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art-projects-to-build-community-office William H. Art projects to build community office complete, these well-designed centers of community activity will signal a massive turnaround for a neighborhood long infested with drugs, poverty, and hopelessness. The program employs roughly eighty young artists in its microenterprise programs each year and serves over three hundred through drop-in programs. Collaborative Art Projects For Kids. The Danville project needed to find a way to upgrade road conditions and meet federal highway requirements, while respecting the aesthetic, economic, and cultural fabric of the community.

From Santiago, Chile, to St Paul, Minnesota, local citizens are partnering with artists to address challenges and make positive change. Of course, not all examples in this movement play it this way. Here are some projects that demonstrate the potential of artists to help create vital and just communities. How do you build a direct connection between artists and community members that is simple, fun and organic?

Artists and buyers come together for pickup parties, creating a direct connection between community members and artists that lasts well beyond the scope of the project. Community supported art programs now exist in 40 neighbourhoods in the US and beyond. When artist Hunter Franks was working with youth in the Bayview neighbourhood of San Francisco, California in , he asked what they wanted to improve about their neighbourhood. The Neighborhood Postcard Project was born.

Now in cities from Santiago to Detroit, stories from residents in underinvested communities are collected on postcards and sent to random people in the same city to break down stereotypes and build new community connection.

After the initial recovery period following a natural or manmade disaster, communities face unforeseen challenges such as vacant spaces, low community morale and negative perceptions. Following the September earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Gap Filler project collaborated with creative stakeholders across the city to make and place temporary projects that bring people together and experiment with space.

Highlights included a coin-operated public dancefloor, a community pizza oven and the Commons , a new public gathering area. In order to amplify the creative power of artists, the Laundromat Project in New York has made this their core principle.

Based in Harlem, the project supports artists to create new, community-engaged work based in laundromats, a place where people are going to be and have the time to collaborate. Projects have included renaming streets based on personal and social history, transforming laundromats into yoga studios or English classrooms, and creating community mix tapes.

This approach opens communities to new ideas of what it means to be an artist and builds power through creative expression. Drawing on the work of Brazilian director and politician Augusto Boal , Theatre of the Oppressed is a model that brings together marginalised individuals with professional actors to create plays based on their real-life experience.

The process engages the audience to solve the underlying problems through activism, advocacy, legislation, policy change and more.

In Bangalore, India theatre performances are used to address issues ranging from government corruption and police harassment to how to improve communications between doctors and patients. A major three-year light rail construction project through the heart of St Paul, Minnesota, could have been a major hardship for city residents and small businesses along the route.

Irrigate, however, mobilised the skills and power of more than local artists to offset the impact of the construction with more than place-making art projects, turning disrupted neighbourhoods into destinations. These projects included murals, performances in restaurants and parking lots, plus giant puppets that acted as business signage.

These projects created a positive counter-narrative of joy, surprise and commitment to the communities in the construction zone. He wrote this book with Partnership for Livable Communities.

For more information see www. The links between the economic health of a community and the quality of its social bonds are becoming increasingly clear. Robert Putnam and other sociologists have supplied convincing evidence that strong social connections are necessary ingredients of economic success. In looking for the ingredients that affect the physical well-being of people in different kinds of places, Dr.

Felton Earls, a Harvard professor of public health, conducted an extensive, fifteen-year study in neighborhoods across Chicago. His research found that the single-most important factor differentiating levels of health from one neighborhood to the next was what he called "collective efficacy.

A more elusive ingredient--the capacity of people to act together on matters of common interest--made a greater difference in the health and well-being of individuals and neighborhoods. The communities profiled here found opportunities for people to come together in creation and celebration of culture. They developed their social capital by cooperating, sharing, and seeking and finding shared goals, and by developing ties on a cultural level.

These connections serve these communities well in their other endeavors--from economic development to civic participation to healthy living.

Public spaces and marketplaces are essential ingredients in every community. Public space provides opportunities for people to meet and be exposed to a variety of neighbors. These meetings often take place by chance, but they also can come through active organizing.

The art of promoting constructive interaction among people in public spaces has been nearly forgotten in many communities. Planners, architects, and public administrators have focused more on creating aesthetic places and on providing for the unimpeded movement and storage of automobiles than on creating places that encourage social interaction. More recently, public officials have been even more concerned with security and maximizing their ability to observe and control people in public spaces.

William H. Whyte asserted that crowded, pedestrian-friendly, active spaces are safer, more economically productive, and more conducive to healthy civic communities.

Since the s, city planners, developers, policy makers, and transportation engineers have built and modified communities in just the opposite vein. While the design of public space influences its use, Project for Public Spaces notes that 80 percent of the success of a public space is the result of its "management," referring to how the space is maintained and activities programmed.

In other words, even in the best-designed spaces for public interaction, activities need to be planned, and the space needs to be clean, secure, and well maintained, or it is unlikely to serve people well. Public art administrators and cultural planners of all kinds can be significant players in designing, managing, and programming public space.

Increasingly, artists are being tapped to collaborate with architects, landscape architects, engineers, and city planners in the design and creation of public spaces, buildings, roads, highways, and public transit facilities.

As important as the space, piece of art, or event is the process by which it is created. A puppet parade may simply be a group of artists marching in the street, or it may be the result of a lengthy, community-wide process involving hundreds of residents who brainstorm themes, construct and paint the puppets, plan the activities, and march together with their families and neighbors.

WaterFire, a public art event in Providence, Rhode Island, brings unprecedented numbers of people together on a regular basis to share a profound experience. At the same time it instills pride, belonging, interaction, and human connection. Created by a public artist, WaterFire involves hundreds of volunteers and supporters, and it has become part of the community's collective identity.

Built at the convergence of two rivers, Providence covered its polluted downtown waterways in the s with roads, rail yards, and expanded parking lots. In the early s, the city uncovered, or "daylighted," the rivers and lined them with public promenades and pedestrian-friendly parks. WaterFire, a public art event that takes place on the downtown waterways, became the needed catalyst for revitalization.

The event involves music, performances, ceremonial bonfires, boats, and ritual and, when it is staged, transforms nearly one mile of Providence's downtown. One hundred fire baskets, or braziers, are placed at regular intervals in waterways that wind through the center of downtown.

Filled with fragrant local firewood and set ablaze at dusk, they're fed late into the night by black-garbed "fire tenders" who make their way from fire to fire in small boats. Powerful and mesmerizing music, conducted through an elaborate speaker system, seems to emanate from the flames.

Artist Barnaby Evans conceived WaterFire as a one-time event in , but citizens immediately recognized the power of Evans' spectacle, in which fire evoked a ritual feel and the flames symbolized the renaissance of the city. Their support, seconded by the city's mayor, led to the institutionalization of WaterFire as a community ritual in Evans created WaterFire Providence in as a nonprofit organization to carry on the public art event.

Today, twenty-five events, or "lightings," are held each year, spring through fall. Each event attracts as many as , people to downtown Providence's public spaces.

Multiple partnerships with social service, education, arts, and civic groups help promote other causes through the event and provide a steady stream of volunteers, weaving a fabric of community through multiple levels of participation. Visitors now come from around the world, and local residents volunteer for and attend the event again and again.

By working across public, business, and nonprofit sectors, the city revived its economy. Perhaps more importantly, WaterFire boosted the community's spirit and self-image beyond what anyone could have imagined. Creating the kind of connections between people that lead to collective civic action is a challenge for any planner, organizer, or community builder. Annual or seasonal events such as festivals or farmers markets can be especially effective in communities with great social, ethnic, and economic diversity.

The processes used to plan and carry out these events are at least as important as the events themselves. Planners and a multitude of artists involved in the Delray Beach Cultural Loop found inventive ways to connect a wide range of people for the first time through community-based cultural organizations. This process crossed ethnic boundaries and helped people celebrate together in a rapidly growing area of south Florida.

Situated on the Atlantic coast near Palm Beach, Delray Beach is an unusually diverse suburban community. There are numerous arts and cultural organizations in the community that offer exhibitions, performances, and classes and an equal number of historic groups and sites.

Many churches and other places of importance serve as sites for ritual, ceremony, and social activity. It consisted of a 1. In doing so, it showcased the community's rich and diverse cultural heritage. Partnerships between cultural and community-based groups rooted in the African American, Haitian, Anglo, and Latino communities were important to the event's success. The cultural loop tour included fourteen churches, six civic institutions, and twenty-three additional historic sites, all welcoming passersby.

A variety of artists projects--on utility poles, trees, sidewalks, and kiosks--lined the way. Each told a story of the people and the place. A vacant lot was occupied by the Open Door Project, displaying over one hundred used doors, painted and collaged in preceding weeks by people of all ages through workshops let by artist Sharon Koskoff. The spectacular collection of doors symbolized the people and events that helped open the doors of diversity and opportunity for individuals and the community.

A "green" market featuring fresh, locally-grown foods, holiday craft show, and outdoor art fair were other attractions along the route, and Old School House Square near the center of the rectangle featured music and entertainment.

Miami-based artist Gary Moore set up a temporary barbershop in a vacant house in the African American neighborhood, offering free haircuts and a glimpse into the world of Black hair for travelers on the loop. Delray Beach's Cultural Loop connected people in celebration of their own diversity.

Although rapidly growing and predominantly prosperous, Delray Beach has ongoing healing and bridge-building work to do. The cultural loop was a unique event that helped locals to be tourists discovering their own hometown using familiar public spaces.

At the same time, it gave visitors access to the diverse cultural riches and history of this south Florida beachside community. Including young people as meaningful contributors in the social and economic aspects of community building must not be overlooked and cannot be left to schools and parents alone.

Engaging youth has a dual benefit: it brings more adults into the picture. Research in civic engagement by the League of Women Voters indicates that the factor most likely to get people more involved in community affairs is helping to improve conditions for youth. The Artists for Humanity programs in Boston does just that. It provides avenues for youth to become socially conscious and engaged entrepreneurs who bridge economic and cultural differences.

Youth build confidence and gain business experience while working with professional artists as mentors and instructors. After it was complete, six students asked her if they could paint something else. That summer they showed up at her studio every day as she found things for them to paint, eventually turning their attention to designing and producing T-shirts to earn money.

In , Rodgerson and the six students incorporated as a nonprofit. While they secured more commissions and product sales, the group developed studio production activities in graphic design, commercial photography, silk-screen printing, sculpture, theatrical set design, ceramics, and painting. The organization later added warehouse space for offices and a gallery.

In , AFH opened a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly "green" facility with 23, square feet of studio, gallery, performance, and office space in Boston's Fort Point Channel Arts District.

The organization works with youth primarily between the ages of fourteen and eighteen from all parts of the city. Fundamentally, it is based upon a small business model, concentrating on what young artists can creatively produce, rather than following a social service model that attempts to address their shortcomings.

Young artists are paid and participate in client meetings and contract negotiations. AFH is careful not to draw boundaries between commercial arts and fine arts--art as personal expression and art as a product for sale. By embracing both, the organization encourages youth to tap their intrinsic creativity. Artists For Humanity operates as a structured, paid apprentice program to pair teens with experienced artists in a broad range of fine and commercial arts for product development and services to the business community.

Participating youth represent the entire city and come primarily from low-income neighborhoods. The program employs roughly eighty young artists in its microenterprise programs each year and serves over three hundred through drop-in programs.

The young artists receive an hourly wage and have the opportunity to earn a 50 percent commission on each individual work they sell through the gallery, shows, or negotiated contracts. T-shirts, Art Projects To Build Community Ltd murals, graphic design, and fine art works are the primary earned-revenue sources. When people become involved in the design, creation, and upkeep of places, they develop a vested interest in using and maintaining these spaces.

When they Art Projects To Build Community Tower have a true sense of "ownership" or connection to the places they frequent, the community becomes a better place to live, work, and visit. The residents' feelings of respect and responsibility for the place bonds them to that place and to each other. No architect or town planner can design or build a place that does that. Citizen involvement in public decision making is too often reactive and negative in character.

People are inclined to involve themselves when the status quo is threatened. But citizen involvement is best when community members and grassroots organizations take the lead. Hope Community in Minneapolis stimulates the creative juices of its citizens in shaping and uplifting their community's self-image.

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