Arts Intranet

Lex Leifheit

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about jerks.

Steve Jobs Was A Jerk. Good For Him. writes Forbes contributor Gene Marks.

Al Davis, all-time great a**hole, was Slate editor Jeremy Stahl’s take on the passing of the infamous owner of the Oakland Raiders.

Marks wonders if embracing his inner jerk would make him more successful. Stahl asks, “What do we do when a legendary figure who was also kind of a jerk dies?”

As an arts worker, I frequently fantasize about a Post-Jerk Era. One only needs to read a newspaper or favorite blog to see that a “jerk” model of leadership and programming is still embraced in the arts.

Consider:

• Jerks are dictatorial...and so is a lot of our programming. Seasons and exhibitions are decided by one curator or artistic director. Community initiatives are sidelined rather than central to marketing, programming and education.
• Jerks are narcissistic. They put their name and image on everything and emphasize the importance of their vision. This is true for many of our most influential arts leaders.
• Jerks sensationalize whatever they are selling you with words like “premier,” “best,” and “new.” In the arts, we are experiencing a moment where some funders are putting innovation (new!) and physical expansion ahead of community impact.
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Tatiana Hernandez

This Salon sought answers to a very big question: what will it take to move and sustain arts and culture in community development, civic engagement, and social change?

The 21st century is all about intersections, networks, and hybridity. Our goal should be to ingrain arts in community development through cross-cutting projects that seek to anchor people to place. Caron Atlas nailed it by highlighting Arts & Democracy’s new book: Bridge Conversations, People Who Live and Work in Multiple Worlds.

The Stockholm metro is not only informally known as “the world’s longest art gallery” but it’s also a leader in energy conservation -- harvesting body heat from passengers to help ease heating requirements.

An example of the art inside the Stockholm subway. (Image via Wacky Owl)

This is a creative solution that puts people (literally) at the heart of the work. Erik Takeshita said it best, “the importance of culture – not just art – is critical.” To Takeshita’s point, the Stockholm metro isn’t art specifically, its culture; a way of expressing the values of a society.

Anusha Vankataraman

Artists and creative organizations are becoming increasingly more engaged in what is the traditional terrain of urban planners and local politicians—from local neighborhood planning, to revitalization projects, and even real estate development.

Engagement of the creative community in local planning issues not only increases the relevance of and helps to create broader bases of support for artists and arts organizations; it also ensures that the city planning policies enacted are sustainable, responsive to community needs, and perhaps more effective in the long-run.

One area of urban politics and economic development that is being tackled by creative institutions and local artists is waterfront revitalization. Because of the large public and institutional investments needed to accomplish projects of this magnitude, waterfront revitalization has typically been a city government-led effort.

However, in the face of limited public resources, citizens, grassroots organizations, and local institutions are taking the lead in re-imagining how their rivers and waterways can be used. This form of city re-development is more socially and environmentally just, equitably shared, and creatively implemented.

Radhika Mohan

At the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, we hold several intimate sessions a year, each with 7-8 mayors and another 7-8 design and development professionals.

At every session, we hammer through case studies that the mayors bring and respond with concrete ways to begin implementing their project. Often, the critique on their urban design case studies sounds something like this: “This design could be anywhere, what makes this place in your city special and unique?”

I often call this the “avoiding the autotune” suggestion. Autotune, being the new(ish) technology of the music industry where a performer’s voice can be digitized, making anyone’s voice sound similar to one another in song.

One way to “avoid the autotune” is to bring artists into the mix of the planning process.

Many of us have written that art, as an expression of our cultural identity, can be a great communicator in the design of the public realm and institutional amenities. Through storytelling, mural-painting, exhibitions, and more, we can foster the exchange of ideas on important projects in our community.

Sara Bateman

When it comes to creating a platform that effectively addresses the intersection of art and change while activating community engagement, there is no better way in my opinion to accomplish this task than by using participatory methods with a street-based approach.

Whether you call it community-based art, political art, social practice art, or participatory art, as long as the message is authentic and an entire community is engaged through every stage of the process, it can be one of the strongest ways to cultivate a movement towards change at the local level.

By now, it seems that almost everyone is familiar with the artist JR, a “photograffeur” who uses wheatpaste methods to post large-scale black and white photographs in public locations. By photographing different populations and placing their faces in strategic locations to bring visibility to them as individuals, JR works at the intersection of art and action, addressing issues of identity, freedom, community, and acceptance.

When JR became the 2011 TED Prize Winner, he in turn created Inside Out, “a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work.”

Moving the project beyond his own boundaries as an individual artist, and opening it up for the general population to become co-creators, JR has spawned a worldwide movement for us as individuals to photograph our face in order reveal and bring visibility to ourselves within our own community.

Tom Borrup (center) and friends

Here’s someone who speaks my language!

In Creativity Will Change the Model, Bill Roper calls for new ways to engage people in re-imaging their communities, specifically to engage creative practices in how community planning gets done!

Just as quickly as we have young people – and people of all ages – paint images or make collages representing their vision (and I’ve done it many times), we also need Facebook, and other social media tools to spark discussions and the exchange of images representing spaces and activities that are important to people. These tools can get more people to engage in face-to-face community engagement, and enrich it, not replace it.

Until we have more experience with these tools, we won’t fully know all they can do for us, but we need to experiment.

I’m presently leading a major cultural corridor planning project in Minneapolis where one of the deliverables expected by the city is a pedestrian study. While they may balk at something other than a report from the same pedestrian consultant they’ve hired 20 times before, we’re crowdsourcing the study using Facebook.