For Release Saturday, September 24, 2011
Citiwire.net
By God they got it! They finally got it! Bravo to National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landsman, his staff and the consortium of government agencies, foundations and corporations for their pledge to invest generously in locally-formed, modest-scale cultural enterprises as generators of urban rebirth.
This group’s new program, ArtPlace, will distribute $11.5 million in grants and $12 million in loans to programs that integrate the arts into local efforts in transportation, housing, community development and job creation. For decades, exactly these kinds of efforts have been a prime renewer of downtowns. Denver, Sante Fe, Portland, Pittsburgh, Chattanooga. Name a reborn downtown district and you’ll find similar modest catalysts that added up to big change.
And this is not just about artists or even the arts as narrowly defined. It’s about the ancillary services and businesses that creative work attracts and, critically, it is about energizing an area so that all kinds of activities are attracted to locate there.
Consider the restoration of the 1855 Hudson Opera House in upstate New York in the 1990s. That once thriving manufacturing town was still dying a slow death. Stores were mostly empty along its main thoroughfare, Warren Street. Only a small supermarket, hardware, sports and drug store, a children’s clothing maker, one antique shop and a few other businesses survived. This shrinking city of 6,700 lost 11 percent of it population since 1990
But Hudson had smartly left its urban fabric intact, ripe for regeneration. First came a pioneering restaurant, then the opera house and one art gallery. In short order, a concentration of antique shops transformed this waterfront city into a destination. Then came art galleries, more restaurants, a Pilates exercise studio, kitchenware, clothing, cosmetics. More diversification followed. The supermarket succumbed to competition from a nearby Walmart and other shopping centers. New was added to old gradually. The Opera House is now a veritable cultural center. The few empty sites are being built upon even during the recession.
By contrast, consider Detroit. It has spent decades chasing the Sirens of flashy progress — notwithstanding the fact that no city has rebounded because of stadiums and casinos. But while none of the massive, publicly-financed big projects did anything for Detroit, some of the smaller ones bore fruit that are now about to be appropriately nurtured by the consortium’s support of the Woodward Corridor. Avalon Bakery, now known for its international breads, opened on Cass Avenue two blocks west of Woodward in the late 1990s, followed by an organic market, a local beer producer, restaurants, art galleries and social service organizations, blossoming into the Cass Corridor. This home-grown regeneration was fed by small investments and spread organically, aided by its proximity to Woodward Avenue with the potential of broad-based rebirth. Similar nodes of regeneration are occurring elsewhere. Small steps eventually add up to big change.
Something similar emerged in Salt Lake City following the first conversion of an empty industrial building into a live-work space for artists in the 1980s. More conversions, galleries, framers, accountants, a stained glass artist, a farmers’ market, a seamstress, non-profit organizations all followed in an unplanned way evolving into a highly popular neighborhood. Even a longstanding homeless shelter was absorbed in the mix. And when a community writing center opened next door, the homeless had a place to learn how to use a computer and create a resume. The neighborhood became a real destination, making feasible the light rail which now connects it to the downtown core.
These kind of catalytic efforts draw investment because they are part of the fabric of the city — strikingly more successful than some large cultural fortress accessible only by car. The regenerative momentum builds gradually. That’s how SoHo started, pioneered by artists, with no public investment, inspiring similar neighborhoods elsewhere. This is about piecing back together the undervalued precincts of our downtowns. Local people must shape the reconnections. Without them, the result is form, not substance.
Roberta Brandes Gratz is an urban critic and author of the newly published The Battle For Gotham: New York In the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, 2010, Nation Books.
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9 Comments
Applaud the work and ideas of people like Gratz focusing on arts as community and economic development, but and here is that but: Their idea of revitalization through are does not address the issue of poverty and racial divide in many of the communities. An ideal neighborhood seems to be one for affluent professional folk like themselves or yuppie-ville. These neighborhood really should be a mix of the swanky stuff and the many enterprises developed by low-income and minority peoples that are often on the outskirts of the downtown core, which is reserved for tourist and the more affluent in the community.
Come and visit Benton Harbor and Saint Joseph, MI. A Corporate non-profit redevelopment of former foundry sites with restaurants, brewreys, revitalization in a fun classic way. Champioship Golf community with beach houses walking and biking distance to 2nd hand clothing shops and senior with public housing mixed into the urban neighborhoods. If you wish to see it in progress, come for a visit. 24/7/365..lots more to do and new stuff com’n. Join the lifestyles in SWMI.
When public arts capital funding is available, U.S. municipal governments and developers almost always spent it by subsiding arts presentation spaces — galleries and theaters — rather than arts production facilities, studios and rehearsal spaces. That is like building a restaurant with no kitchen. The result: cities export artists and import art. This proposal seems no different.
Such programs are not about creativity — art creation — but about demand. Designated “Arts Districts” swiftly become “Restaurant Districts” of art-theme eateries. Even if there are mandates for arts incubators, spaces designated for the messy business of creating visual art and performance rehearsal, there is often a 10-year time limit. Artist creation space then evaporates as art studios are replaced by consumer-oriented businesses that benefit from an artificial artsy aura — bars, restaurants, fashion retail, ad agency offices.
Condo and apartment developers often demand generous tax breaks for offering to set aside a few units for artist housing. But artist housing is not the issue; an artist without access to a studio is a “former artist.” City governments around the world have recognized this and underwritten shared cooperative studio spaces for their artists. If this program cannot do so, it should be funded through HUD or Commerce, not NEA.
This is a great boon to artists and arts communities throughout the country, if they are actually aware of it. The amazing nature of so many renewed urban neighborhoods is that they were started by people using their own resources and investing an enormous amount of sweat equity. I imagine that the organizations that will benefit from ArtPlaces funding are those who are already savvy at securing outside funding. How will this new program reach out to the mini upstarts so localized, and so involved in making their endeavors work (be they galleries, studios, workshops, cooperatives, retail stores or cafes) that this initiative flies over their radars?
A creative cultural neighborhood doesn’t need to be white, yuppie or swanky to be recognized as an arts district. But arts districts will be pushed in the swanky direction without initiatives like ArtPlace that encourage and champion arts that emerges from within a challenged urban community and addresses the issues of poverty and racial divide. Can Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, a low income, high crime, culturally rich neighborhood in the Center City, utilize its cultural anchor the Wing Luke Museum to revitalize the neighborhood for all its residents and businesses? Stay tuned…
Thanks for the excellent column, Roberta. The impact that the arts can have on communities, as you point out, is huge.
One important aspect of the arts is the ability to bring a community together. That’s what often happens, for example, with the restoration of old movie and opera houses — where local residents (and businesses) come together, often donating many, many volunteer hours. It’s a way of cutting across boundaries of politics, age, income, and so on that too often divide us. Everyone is there to pull together to achieve something that will benefit all of the community. For one short report I posted related to this (about a now completed theater restoration in the small city of Emporia, KS), go to: http://www.rte50.com/2007/06/behind-the-curt.html — to visit the theater’s web site: http://www.emporiagranada.com/wp/friends-of-the-granada/
Sometimes just a bit of outside funding can help kick start a project that then builds its own momentum. So it’s great to read about the NEA ArtPlace program.
Wayne Senville,
Editor, Planning Commissioners Journal
Threaded through these comments is a great deal of misinformation that can easily be cleared up by visiting the ArtPlace web site at http://www.artplaceamerica.org.
There you will find that ArtPlace (a) is not a program of NEA (although NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman is a great champion of this work); (b) has already made grants to working artists recognized internationally in their fields who are also working (and living) in neighborhoods in ways that, indeed, address poverty and the racial divide; (c) invites a Letter of Inquiry with very few restrictions on who submits them and is hardly prescriptive.
We look forward to hearing about great ideas for creative placemaking all across the U.S. by November 15.
I don’t think the article presents the program as that of the NEA, at least I didn’t meant it to. It does indicate the NEA is part of a consortium. The NEA has long given grants to artists, to be sure. But the idea of recognizing the interconnectedness of the arts with other city issues like transportation, housing and the like is what makes the ArtPlace program unusual and the coming together of funding sources on these issues is also quite advanced in recognition of how city rejuvenation actually works.
I agree this programme has a huge value for growth and beauty of a city. Its important people realize the importance of international recognition of an urban development, otherwise, its just sprawl, and unsightly at that. but where do these fund come from? As an artist who has curiosity on marketing my work with murals, where does one begin?