduction to our Town Hall session to start day two of the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention.

Following that stirring introduction, Cisneros joined five other panelists, and Americans for the Arts President & CEO Bob Lynch, in a fascinating discussion about how the arts can be involved in all aspects of creative placemaking.

Opening Remarks

In a round of opening remarks, the panelists were asked to respond to Cisneros’ statements about the arts, cities, and placemaking.

Knight Foundation Vice President of Arts Programs Dennis Scholl asked several questions including: “What role are we going to play in this urban renaissance?” (as described by Cisneros) and “How are we going to seize this moment?” More importantly, he stated unequivocally, “I want a seat at the table and a national cultural policy.”

Los Angeles County Arts Commission Executive Director Laura Zucker stated, “Arts and creativity is a special sauce…if we could bottle and resell it to people, everyone would want to buy it. The challenge is to sell it.”

Trey McIntyre Project (TMP) Executive Director John Michael Schert explained how the dance company chose to make Boise, ID, its home because founder Trey McIntyre wanted to be part of shaping the community—how the city sees itself and how others see it.

In a fine example of placemaking at its core, Schert described how vital TMP has become to the community as they were named economic development cultural ambassadors and the fact he can walk down the street and local residents know who he is and often look to TMP as a resource for guidance.  Read the rest of this entry »

Luis Ubiñas

Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiñas started his opening keynote at our 2012 Annual Convention talking about about how he came to the arts. It was through free access in New York City. Having grown up with modest means, Ubiñas was only able to attend the finest cultural institutions that the city had to offer via free days.

In fact, he recounted one story when he was 14-years-old and went to The Public Theater to see Macbeth. However, he and has friend had arrived so early that they ran into founder Joe Papp who told them so, but also invited them to look around and explore his theater.

It was that kindness that stuck with him and shaped his appreciation for the arts. He reminded attendees that everyone in the room had similar experiences that shaped our attitudes about arts and culture and to never forget to provide those experiences to other 14-year-olds you stumble across in your work.

Beyond that personal anecdote, Ubiñas also talked about the economy behind the arts. During one passage he reminded the audience how important it is to explain to decision-makers at every level (city, county, state politicians, etc.) the value of the arts. He said all-too-often, it seems that they will fight to hard to bring a new manufacturing facility to their area due to the jobs it brings, but that doesn’t happen for the arts. And, as he said it doesn’t make sense because, “you can’t outsource a museum.”  Read the rest of this entry »

Jennifer Armstrong

Local Arts Agency — These three words strung together cause confusion among the general public and within the arts industry.

What is a local arts agency? Even local arts agencies have asked this of me.

I receive inquiries from many discipline-specific organizations who are creating arts locally — aren’t they local arts agencies, they wonder.

Illinois neighborhoods, villages, cities, towns, and regions are coming together and forming what could be considered local arts agencies (LAAs). However, provided with a commonly accepted definition or description, often the leaders in these efforts are reluctant to jump into that ‘box.’

Yet more and more non-LAAs seem to find a connection to LAA issues and want to join our Local Arts Network.

If I have to spend so much time explaining what an LAA is, does that label still fit?

Does it have relevance and resonance? Who falls under that nomenclature today? Is it exclusionary? Is it too wide-ranging?

Do our definitions and parameters still make sense? Does the label mean anything? Read the rest of this entry »

Erik Takeshita

The deeper the roots, the stronger we are. 

I have a print in my office made by a teen from The Point Community Development Corporation with this on it. I couldn’t agree more. We need to know where we came from to get where we wanted to go. This is true for individuals, organizations, and communities.

On November 16, Minneapolis-based Bedlam Theatre had 24 hours of live, web-streamed programming for “Give to the Max Day” including a panel discussion on “Placemaking? Arts Bubble or Dawning of a New Age?”

While I enjoyed participating in the conversation with Bedlam, Anne Gadwa from Metris Arts Consulting, and my colleagues from the Irrigate project (an artist-led creative placemaking initiative in St. Paul that received one of the initial ArtPlace grant awards in September), I am not sure we are asking the right question.

What I mean is I think placemaking is neither an “arts bubble” nor the “dawning of a new age,” but rather something that human beings have always done. We are always striving to make the places we inhabit more livable, attractive, and vibrant. Read the rest of this entry »

Christine Harris

For much of our recent history, the arts have been considered a ‘nice to have,’ a quality of life amenity that certainly helps make a difference in the community, but expendable when there are tough budget or resource choices.

We are painfully aware of being excluded as serious priority from the public funding and the arts education conversations. But, there is a new table that we can join with a strong and purposeful voice — and that is the ‘economic development’ table.

I’m not just talking about economic impact (which many development specialists eschew), or community/quality of life, but measured, quantifiable economic development in the same manner as biotech, healthcare, or construction industries.

While many in the arts community believe that anything connecting us with the same tools to business somehow ‘taints’ our value or impact or role, the truth is — if you are not at the economic development table these days, you are just not part of the conversation — period — like it or not.

But the reality today is that we can demonstrate the value of being seated at that table, perhaps for the very first time. Read the rest of this entry »

Tatiana Hernandez

This Salon sought answers to a very big question: what will it take to move and sustain arts and culture in community development, civic engagement, and social change?

The 21st century is all about intersections, networks, and hybridity. Our goal should be to ingrain arts in community development through cross-cutting projects that seek to anchor people to place. Caron Atlas nailed it by highlighting Arts & Democracy’s new book: Bridge Conversations, People Who Live and Work in Multiple Worlds.

The Stockholm metro is not only informally known as “the world’s longest art gallery” but it’s also a leader in energy conservation — harvesting body heat from passengers to help ease heating requirements.

An example of the art inside the Stockholm subway. (Image via Wacky Owl)

This is a creative solution that puts people (literally) at the heart of the work. Erik Takeshita said it best, “the importance of culture – not just art – is critical.” To Takeshita’s point, the Stockholm metro isn’t art specifically, its culture; a way of expressing the values of a society. Read the rest of this entry »

Brendon Greaves

I just returned from several days in Wilson, NC, where I am assisting with the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park Project. This ambitious project involves conserving twenty-nine of local artist Vollis Simpson’s monumental wind-powered kinetic sculptures and relocating them from a field outside his repair shop at a crossroads in rural Lucama to an expressly designed downtown sculpture park in nearby Wilson.

This weekend was the annual Whirligig Festival, a street fair inspired by the community’s affection for Mr. Simpson’s artworks, which already adorn several public locations downtown, providing an aesthetic identity and metereological indicator for Wilsonians.

Despite enthusiastic sanction and financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtPlace, the Educational Foundation of America, the North Carolina Arts Council, and many others, the true power of this remarkable placemaking project resides in its grassroots foundation.

The concept of using vernacular art to leverage investment in the community for the goal of cultural tourism and arts-driven economic development originated with local stakeholders concerned about both Mr. Simpson’s legacy (he is 92 and can no longer climb the 55-foot sculptures to grease bearings and repaint rusting surfaces) and the economic future of Wilson in a post-tobacco economy (Wilson once boasted the title of the world’s largest tobacco market). Read the rest of this entry »

Tatiana Hernandez

People have looked to the arts to help define their communities and create a sense of place for generations. So, why are we so excited about creative placemaking today?

Perhaps it has something to do with context. In this digital world, many are reexamining the fundamental nature of “community” and our relationship to place. We now know, based on findings from the Knight Soul of the Community report, that social offerings, followed by openness and aesthetics explain why we love where we live. What does that tell us about the essential importance of our connection to place?

“Vibrancy” is popping up as a way of describing the intangible nature of a neighborhood’s character. Here are three projects working to help define a sense of place in each of their communities:

Philadelphia has a strong tradition of mural work, and thanks to Mural Arts, artists and residents continue to come together to help define “home.” As part of their Knight Arts Challenge project, Mural Arts brought two Dutch artists, Haas&Hahn, to North Philadelphia to live, work, and engage the community around a large-scale mural that will span several blocks of Germantown Avenue. Read the rest of this entry »

One the community gardens operated by the Norris Square Neighborhood Project. (Photo Courtesy of Norris Square Neighborhood Project)

Throughout the first half of the Animating Democracy Blog Salon, several have spoken to the powerful potential of creative placemaking for igniting engagement and change at the local level.

By capitalizing on community assets, placemaking can aid in elevating the potential of a neighborhood’s space, reinvigorating both the physical and the psyche of the local environment.

This past summer, I had the opportunity to wander through Las Parcelas, one of the six community gardens operated by the Norris Square Neighborhood Project (NSNP) in Philadelphia.

Consisting of over three dozen plots and coming alive through the vibrant colors found within bird houses, benches, garden ornaments, murals, and a rural Puerto Rican casita, the garden has breathed life back into a community historically plagued by low-income levels, high drop-out rates, and a deadly drug culture.

Las Parcelas has created an important third space for Norris Square youth and neighbors alike to embrace their heritage and celebrate the identity of the neighborhood through gardening, community gatherings, and educational programming. Read the rest of this entry »

Olga Garay

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) is pleased to announce that we have received an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), one of only 51 grants awarded nationwide.

DCA will receive a $250,000 award, the largest grant amount available, to support the design of the Watts Historic Train Station Visitors Center and Artist Pathways. Principal partners are the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) and the Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC), as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is already providing preservation services for the Watts Towers.

Our Town is the NEA’s new leadership initiative focused on creative placemaking projects. In creative placemaking, partners from both public and private sectors come together to strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Read the rest of this entry »