Arts and Community Development

   Culture, Equity, and Cities (1.5Mb)

Have you ever begun to just notice something and then suddenly you see it everywhere. Then you wonder, have I been out of it, or did this just become a thing?”

To be wealthy was not to have, to be wealthy was to give.

— Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way

The Native people of the East Bay Area are mostly overlooked by its modern dwellers. When people speak of Oakland as a place, most people likely think of a dense urban area — perhaps they think of the Oakland Raiders, with the team colors of silver and black. The Raider Nation. But do they consider the tribal nations that lived in Oakland before it was Oakland? Probably not.

Today, Regina’s Door in Oakland serves as a healing artistic space for survivors of sex trafficking, as well as a launching pad for theatrical productions featuring the stories and performances of survivors. Its start came in 2014, when Regina Evans decided she needed to do something to help her community. “We have young girls being brutalized every day. In Oakland trafficking is very hidden, but if you go down International Boulevard, you also see very young girls — twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old, and you know they’re being raped,” she said.

An artist's work offers design solutions for coastal cities to adapt to climate change and rising sea levels. Profiled by Food Tank, Mary Mattingly mentions, "We absolutely need more public spaces for foraging and stewardship-building, and we need larger-scale participation."

Before doing a routine demolition in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, one artist was inspired by the stories and the personal belongings of those who lived in that house before it was abandoned, reported Next City.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded recently Pitzer College a five-year $1.1 million grant to develop a Claremont Colleges-wide Critical Justice Education (CJE) program. The program will foster social change through the power of prison education and educate Claremont students and incarcerated individuals.

As the term creative placemaking is increasingly known in arts and culture, community development, and urban planning, a new white paper released by Kresge Foundation explores the value of the field and what it needs to flourish.

Arts and cultural organizations in the United States are well-distributed across the country, serving communities both poor and affluent, rural and urban, not just on the coasts and not just in major metropolitan markets, states the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) introducing its 2018 most vibrant arts communities in America index.

This May, after five years, the art space 356 Mission in East Los Angeles will be closing its doors. But, as Nonprofit Quarterly wrote citing Hyperallergic, there were mixed reactions to the news. From artists, there was a sadness as they acknowledged the work the space has done for the arts and for its neighbors. And, with a very different reaction from community activists who “applauded the announcement as a victory against developers and the artists and galleries they see as their enablers and collaborators.”

"What does culture have to do with sustainability?" A report by Helicon Collaborative, commissioned by ArtPlace, begins with this question to make the case for how place-based arts and cultural interventions, or “creative placemaking,” advance sustainability outcomes in the context of community development.