You Gotta Have Community Building

Slide from Presentation by Peter Bruun, Art on Purpose.

I have written before about a Detroit Institute of Arts promotion campaign that I still remember from my childhood, "You Gotta Have Art." It was pointed out to me that this campaign likely was a takeoff of the Richard Adler song "You Gotta Have Heart."

Anyway, appropo of the ongoing discussion about art, public art, professional artists, tourism, and community building, not to mention graffiti vs. murals, yesterday I attended with some other Washingtonians, the Baltimore "Art and Neighborhoods" symposium.

It was an excellent presentation, something they should do annually, and something we should do annually in DC. (I'll try to launch this idea in association with something else I am planning, but more on that, maybe, later.)

Presentations were made by Mindy Fullilove, author of Root Shock, Liz Lerman of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange!, Kumani Gantt of the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, Jay Cohen, an artist leading the Rebuilding through Art project in Baltimore's Midtown Edmonston neighborhood, and Peter Bruun of Art on Purpose.

Real City, Dream City is a multi-faceted project involving ten Baltimore City Neighborhoods. April to June 2006 photo workshops led to community exhibitions that had residents vote on images to become postcards. A Postcard Dialogue Project held in each neighborhood August through September 2006 led to specific ideas for change, action, or advocacy.

The presentations were excellent, some provocative. But in the context of the broader conversation within the blog and outside of it, in the various projects I am involved in, it makes me realize that we are talking about different things.

The projects covered in yesterday's session were really about community building through art, not really about arts-driven revitalization such as is occuring in Paducah, Kentucky, in Western Massachusetts, or in Pittsburgh with the Penn Avenue Arts Initiative. Baltimore has two arts districts, Station North and Highlandtown. And just over the border in PG County, there is the Gateway Arts District.

Public art projects to promote art are different from public "art" projects to promote tourism, and mural projects pushing community building within neighborhoods are different from mural projects that are more about art.
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The Chicago "art" cows were one of the first examples in North America (the first place to do this was a town in Switzerland) of tourism campaigns utilizing artist decorated fiberglass constructions. Flickr photo by Travis Church.

The Sioux Falls SculptureWalk is much different from the fiberglass constructions, featuring sculptures produced by professional artists. "Pas de deux," by Shari Hamilton, Westhope, ND. Location - On east side of Phillips Ave. , middle of the block between 9th & 10th Streets. Photo by Paul Schiller.

Something relevant to this thread is the work that I do with history and historic preservation. The methods are the same even if it isn't about "art" per se. Anyway, at the Main Street conference last year in New Orleans, our colleagues from Shaw Main Streets made a presentation about the Shaw History Trail among other things.

From the African American History Trail marker outside the Thurgood Marshall Center in DC's Shaw neighborhood.

An inquiry from the audience was looking for proof about how that project is generating visits, and increasing economic returns from tourism. Listening to the question, I realized that the trail signs are more about community building vs. broader objectives, the same kinds of things discussed in this entry about "Civic Tourism."

Anyway, community building is different from arts-based revitalization, or cultural tourism, and we need to be clear about the distinctions.