Art is a wonderful thing. It can move us to emotion, educate us, provoke discussion, and prove that G-d does exist. Who hasn't been moved by the sight of Natalia Makarova dancing "Swan Lake?" However, can art become a way to develop communities? Interesting prospect. Before we go any further, let's define the word art as a broad category that includes, dance, music, architecture, graphic design, digital media, sculpture, writing, and so forth. A growing trend in communities across the United States is the integration of art into community development efforts. As a viable approach, the arts can serve as a catalyst for business incubators, cooperatives, and the development of tourist venues, just to name a few. The efficacy of the arts as a basis community development depends programs that are flexible and creative as well as a strong base of support for the arts.
Art as a strategy for community development is gaining traction in the United States. In the United Kingdom most communities consider the main importance of the arts as a jobs generator against the background of a tough economy. In truth, support for the arts as a strategy for community development in the United States goes back to the 1890s with the City Beautiful Movement. Daniel Burnham, the principle architect of the movement, and his cohorts were strong believers in the idea of integrating public arts into parks and other open spaces and beautiful architecture. This approach to planning was quite popular for a time and when it ended so did its support until the resurgence of interest about one hundred years later. The upside of this was that it made work for historic preservationist such as your truly. This time the interest in the arts is focused on the recognition of its social and cultural impact on community. Often conflated with the term "cultural resource," the arts' contribution to community development is modified in such a way that it becomes attractive to investors, cultural tourism development for increased services, and increases the capacity for internal development. Commodifying culture as a supplement to traditional development activities has become the focus of many communities around the world. For examples, the 1999 Culture Counts Conference organized by the World Bank and Italy in cooperation with the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Culture Office intended to explore the links between cultural resource investment and economic growth. It should be noted that the majority of the participants were from North America and Europe there were no representatives from the non-Western countries.
Too much commodification of art and culture can and does happen, leaving a community with no real social and cultural benefits. Without the involvement of the specific community in the development process, communities may experience conflict between culture, community, and identity. Essentially, local development needs to be at the cultural level to facilitate participation and empowerment if the desired outcome is to be achieved. This fits within the context of an arts-based community economic development approach because the arts can be considered a community asset. A community asset can be defined as the gifts, skills, and abilities of individuals, associations, and institutions within the community. In short, the arts build on the inherent assets of a community, and if the definition of community development as a planned efforts to build assets that improves the residents' quality of life, then an arts-based community development has a great deal of potential. Brilliant.
The arts, in context to community economic development can be defined as:
1) an industry comprised of individuals, institutions, and organizations functioning as businesses interrelated with other local and regional business; (a symbiotic relationship)
2)Wide-ranging to specific cultural amenities;
3) cultural education, tools, policies, and processes (support Arts Education in your local schools).
Some see the arts as a powerful catalyst for rebuilding all aspects of a community not just economically. Who would've thought that a local historic landmark could be so powerful. Think about for a second. Look at Downtown Los Angeles as a case study. Like Brooklyn, New York, the creative types needed an affordable alternative to housing in Los Angeles. In the eighties, Downtown Los Angeles was not quite the place it is now. There were a lot of empty run down older buildings, homeless and criminal element, cultural institutions such as museums and galleries did not exist. This provided an appealing setting for painters, writers, photographers, and so forth to practice their craft while living on next to nothing. Additionally, there was plenty of space to exhibit their work and share ideas. Soon buyers and gallery owners began to filter into the area to check out the new talent. Little by little, restaurants, retail spaces, and other amenities began to pop up. Eventually developers caught on and overtime, Downtown Los Angeles grew into a more glamourous place. To be sure, there are still parts of the area that very questionable but what we have here is a good case study of what happens when arts-based development becomes a catalyst for other things. Perhaps, the impact of the arts at the community and regional level was stated best in this quote from Rural Action, Inc.,
The arts touch people on a personal, emotional level and have the power to rebuild the fabric of community where it has been torn apart by years of poverty and struggle. the arts can construct bridges across barriers of class, race, gender and age. The arts can interpret and celebrate the past, present and future of a community to replace despair and apathy with hope and creation. (Rural Action, Inc., 2001, p.7; http://cdj.oxfordjournal.org, 2004)
There are four types of approaches to how the arts are used for community economic development. The first type is the Arts business incubator. Here, incubator program are an economic development tool intended to foster a community's business development efforts. This method includes shared administrative and other services, centralized space and business development assistance provided in the facility where new or young small businesses co-exist. Almost half of the incubators are sponsored by the government and non-profit organizations with main directive being general economic development goals of job creation, economic diversification, and tax-base expansion. Notice how I didn't mention corporations and wealthy individuals as "job creators." Sorry I couldn't resist a dig at the Republican National Committee. An arts incubator helps artisans develop much needed business acumen skills or puts them together in a cooperative situations or other organizational arrangements to provide the necessary skills. Keeping costs low and providing support services combine to make it possible for artist entrepreneurs to start businesses. Good idea because, honestly, the whole starving artist thing get really old really fast. Arts incubator programs are emerging in a variety of context in major cities as well as smaller communities.
For example, in Sneedville, Tennessee The Jubilee Business Incubator is funded and operated by a community coalition of religious organizations, artisans, farming groups, and others. This incubator program helps organize people in the area into a network of grass-roots community, youth, economic cooperative and small business groups. The craftsmanship is part of the heritage of the mountain community and the Jubilee project is a way to preserve this heritage while addressing community needs. In the City of New Orleans, Louisiana, The Entergy Arts Business Center focuses on helping local artisans learn the fundamental skills necessary to operate small businesses. The Center's goal is to support the creation and development of arts-based businesses. It is funded from a variety of sources and functions as a business incubator offering rental space and shared services to small art-based business start-ups. The center also offers business-training programs to other artisans who are not incubator tenants, for a small fee, covering topics such as business and financial planning, marketing, and legal issues, The Entergry Arts Business Center is considered a success because of its efforts to support business development.
A second type of arts-based community economic development is the Arts cooperative. Cooperatives can be an effective method for encouraging arts-based business development. Typically, a group of local or regional artisans from a non-profit organization to market and promote their work. A portion of their revenues from sales pay shared market expenses. One example is The Craftsman Guild of Mississippi. This cooperative was formed in 1973 by a group of artisans interested in preserving and promoting the folk, traditional, and contemporary crafts of Mississippi. The goal of the non-profit organization has been to set standards of excellence in arts and crafts. By ensuring high standards, the Guild developed a reputation as one of the best arts cooperatives in the region and has impacted community development in a positive way. Their first project was the establishment of the Mississippi Crafts Center on the historic Natchez Trace Parkway north of Jackson in a traditional log cabin. The Guild constructed a second project near downtown Jackson, The Chimneyville Crafts Gallery, which includes a sales center, main offices, classrooms, and studios. The Guild also conducts public service projects to promote the arts and community and holds several large festivals every year. They also sponsor continuing education programs in addition to handling the sales and marketing of member's work
A third type of arts-based community economic development is the tourist venue. Okay, Okay I heard that groaning, I did it myself. The tourist venue, ugh. Brings to mind the ridicules installation piece commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art "Levitated Mass" which received a lot of publicity touting to be THE MUST SEE ART EVENT OF 2012. However, the arts-as-a-tourist-venue can be used for purposes of good. While arts incubators, cooperatives, and comprehensive approaches may recognize tourism as a tool for economic development, this approach explicitly develops programs focusing on tourism. Some communities use themselves as a palette for venues, painting murals on buildings or incorporating public art on a major scale. Caution must be exercised so that this approach does not become over-commercialized and reduced to Disney-fying community.
One example is the town of Tifton, Georgia located in Southern Georgia's prime agricultural land. Tifton used an approach of providing several venues to attract visitors to spend the day or more exploring the arts. Two sites-the Tifton Museum of Arts and Heritage and the Georgia Agrirama to serve this purpose. Also, a special program has been implemented in conjunction with the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, the Art Experiment Station. The latter focuses on putting public art around downtown and in regional schools. The realization that the arts could serve as a vehicle for community develop came with the development of the The Georgia Agrirama in 1976. Built with state funds, the Agrirama is a living history museum, eerily similar to Colonial Williamsburg (http://www.abac.edu/museum) and incorporates traditional arts and craft exhibits. The Tifton Museum of Arts and Heritage was developed in a historic downtown building, refurbished with a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts (support them). This project was instrumental in an arts-based development strategy and has promoted the redevelopment of nearby properties for related activities.
The final approach is the comprehensive approach in which the arts serve as one component of ann overall development plan, the arts become the foundation usually focusing on revitalizing local economies. The underlying motive for the community-wide revitalizing effort is that the arts are a key to bringing back the economy. While art-related events are not enough, the integration of arts in the overall community development strategy and planning, encouraging wide-spread citizen participation, that appears to be an effective community development strategy. One example is Bellows Fall, Vermont.
By the late 1980s, this dying former mill town was in serious economic decline. The once bustling brick factories were vacant and crumbling, the Victorian houses subdivided into apartments, and the majority of storefronts were empty. In 1997, Robert McBride, a New York-based artist, founded the Rockingham Arts and Museum Project (RAMP). This community-based organization's mission statement,
RAMP is intent on developing awareness of the arts, creating vitality in the community with the arts and demonstrating that the arts favorably impact the local economy. Success of the program relies on developing effective partnerships. The theme is Art Makes a Difference (author's insertion: YES). (Rockingham Art and Museum Project, 2000, p. 1)
This organization has prompted the village to take charge of its future rather than letting fall victime to hard economic times. RAMP integrates art into the overall community development in a way that builds support for the arts through infrastructure improvement and other activities. For example, RAMP renovated the historic Exner Block (c. 1870s). The pressed tin structure is considered one of the state's most important architectural features was remained unused for decades. The Exner Block is now affordable space for artists studios, apartments and retail space. Funding for the project required a creative mix of public and private sources which totaled more than $1 million in tax credits from local banks, $400,000 from federal sources, and $400,000 from the state of Vermont (Rockingham Arts and Museum Project, 2000, p. 2). Through RAMP's efforts, Bellow Fall became the ninth community in the state to receive official Downtown Designation, which helps promote revitalization activities.
What are some of the considerations for implementing an arts-based community development strategy? There are five points to think about:
1) General support for the arts. Citizens and local government officials need to recognize that a healthy arts presences is a vital part of community infrastructure and is important in terms of community development. Participation approaches in community decision-making should be used to further build support.
2) Seek out untapped resources. Local governments may have more resources that direct funding that can be used to support arts-based businesses and other activities. Examples include rent-free facilities from a variety of sources such as school classrooms and auditoriums, commercial warehouses, conference centers or vacant retail spaces.
3) Integrate the support of arts with community development benefits. Whenever possible, the community should strive to link benefits with arts-based activities. For example, artisans could participate in programs such as bringing art to public schools or placement of art in public venues.
4) Maximize resources through community sharing. The centralization of facilities and resources is a significant factor in the success of arts-based programs. A centralized facility such as a production studion, gallery, office, or retail space can be used by numerous groups to provide cost savings. This is one of the underlying premises of arts business incubator program-by sharing, costs are reduced for everyone involved.
5) Adopt a flexible approach to arts support. All artists are different and need different kinds of support and assistance. Business management assistance to arts entrepreneurs is usually a critical need in communities, yet the type of assistance may vary. Successful arts-based programs will respond to artists on an individual basis. (http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org, 2004, p. 8-9)
So what can we conclude from all of this. On paper it sounds like a sure-fire wonderful way to bring back ailing communities. Certainly, as evidenced here, it works but there are challenges. The approaches presented here are typologies that can be applied according to the situation. The key is flexibility and creativity. No one approach works. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone came up with a whole new set of arts-based community economic development. The other crucial factor is community support. In this time of sequestration, it might be hard to find a community that would support an art-based community economic development program no matter great it sounds. This is an idea worth pursuing, it has promise.
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