How do the arts build communities?

How Do the Arts Build Communities? THOMAS TRESSER Arts Partners, Chicago In the United States there is a growing interest in the intersection of community development and cultural programming. Two national studies have recently been published addressing this subject. "Culture Builds Communities" is a study published by Partners for Livable Communities' and "Community Development and the Arts" has been published by the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild as part of a major Ford Foundation initiative.2 The National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies has recently established the Institute for Community Development and is collecting over 2,000 case studies of arts at work in solving community problems and building neighborhoods.3 This paper is designed to give an overview of how the arts can be used in a community development setting, especially as part of a community development corporation (CDC). CDCs are non-profit organisations, exempt from paying federal income tax and able to accept grants and contributions, which are deductible from income tax, from individuals. Most CDCs are locally controlled and accountable to the neighborhoods they serve. The majority of CDC boards of directors consist of people who live in the community and who represent the community's interests. There are approximately 3,000 CDCs in the United States. They serve urban and rural areas, targeting their services to low-income people and communities. CDCs engage in a wide range of activities to develop their communities and they bring services into neighborhoods which have been neglected and abandoned by banks, insurance companies, supermarket chains and other mainstream marketplace institutions. Nationally, CDCs have developed 320,000 units of affordable housing for very poor people. Almost 90,000 permanent jobs were created Cultural Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 145-162 Reprints available directly from the publisher Photocopying permitted by license only ©1996 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Harwood Academic Publishers editions des archives contemporaines Printed in Malaysia -1145 146 THOMAS TRESSER or retained by CDCs during the period 1986 to 1991. These CDCs created 17.4 million square feet of commercial/industrial space and made over 3,500 loans in 1991 through a variety of programs supporting micro-enterprise. CDCs are also involved in civic advocacy, community organization, homeowner and tenant counseling, home repair and weatherization, health-care services, youth programs and other community building work.4 One such organisation, Peoples Housing, was a private, non-governmental nonprofit community development corporation located in north Rogers Park, Chicago which was founded by neighborhood activists in 1979. Peoples Housing was one of 35 CDCs in the city of Chicago which produced over 10,000 units of low-income housing over the past 15 years. In 1994, 9 of the 14 members of Peoples Housing's Board of Directors were African-American, 9 were women, 9 lived in the immediate service area of the organization and 5 were residents in Peoples Housing operated properties. Peoples Housing ceased formal operation in December 1995. Over the years, Peoples Housing developed a number of initiatives and community improvement programs, and I served as Director of Cultural Development from March 1993 to December 1995. Its main area of work was the development of 19 properties for low-income housing. Over 400 people live in these properties and half of the buildings are located in an area known as North of Howard, a neighborhood covering about 20 blocks with a reputation for high levels of poverty and crime. The bulk of this neighborhood is contained in Census Tract 101. Approximately 51% of the residents of the Tract 101 are African-American, with Whites and Latinos numbering roughly 25% each.' The median household income in 1989 was $16,549 and there are many young people in the community. In 1989, 1,353 residents, or 21% of the total population of North of Howard was in the range 11 years old or younger. There were also 671 teenagers, representing 10% of the total.7 Over the years, Peoples Housing had expanded and revised its concept of community development. Originally concerned with issues of housing justice, it turned to producing affordable housing development in the early and mid-eighties. This involved acquiring multi-family properties (12 to 40 units) and renovating them inside and out often completely gutting and refurbishing the apartments. ÿ -2- HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 147 Peoples Housing completed its first rehabilitation project in 1983. They were one of the first organizations in Chicago to use the low income housing tax credit vehicle of financing projects, and by 1995 had generated $23 million of reinvestment in north Rogers Park. At first, Peoples Housing was concerned with acquiring properties, renovating them and moving in low-income residents. But as time went on, the organisation moved into a variety of community development and civic improvement projects. These included hiring community organizers who helped create clubs, organized local school council elections, operated a youth drop in-center and participated strongly in a pilot program for community policing. Peoples Housing also spent a great of deal of time and resources perfecting a lowincome co-operative model where residents "rented to own" their units. Peoples Housing also tried its hand at operating a small laundromat, which did not prove successful. They renovated a six story building for 50 units of senior housing and became involved in issues of service and advocacy for senior citizens as well as operating a small community loan program. They were a subcontractor for Chicago's Depar tment of Hum an Se rv ice s and the May or 's Office of Employment and Training for a number of short term programs. In the late 1980's the board and management developed a more complex framework for looking at community development. Asking themselves, "What makes a strong community?", Peoples Housing developed the concept of "a hospitable community" as a framework for talking about the kind of community they were working to develop. The management of Peoples Housing came to the conclusion that a strong community needed four essential dimensions: (1) a stock of affordable and decent housing units, (2) a safe and neighborly streetscape, (3) a strong and effective public school system, and (4) a set of vibrant and accessible cultural resources. Over the years, Peoples Housing had become more concerned with issues of human development and less concerned with physical development and, although they continued to produce low income units, senior management became increasingly involved in issues of human development, community coalition building, crime and safety projects, gang intervention programs and economic development. In terms of a mind set, one might say that in the early days of Peoples Housing, the staff considered their job essentially accomplished once a building was developed and brought on-line for management. But, in the late 80's and early 90's that view changed to the realization that their work was only beginning when a building was -3- completed. It was in this context that the Peoples Housing acquired the Howard Theater Building in 1992. The 78 year-old Howard Theater Building is located in the heart of Peoples Housing service area and contains 30 apartments, 10 occupied store fronts and several spaces suitable for cultural activities. The largest is the Howard Theater, a 20,000 square foot movie theater, which had been unused since the late 1970's. I was hired in March of 1993 to create a community arts program that would turn the Howard Theater into a community cultural center. My responsibility at Peoples Housing was to create a community arts program that combined grass roots programming with youth development and economic development. This paper reflects my practical experience of developing programs there as well as research in this field. I have come to see that a community arts program can help in community building in several arenas:    Human Development Physical Place Economic Exchange Human Development The area of human development is where an arts program can have the greatest impact on community development. The power of the arts is to unleash a person's creativity, to give him/her a voice, to open up a channel for a person to succeed and thrive in hitherto unknown and unpredictable ways. Research indicates that human beings possess multiple intelligences. Educator, Howard Gardner, working at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education over the past 15 years, has identified seven different types of intelligence common to all people: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. ÿ Language facility with words. Math & Logic reasoning & problem solving. Music the world of sound. Spatial Reasoning visual relationships. Movement kinesthetic ability. Interpersonal understanding others. Intrapersonal understanding yourself.8 ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ Most public education teaches, recognizes and rewards only two (Language and Math/Logic) out of all the types of intelligence that a -4- HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 149 young person possesses. Experiencing, making and participating in arts activities primarily exercises and builds on six of the seven types of intelligence (with least emphasis placed on Math/Logic). However, it is a common experience for teachers who use the arts in the classroom to report that even the most unresponsive students come alive and show great success when they get a chance to work on an art project. There has been a great deal of research and reporting on the effects of arts programs in the traditional school setting. The Roosevelt Middle School in Milwaukee adopted an arts rich curriculum in 1984 and as a result of introducing the arts into many aspects of the school, dramatic changes occurred. The percentage of students meeting reading level standards jumped from less than 30% to 80%. By 1989 60% of the students met the math competency standard, up from 10% from 1983. Average daily attendance rose from 85% to 92%. The percentage of failing students fell from 16% to 6%. Behavior problems also declined; before the arts program over 50% of the students had been suspended after the arts program was in place, less than 10% were suspended.9 Working with an artist can be fun, stimulating, challenging and exhilarating. While not all artists are good teachers, many of the arts disciplines are people-intensive undertakings. To put on a play or a dance requires collaboration, team work, listening, discipline and good communication skills. This involves a wide spectrum of practical tasks, ranging, for example, from measuring items for the construction of scenery, and the ability to quickly absorb and follow a complex set of directions, to the writing of press releases and the ability to speak in front of the public. Of course, no one person masters all these skills at any one time, but they are illustrative of the kinds of skills needed for collaborative work. All working artists are resourceful and experienced in solving problems and visualizing solutions. Even if the artist does not possess academic credentials for teaching English, or even for teaching his or her own discipline, he or she has the ability to bring creative and often unorthodox solutions to problems and tasks. Therefore, when we create a community arts program which offers people chances to interact with artists, to take classes, to participate in collaborative projects and to practice their own skills, we are putting our constituents in touch with a powerful personal development resource. ÿ A key point here is that to maximize the possibilities for personal -5- interaction between our artists and non-artist neighbors, we should strive to employ artists who live in, or close by, our neighborhoods whenever possible. These artists are our neighbors and will become known and respected in the neighborhood. They will become role models for our young people and once they start to interact with our constituents, I believe they will involve themselves in the life of the community outside the boundaries and interests of the arts programs. Exposure to, and participation in, arts projects also gives people a voice to speak out and express themselves. Participating in arts projects puts people in touch with their heritage and helps give definition to community identity. This has a direct impact on community pride and solidarity. We know that union organizers have used song and graphic arts to help bring people together, and that the civil rights movement turned to song and hymns many times to give voice to their struggles. The arts speak to the spirit. We can experience the entire spectrum of human emotion and diversity through the arts, which work on our imaginations and fire up our creative engines. The arts create beauty and order where there appears to be none, and the creative act can reveal and bring into light contrasts and contradictions in ways that speak powerfully and directly to a wide range of audiences across boundaries of language and education. The arts show us how to change the world around us by allowing us to change our inner world. This is extremely relevant for the work of community organizers in order to change the world, you first must be able to imagine a better world. Making art and experiencing art is an act of hope and renewal. Participating in a community arts program may not directly put bread in the mouth, but is provides a rich and nourishing spiritual meal that is often underrated. Referring to the nationally recognized community arts program he has built at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in Pittsburgh, William Strickland says "This isn't art just to have a nice day. This is a way of saving kids' lives, oftentimes quite literally." He has also elaborated on the power of the arts for our at-risk youth: "They're all with spiritual cancer. They're all dying, every one of them . . . This is an alternative to dying for a lot of these kids. They don't see anything like this in their lives, in school, or in the communities where they live. Where people say you're something. And they're looking at beautiful things . . . and they're looking at people who are excited about that . . . The idea of the program is to get them addicted to living like this, so they want to live like this for the rest of their lives."' Mr. Strickland has built a $5 million arts center in the poorest section of Pittsburgh which offers classes in photography and pottery and ÿ -6- HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 151 ceramics, as well as programming a state-of-the-art jazz recital hall. They operate a culinary arts training program which has spawned a catering and food service business doing over $1.5 million in business annually. The centre runs a jazz school and a training program in sound engineering, and is building a new greenhouse facility which will combine gardening and commercial production of flowers and plants with the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders. 80% of the students who finish programs at Manchester go on to college, compared with only 20% of all Pittsburgh high-school graduates. While the power of the arts is not just relevant for children, opportunities and options for the young people are especially pressing issues. In the case of north Rogers Park, where Peoples Housing operated, the Gale Academy, our elementary school, is in session yearround, so there are approximately 200 young people at liberty at any given time of the year. Our area is especially lacking in recreation facilities and so poverty, combined with aggressive gang recruiting, and a lack of positive activities for young people create a too familiar pattern of no-where-to-go, no-chance, no-options scenario for the young. Community-based arts activities and training projects are alternatives to gang affiliation because they open new vistas for young people whose limited incomes and often stressful family situations have permitted them extremely constrained access to cultural opportunities and creative exercise. This experience is more applicable to young people at various stages of development and inclination than even sports and athletics. While there is much merit in after-school athletic programs, corporate commercial culture would have young people emulate millionaire basketball stars in an effort to get them to purchase over-priced athletic gear and consumer goods. This reinforces a violent, maledominated, competitive and unrealistic set of expectations for youth. Participation in the arts can be a more inclusive way to reach young people and may serve them better in the longer run." In summary, personal participation in the arts, especially in a neighborhood setting, as part of an ongoing community arts program that uses local artists and is grass roots responsive to people, can excite, empower, energize and educate. Combining accessible public spaces with the creativity of local artists and the needs and talents of the neighbors is a powerful catalyst for human development and neighborhood building. Having the process nurtured, managed and brokered by a community development corporation or other -7- similarly neighborhood-based group is a bold and logical choice for such an approach to community building. In this way the arts become part of a community's spiritual infra-structure, as important to the life of the community as its churches or shared ethnic heritage. And like the physical infrastructure of a community, the spiritual infrastructure needs attention, maintenance, resources and advocacy. Physical Place Many of our CDCs are involved in designing and building or re-building physical places. Peoples Housing generated over $23 million in rehabilitation work over the past 15 years, most of it coming from outside the community. It is important to explore ways in which a community design component of the work can come from residents and potential residents within the community, for example on the configuration of the projects, the interior design, the exterior look, the landscaping and painting schemes. The establishment of apprentice programs to train young people in construction techniques and design basics is necessary and this would require architects to use graduates as apprentices on community projects. It might be possible to collaborate with a design or architecture school to accept graduate apprentices into their programs with scholarships. We could offer such students work/study assignments in our organizations, helping us draft concept drawings or continue apprenticeships with our chosen architect. This could also apply to gardens and exterior spaces, with gardening and landscaping programs that add beauty, value and a distinctive identity to our properties. It may even be possible to theme a building, for example along musical lines, with members of a community art team producing artistic elements. Floors might be named after famous songs. A music practice room might be included in the layout, and donations sought for instruments. Residents could be encouraged to pursue musical instruction and organize choirs, concerts and other events. At Peoples Housing, we started in this direction with the Tile Project, under the supervision of a ceramist and educator. We set up a small art studio on the first floor of our headquarters building and taught a group of children and adults how to glaze tile and create three dimensional sculptured tile. This group installed a mural, entitled "People of Rogers Park", composed of over 170 hand made tiles, in Peoples Housing's office. This group has formed a for-profit micro-enterprise called The Tile People and in six months of part-time sales work have sold $6,000 -8- HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 153 of hand made tiles. They are seeking commissions from architects and home remodelers. The group has had three exhibits of their work and given several demonstrations. In all cases young people, some as young as 12 years old, are in leadership and equity positions. One 12 year-old has made over $400 from the sale of his tiles. This is an admittedly modest beginning, but just as Peoples Housing was failing, we were beginning to build relationships with national manufacturers of tiles and plumbing fixtures as well as local furniture showrooms. We were also negotiating with youth enterprise training programs to teach each of the young participants of The Tile People the basics of business planning. I am still working with the tile crew and I am confident that we will get soon receive a significant contract where all the proceeds will be split among the team members. A model program of this sort is Young Aspirations/Young Artists (YA/YA) in New Orleans. Founded in 1988 by artist Jana Napoli, YA/YA is a nonprofit organization that guides students from the L. E. Rabouin Career Magnet High School toward becoming self-sufficient artists with professional skills and solid business know-how. The teenage YA/YA artists paint on used furniture, design watches for the Swatch Corporation, operate a small fabric-printing workshop and do murals for corporate clients. In 1995 they netted $165,000 through their design contracts. Participants must maintain a C grade point average (B if they want to travel with YA/YA to other cities for exhibits or commissions) and they receive ongoing training in art techniques and business.12 In Philadelphia, the Village of the Arts and Humanities has been using a collaborative approach to transform the Adler Street area since the mid eighties. Under the artistic leadership of Lily Yeh, a professor of painting and Oriental art history at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, the Village is a unique collaboration of artists, local adults and children which has literally transformed vacant land and abandoned buildings into sculpture gardens, arts classrooms, a crafts building, and even started rehabilitating townhouses.13 "The current buzz phrase," Yeh says, "is 'art for social change.' Art may or may not change society, but making art is like striking a match, it invites other people to light a match. It invites other people to light the candles of their imaginations, and it begins to illuminate the darkness of despair.' CDCs are important resources and community assets. We know how to develop, build, and manage spaces. In many of our communi-9- ties public space is at a premium and there are few, if any, enclosed places where neighbors young and old can meet for recreation. CDCs can provide a valuable asset for neighborhood creation by developing and nurturing public spaces which promote community safety, celebration and unity. This is the idea of a public plaza or "town square" which was once a feature of many small towns and neighborhoods. In many countries, town or village life revolved around a public square or plaza and, for many of our neighbors who have recently come to America, this aspect of community life is difficult to re-establish. In the case of Peoples Housing, we managed three spaces which were used for a wide variety of community purposes. We used spaces in the Howard Theater for performances, dance classes, festivals, rehearsals, weddings, parties, benefits and teen dances. On the first floor of our headquarters building we created a small art studio for tile classes. We spent about $40,000 in setting up these spaces with basic amenities, including a small stage in the lobby. An open door policy was instituted which invited arts groups, other youth serving organizations, local recreation programs, local artists and many others to use these spaces. The mandate was to activate the spaces and to encourage a wide variety of groups to come up with projects for the spaces. A minimal rent was charged to incubate and subsidize the risk of trying out the space. This cost can not be born indefinitely, but our experience has shown us that some users can afford to pay more and can put on events that will generate income (rap concerts, dance parties). We were working out a system where we could generate sufficient revenue from these types of events on weekend nights to cover the cost of keeping the space open during the week for classes and drop-in activities that do not generate income. To run such a space, the position of Space Facilitator was being investigated. This person would be a combination of host, janitor, organizer and trouble shooter who would help spread the word about our community spaces and the activities going on in them. He or she would encourage groups to use them and help them with organization if necessary. A guest book would be kept by the Facilitator who would also informally distribute information about Peoples Housing's various programs. Under this unrealized scenario, each public space that we operated would be guided and staffed by a Space Facilitator whose task would be to maximize the use of that space by as wide a range of users and for as much of the time as possible. This is a different model of community organizing and community building in that we would not strive to create programs and then recruit neighborhood participation into them. Instead, we would cre- 10 - HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 155 ate spaces for community members to use and support those activities to the fullest extent possible. Community development companies construct buildings and so are in the space creation business, but more attention should be paid to the physical design of our projects. We should seek to employ neighborhood workers in as many aspects of the design and construction as possible, and we should look at building in community-use spaces in our projects or outside of them. Economic Exchange Nationally, the arts contributes over $36.8 billion to the United States economy every year. The nonprofit arts industry supports 1.3 million jobs annually. This is 1% of the American workforce more than is employed by the legal services or building construction industries.15 In the New York City-New Jersey metropolitan region the arts had an economic impact of $9.8 billion in 1992.16 Much of this impact is due to major downtown institutions, whose staffs are mostly white and whose patrons are mostly upper middle and upper income whites. The economic impact of the arts at the neighborhood level has not been broken down or studied in depth. However, we can cite anecdotal evidence and extrapolate from the impact studies we do have. In San Antonio, the Guadeloupe Cultural Arts Center was created in 1980. They have renovated the historic Teatro Guadeloupe, an old neighborhood movie theater in the heart of Mexican-American Westside. The GCAC has grown to become a business as well as a major cultural resource, employing 17 people with an annual budget of $1.5 million. It provides an extensive array of classes, festivals and cultural enterprises. In addition to holding a large arts and crafts fair every December, GCAC operates the CineFestival and the InterAmerican Book Fair and Literary Festival. The median income for families surrounding the GCAC is $10,455. Clearly, the investment made by the Center's founders and leaders in that neighborhood has paid off hugely.17 ÿ On 19th Street in Pilsen, on the near south side of Chicago, the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum is housed in a refurbished boatstorage facility in Harrison Park. The museum was founded in 1987 with a budget of $900 by Helen Valdez and Carlos Tortolero. They started out their careers as bilingual teachers at Bowen High School - 11 - on the Southeast Side, were frustrated by the lack of Mexican cultural education and set out to create a community-based institution which combined education with cultural celebration and preservation. Today, the MFACM is a bustling hub of classes, exhibits and performances. It has a staff of 21 and a budget of $2 million. In 1994 the MFACM embarked on a four year, $4 million expansion plan that will triple the facility's size and enable it to serve thousands of new patrons annually.18 8 The push by locally controlled CDCs to invest and build in their communities is wonderfully echoed by community cultural activists such as the founders of the Guadeloupe Cultural Arts Center and Chicagoans Valdez and Tortolero. "It always cracks me up when someone says, 'I really love what you're doing, but you should be downtown,' " says Tortolero ÿBut they don't understand what we're about. We think every community should have [this kind of museum]. As beautiful as Chicago's downtown skyline is and we should be proud of that and all the great cultural institutions downtown Chicago is rooted in its neighborhoods." '
The Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center in Brooklyn, New York City, is housed in a 360,000 square foot warehouse built in the 1880s. It is home to 50 artisans who specialize in furniture design and refurbishing, woodworking and the decorative arts. The artisans have formed a co-op to help combine equipment needs, collaborate on large projects and joint marketing. The co-op has led to the creation of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center Local Development Corporation which is negotiating to purchase the facility from the City of New York and renovate a large portion of the ÿ ÿ b
These projects are examples of how neighborhood-based cultural activists created programs and facilities to serve their diverse constituents. Their successes are hard won, with projects started in spite of, or in the face of, indifference by the major cultural funders. I believe that cultural activists and community activists who are trying to rebuild their neglected and disinvested neighborhoods should work together to bring new sources of cultural capital into the neighborhoods. The economic exchanges generated from neighborhood based arts projects and arts facilities fall into several categories:   Jobs in the program or facility. Increased use of neighborhood services (staff eating at restaurants, office supplies, lumber, security, etc.) - 12 - HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 157  Volunteers, visitors and patrons use neighborhood servicesÿ especially restaurants and other shops if available.  The sale of locally made art work or crafts. This can be in local open air markets or local outlets or through export to galleries, mass merchandisers and chain stores located far from the community.  The creation of live performance attractions which draw people from outside the community. This is different from the normal run of performances operated by the neighborhood based arts program, which is aimed and priced for neighborhood residents.  The creation of cultural ventures that are spin-offs of work being done in the neighborhood arts program.21 Cautions and Obstacles I have found that many community activists are a bit suspicious of the arts and artists. There are several reasons for this. Part of the explanation is due to the belief that artists in a community are a sign of gentrification, and there are numerous examples of artists being used by real estate developers to "seed" a neighborhood as a precursor to planned gentrification efforts. But the truth is that most artists and arts groups seek cheap space which meets their creative needs, and that they will go to fringe areas of the city to find it. They do not have enough capital to purchase their spaces, nor the development knowledge or access to financing necessary to purchase space. Unfortunately, some artists turn a blind eye to the communities they move into and are mute accomplices to the market forces which start to uproot the longtime residents of the community. So, in some communities, artists have organized co-operative ventures to purchase and rehabilitate spaces according to their own needs. This is a time consuming and risky proposition.22 A further caution is the need to be sure that the artists working in this arena have some sort of training or exposure to community organizing techniques and a working knowledge of urban policy issues. They should know the history and power dynamics of the community in which they live and work. This is not to suggest that our artists must be community organizers or servants of some political agenda of the organization which hosts them. But they should have a viewpoint on grass - 13 - roots empowerment and understand how their community works. At Peoples Housing I built a steady routine of community networking into the job responsibilities of the artists in the Community Arts Program. They were to meet other staff serving youth from neighboring organizations, the local city councilman, school officials, block club members and other local leaders. My intention was to have each of the artists working in the CAP build their own informal network of supporters and community resources. In my experience, most artists trained in the United States do not have this sort of preparation. I have met many who combine their creative careers with activism of every sort, but their formal arts training did not lead them to community work or offer any training that would be useful in this arena. Much has been written on the subject of the American art industry and how our arts training institutions prepare artists to work in the world of commodity and product." I call this the "Big Art" or "Red Carpet" art world. If we want our artists to join in the community development movement, they will need some coaching and training to make them effective. Of course, there will also be some resistance from the non-arts staff of the host organization to the artists appearing in their midst. I operated independently at Peoples Housing, but I attended regular meetings of the organizing and housing development staff and constantly urged our staff to take advantage of our events to publicize their programs. The offices were decorated with plants and art work and the creative touch was injected into flyer design, live performances into our annual meetings and theater games into our board retreat. The power of our programs spoke for themselves. Over 12,000 people participated in Peoples Housing's community arts activities in 1995 which included classes, open mike shows, teen dances, farmer's markets, concerts, private parties and banquets and community meetings.24 Gradually, many staff members who were at first skeptical of the presence of an arts program inside a CDC like Peoples Housing became strong supporters and were open to a wide range of collaborations. ÿ Finally, there is the difficulty of raising funds for this type of work. I was determined not to plunge ahead with a grand rehabilitation scheme and capital campaign for the theater before we knew what types of activities the community would support. We needed to build a solid base in order to guide our program development and also to show skeptical funders that residents of the Howard Street community wanted and would support a community cultural center. - 14 - HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 159 "People of Rogers Park" is a mural produced by the participants of the free tile class. Kids and adults produced the 170 hand made tiles under the supervision of artist Kay Hauck. Photo: Thomas Tresser ÿ This is a subject for a separate analysis funders place many more obstacles in the way of community based arts programs and facility - 15 - development. It remains easier to raise $1,000,000 for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra than it is to raise $10,000 for a program like the one we created at Peoples Housing. Theater artist and community resident Oba William King initiated many of the cultural programs at Peoples Housing. Here he is engaging a group of pre-schoolers in the Howard Theater Lobby. Photo: Thomas Tresser The Alyo Children Dance Theater performs at the Howard Theater Family Arts Festival, June, 1994. Photo: Thomas Tresser - 16 - HOW DO THE ARTS BUILD COMMUNITIES? 161 CONCLUSION In summary, I have indicated that a neighborhood-based arts program can help in the community development process in many ways. Some of these ways are intangible and not immediately measurable, and some of the impacts are dramatic and overpowering. This is, by no means, an exhaustive study of the community-building impacts of locally controlled and situated arts programs. I am still gathering data and investigating best practices. My work at Peoples Housing was "a work in progress," with members of the community as collaborators. Nevertheless, I feel there is ample evidence to warrant support for efforts such as these in the United States, and my experience on Howard Street tells me that the results can be exciting and unique. I encourage community workers in all disciplines and regions to work with local artists and cultural programs to promote the powerful development of neighborhoods. NOTES 1. Culture Builds Communities—A Guide to Partnership Building and Putting Culture to Work on Social Issues, Kathy Booth for Partners for Livable Communities, Washington, DC, 1995. This is part of their "Arts Builds Communities" Project. 2. Community Development and the Arts, Elinor Bowles for the Community Development Corporation-Arts Resource Initiative at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, Pittsburgh, PA, September 1995. 3. 4. 5. The Institute for Community Development at NAALA is directed by Randy Cohn, at 202-371-2830. Changing the Odds The Achievement of Community Based Development Corporations, a report of the National Congress for Community Economic Development, December 1991. Peoples Housing ceased operation in December 1995. Federal programmes such as the National Equity Fund and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation caused funds to be made available for low-income housing development projects as part of a complex financial package. This mechanism presented problems and caused groups like Peoples Housing to overcommit themselves to projects. For a discussion of the factors causing Peoples Housing demise, see Neighborhood works, "Death of a CDC." Sept.ýOct. 1996. ÿ - 17 - U.S. Census of Chicago, Chicago Department of Planning, February 1991, p15 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Web site: cedr.lbl.gov/cdrom. 8. Frames Of Mind—The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner, 1983, pp. 73-276. See also: Seven Kinds of Smart—Identifying and Developing Your Many Intelligences, Thomas Armstrong, 1993, pp. 7-12. Understanding How the Arts Contribute to an Excellent Education, National Endowment for the Arts Research Paper, OMG, Inc., Fall 1991, p. 48-49. 9. "The Art of Saving Kids' Lives," by Vince Sehle, in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, February 23, 1995. P. 6. 10. An excellent overview of community based arts programs is contained in the recently released report by the President's Committee of the Arts and Humanities, Coming up Taller-Arts and Humanities Programs for Children and Youth at Risk, by Judith Humphreys Weitz (202-682-5409) 11. NEA Web Site: Arts.endow.gov, "Design for Success: Young Aspirations/Young Audiences", Stepanie Madden and Missy Bowen. 12. "The Village of the Arts and Humanities," by Gil Ott in High Performance, Winter 1994. P. 33. 13. Quoted in "A Village With Heart," by Judith Stein, in Metropolitan Home, July-August 1993, p. 35. 14. Jobs, The Arts and The Economy, National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, 1994. 15. The Arts as an Industry, The Port Authority of NY & NJ, October 1993. 16. "The Guadeloupe Cultural Art Center," by Lynn Gosnell in High Performance, Winter 1994, p. 29. 17. Profile of Helen Valdez and Carlos Tortolero by Dale Eastman, in "Chicagoans Of The Year-Seven Who Made A Difference," in Chicago Magazine, January 1995, pp. 50-52. 18. ibid, p. 50. 6. 7. Letter from Dan Dray, Director of Economic Development for the Greenpoint Center, dated November 23, 1993. See also "Co-op Turns Relic Into Profitable Plant," in Custom Woodworking Business, May-June 1993, pp. 41-46. 20. One example is the cassette tape, "The Best of Howard Street, Volume 1" produced by the Community Arts Program at Peoples Housing in 1995. This is a one-hour compilation of some of the best talent which performed at a series of shows at the Howard Theater. It involved working with a musician who recorded young people and adults performing rap, poetry, blues, spirituals and drumming. 200 copies were sold at $6. each and the marketing and distribution of the tape has become a community arts project. Further details from the author. 21. For example, in Chicago it has taken a group of 30 artists-The Acme Artists CoOp-five years to organize, find a building, secure bank financing and produce member down-payments. They did this through collaborations with local civic groups, block clubs, neighborhood activists, local politicians, 19. - 18 - schools and churches. They are located in a community called Bucktown (which has become a Mecca for artists and upscale restaurant) and have organised a community forum on the topic of gentrification and affordable housing. 22. See particularly, Crossroads-Reflections on the Politics of Culture, Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, 1990. You can learn more about these insightful cultural critics and their work in the area of cultural democracy by visiting the 'Webster's World of Cultural Democracy" site on the World Wide Web at http://www.wwcd.org. 23. The arts program generated 33 positive articles and feature stories in local and national newspapers and journals. Tom Tresser is a consultant, producer, educator and trainer who can help individuals, companies and communities leverage and amplify their creative assets in order to solve problems, create economic value and trigger civic engagement. Tom has been a longtime advocate for an increased appreciation for the role of creativity in the life of the community. In 1991 he started an organization that organized artists and cultural workers for political activism and taught "Arts and Public Policy" at Roosevelt University, where he organized a center for the study of cultural policy. Tom was Director Cultural Development at Peoples Housing, a nonprofit community development corporation operating in northeast Chicago, where he organized a community arts program that combined culture and economic development. Tom served as lead organizer for the Chicago Park District for two years in a pilot project that transformed a major regional park into a community cultural center. In April 2004, Tom was elected to a two-year term for the Local School Council for the Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. He lectures on “The Politics of Creativity” and conducts leadership training sessions for artists and creative professionals. He teaches classes on arts and civic engagement at DePaul University and Loyola University. He is working on a new civic effort to stop privatization and defend the commons @ www.publicassets.us www.tresser.com – [email protected] - 19 -