by
Michael B. Schwartz (
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)
Connecting strands of cultural memory to the present is
critical for the development of any neighborhood. This is the story of the
Miracle Manor Neighborhood Mural Project. Located in central Tucson, Arizona, this civic dialogue project includes weekly after-school workshops with youth,
neighborhood design meetings, elder shares and a project blog. The coalition
making all this possible includes
the Miracle Manor Neighborhood Association, One on One Mentoring, Youth
Empowerment and Services and the Tucson Mural Arts Program. The mural was
identified by the neighborhood as a key strategy in addressing neighborhood
issues of participation, safety, crime, need for youth activities and
beautification. Project leaders include Marsha Quinn and Oscar Bojorquez of the
Miracle Manor Neighborhood Association, Maria Harvey and Milini Simms of the
YES Network, Jen Spencer of One on One Mentoring, and myself, community artist
Michael Schwartz.
Miracle Manor has seen a lot over the years. The
neighborhood sprang up in the 40s and 50s adjacent to the hotel and motel
district. The area had a pastoral feeling. Streets and yards were well-groomed
and neighbors intermingled with ease. Henry and Elisa Garcia moved into the
neighborhood in the 50s. Henry had grown up on the infamous Myers Street in
the days before the “urban revitalization” that destroyed most of old Tucson.
Throughout the era between world wars many people had to be self-starters.
Roadside jewelry shops and produce stands were the seeds of modern-day
businesses like the S and K Market and Lim Bongs Market. Dottie Kaiser, Virgnia
Bonnin and Sandi Mittelstaedt’s families moved to Tucson and build their homes
in the neighborhood. This trend continued through the 60s as friends and
family migrated to the neighborhood, building houses and raising families. This
generation of neighborhood mothers and fathers have valuable lessons for today.
Perhaps due to urban renewal or the building of Interstate
1-10, the area took a downturn in the 70s. The once glamorous hotels and motels
that lined highways 80 and 84 fell into disrepair, crime and drug use increased.
Even the spectacular Ghost Ranch built by Arthur and Pheobe Pack, with its
famous sign designed by artist Georgia O’Keefe, eventually closed its doors.
Connecting these stories to the lives of the young people in the neighborhood
has been an exciting element of this project.
This mural follows years of hard work by neighbors in
confronting the drugs, crime and prostitution the area had become notorious
for. Neighbors have organized with great success. Jacinto Park has been
restored with lights, a basketball court, playground, benches and tables. One
on One mentoring and the YES Network started providing after-school programs
twice a week, and local preservationists formed the Gateway Business Alliance.
The neighborhood is already feeling the positive impact of this work: you see
people in the parks, attendance at meetings is up and there is an annual
haunted house.
The conversations that have emerged from this project are
fascinating. It might start with a small detail, attempting to remember a place
or person that stimulates new memories. Like all projects we quickly learn that
this place is connected to the cultural life and memory of the region.
Connections are a key part of community-based cultural development. People
reconnect, make new friends, find out more about the talents and passions of
their neighbors and are finally able to put a name to a face. It’s a slow process of
gathering stories and information. All this information is re-presented back to
the neighborhood in the form of a project blog, artworks created by
participants, video, audio and finally, the mural. Each step of this process is
critical, each voice integrated. It’s a process that could go on and on,
weaving together more and more people and stories. One project participant,
Dottie Kaiser, surprised us when we found out she was one of my father's
teachers at the Brandes Boys School (which had been located on Broadway Boulevard)
in 1948.
Knowing who we are and where we come from is not only
fascinating, it gives a sense of being grounded, confident, and informs our
decision-making process. If we feel like we are citizens who are a critical
part of society—if we have a place, a role, then we are more likely to feel a
sense of stewardship. Instilling residents of the area with a sense of pride and
ownership is a key part of that change.
There is still graffiti in the neighborhood. Poverty and
hopelessness still exist, but slowly, things are changing. The mural project is
part a larger strategy to recover and reweave civic life in the area. Miracle
Manor in many ways is reflective of the state of our nation and world. Projects
like this one break down social isolation and bring people together to
beautify, retrofit and restore common space.
Currently we are in the final design phase of the project,
making changes voted on by neighbors. On February 6, 2010 we will have a
Neighborhood Paint Day. The next several weeks will be spent painting the mural
and finishing individual works of art, testimonials and research.
In every project there needs to be a start, a beginning—a
moment where a decision is made by someone, somewhere to creatively change the
world around them. Giving oneself permission to take the bold step is essential to starting
an initiative.
Remaining open to possibility involves giving, to be of
service, thus opening oneself up to change and possibility. The power of
community arts is that very possibility—a place where innovation and
experimentation are encouraged, fostered and documented. It is here we find a
vast array of projects and initiatives that seek to heal, mend and transform
the world into a better place. Within this labyrinth of creative intention
exist the seeds of transformation.
Many thanks to our project sponsors including the Arizona
Commission on the Arts, YES Network, Pro Neighborhoods, Pima County Attorneys
Office and the Lego Fund for Children.
###
MICHAEL B. SCHWARTZ, www.michaelbschwartz.com (MFA
University of Arizona, BFA Tyler School of Art at Temple University) is a
community mural artist whose work balances a dynamic civic engagement process
with beautiful, safe, secure and durable final products. He has worked with
numerous organizations nationally including the Philadelphia Mural Arts
Program, the Fleisher Art Memorial, Center for Biological Diversity and the
International Council on Adult
Education.
Last Updated on Monday, 11 January 2010 01:27
Be The Change: Fast, Free, Fiercely Important
Tuesday, 22 December 2009 03:16
As you spend time with friends and family this season, take the challenge. Speak it, show it, sing it, dance it so everyone can understand it: America needs a bold new investment in culture, a policy recognizing that culture holds the key to a future we can believe in. As Wynton Marsalis said, “Songs, dances, writings allow us to speak to one another across generations. They gave us an understanding of our commonality long before the DNA told us we are all part of one glorious procession.”
You care passionately about community and culture, so you understand the difficulty and importance of getting this message across in all its power and glory. Everything you need to make the case is in the
two concise pages of Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework. Please make it your new year's resolution to spread the Framework far and wide!
Then—right now, while people are snowed in with time for online networking or slowing down for the holidays—please send this message to at least ten friends or colleagues who share your convictions, asking them to stand and be counted too before the new year begins.
To garner the attention and respect that can lay the groundwork for real changes in national policy, the Framework needs a critical mass of signatures. You and I know that culture matters not just for artists or others who directly benefit from existing programs, but for everyone who wants a future of imagination, empathy, equity and inclusion. Signing is free, fast and fiercely important! Please join the amazing artists and
activists who have already endorsed the Framework by signing the petition today.
The five powerful concepts that form the Framework can shift the conversation immediately. They can be used at the local level to infuse community work with the power of culture, and at the national level to bring new capacities for creativity, understanding, innovation, and mutual responsibility to the crises we face. Many of us hope the next few years will see fresh new programs that build on the Framework: wouldn't it be amazing to have a new jobs program start in 2010, the 75th anniversary of the WPA, the New Deal program that employed thousands of artists in public service? But first, we need to show our strength.
Please widen the conversation about these exciting ideas by linking the Framework to your Website (you can download readymade code for a button at the bottom of the Downloads page), by writing about it in your blog or newsletter, by e-blasting this message to your list.
Please seek endorsements from organizations and officials who can help bring attention to the need for a bold new investment in culture and creativity. Visit the Act Now! page of the Website to download sample letters, pick up tips on writing op-eds and letters to the editor and contacting elected officials.
This is a volunteer effort by artists and activists who understand that unless we recognize our own power to drive change, the terms of debate over the public interest in culture will continue to be set by people who think art is a frill, or who fear free expression, or would rather spend public funds on war and incarceration than on building creative community. Let's start by spreading the Framework to every in-box in the nation. Write me if you need information or assistance:
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. Thanks for your help!
With all good wishes for a game-changing new year, a tipping-point in recognizing art's public purpose, and for all your good works,
Arlene Goldbard
Last Updated on Tuesday, 22 December 2009 03:27
You Can Make It Happen
Thursday, 12 November 2009 15:47
Imagine what it would be like to never have another argument with someone who sets the terms as "art versus the essentials." Please read on for 3 easy, simple things you can do to change our national conversation about the public interest in art, bringing it in line with all that is most resilient, resourceful and inspiring in our culture. Please start by sending this message to everyone you know: you don't have to be an artist to take part.
The usual objection to making an investment in arts’ public purpose is cost. We currently have over seven million people in prison, on parole or probation, with total state spending of around $52 billion. We have spent over $915 billion on wars since 2001, an average cost of $315 million a day—that’s two annual National Endowment for the Arts budgets daily, seven days a week. No matter how much some people insist that this is a budget issue, we know it isn't about money: public arts expenditure in the USA amounts to pennies per person. It's about social imagination and sustainable community, about investing in beauty and meaning. About what we value and who we are as a people.
When future generations look back on our time and try to figure out who we were from the ways we chose to invest our commonwealth, what will they conclude? Please help change the answer to that question.
Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework is a new proposal for a bold new investment in culture, a policy recognizing that culture holds the key to a future we can believe in. You are reading this because you understand art’s public purpose in mending our social fabric, promoting freedom of expression and a vibrant, inclusive national dialogue, and revitalizing both education and commerce with the creativity that has always been the wellspring of our energy and success. Now we need that understanding to spread far and wide.
To focus policymakers' attention on art's public purpose, it is essential to show that we are many and we are determined. Please take at least one of these steps today (you can move on to a second step tomorrow):
If you haven't already endorsed the Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework, please sign the petition right now.
Widen the conversation about these exciting ideas by linking the Framework to your Website (you can download readymade code for a button at the bottom of this page), by writing about it in your blog or newsletter, by e-blasting this message to your list.
Seek endorsements from organizations and officials who can help bring attention to the need for a bold new investment in culture and creativity. Visit the Act Now! page of the Website to download sample letters, pick up tips on writing op-eds and letters to the editor and contacting elected officials.
This is a volunteer effort by artists and activists who understand that unless we recognize our own power to change this, the terms of debate over the public interest in culture will continue to be set by people who think art is a frill, or who fear free expression, or would rather spend public funds on punishment than on building creative community. Let's start by spreading the Framework to every in-box in the nation. Write me if you need information or assistance:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. Thanks for your help!
Welcome
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 00:21
Welcome!
I am thrilled to write the first post in this blog, sharing this exciting new cultural policy framework, Art & The Public Purpose. We have an amazing group of founding endorsers, all of whom join me in urging you to add your own name, seek organizational endorsements, allow the Framework to influence your own work, to educate elected and appointed officials and to change our collective understanding of the need to invest in culture.
Please use the tools at this Website to share your stories and spread the word: please post to Facebook, twitter, email, and do all you can to build support for these powerful ideas.
Since May, it has been my pleasure to work with a group of artists and organizers who first came together as part of a White House Briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery. After our briefing with administration officials, we artists and activists held working group sessions about what to do next. I convened a working group on cultural policy. Group members gave ourselves a challenge we have been working on ever since: to use plain language to convey the necessity of a major new investment in art's public purpose. This Framework is the result.
People who understand the power of culture and community have unlimited opportunities to be defensive these days: hiding out, running away, hoping those who attack us will tire of it and relent, fighting fire with fire. What all these responses have in common is allowing others to set the agenda. For me, this Framework is about working with comparable energy to bring about what we desire.
What if we dedicated ourselves to putting artists to work for art's public purpose, mending our social fabric, promoting freedom of expression and a vibrant, inclusive national dialogue, and revitalizing both education and commerce with the creativity that has always been the wellspring of our energy and success? What if we dedicated ourselves to cultivating the imagination and empathy essential to national recovery and sustainable community?
Together, we have the power to craft the narrative that defines this moment, to choose whether those who look back on this time will see us running scared or standing for all that we know is true. I urge us all to act now as though we believe that art is the secret of survival—which it is—and that our own creative actions are precisely what's needed to save and strengthen democracy.
Many thanks to all who helped make this possible, and especially to our friends at SPARC who built the Website. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions:
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.
