ARC Muses: March 2012

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

ART/CITY: Photo Recap

On March 16, 2012, the Arts Research Center hosted ART/CITY, a symposium which explored the impact of arts districts--both formal and informal--on the vitalization of metropolitan areas. We would like to thank all participants for their thoughtful contributions to a stimulating discussion. A photo album of the day is now posted on the Arts Research Center Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ArtsResearchCenter). If you participated in the event, please feel free to tag yourself!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

ART/CITY: Shannon Jackson

Reading the blogposts of ART/CITY's incredible interlocutors, I am struck both by the investment in broadly resonant macro-issues about the conjoined future of the arts and cities and by participants' willingness to share highly local stories of the puzzles that they are encountering at their own institutions. Whether we are talking about Dallas or Philadelphia, UC-Berkeley or UC-Riverside, about a museum or about a community center, these posts reflect the thinking of a broad coalition of citizens, people whose conversation will be important because of the different sectors that they occupy. We seem to share many similar values, but our approach and response to questions of cultural sustainability will differ depending upon whether we are museum directors or city planners, visual artists or theatre artists, in small organizations or large ones, whether we are Conceptual artists, community organizers, social workers, teachers, parents, and more.

While I am tempted to move into the abstract issues that drive research in the urban arts field, I will say that the question that is truly preoccupying me most right now is how the Arts Research Center can enable public deliberation about the issues that we hold dear. At ARC, we are working to support independent and fresh thinking about the arts in many areas--across a range of art forms, in relation to numerous disciplines, and in conversations that are both highly local and intensely international. At the same time, we seek to share our work and our process with interested communities and with those who want to think with us about the most pressing and intriguing questions at work in contemporary culture.

The question then of how to continue to do this inevitably invites other questions: 1) In a world where public engagement is an articulated value for nearly every art institution, what is the value of a Center that represents many art forms (music, public art, film, architecture, visual art, dance, theatre, etc) in curating such deliberation? 2) How do we navigate the Heisenberg principle when it comes to certain research questions and experiments in creative art-making? For instance, if the relation between city, the university, and the arts is a research question for us, how do we both serve the UC-Berkeley's art organizations AND cultivate independent-minded research in the arts and sustainable relationships with the many arts, community, and educational organizations serving the Bay Area? 3) At a time when public resources have drastically diminished — not only for civic arts programs but also for the University system that tries to support ARC —what kinds of philanthropic and foundation models might help to sustain ARC's role as an arena of public, cross-arts deliberation and to restore ARC opportunities for artist residents to engage in interdisciplinary, cross-sector experimentation at the university, with our students, and with our Bay Area colleagues? How can ARC's own efforts to expand and sustain itself be imagined in a way that expands and sustains the programs and initiatives of other institutions, in the Bay Area and beyond?

My hope is that ART/CITY is itself an answer to such questions…and a gathering that helps us imagine new answers as well.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

ART/CITY: Dawn Weleski

Conflict Kitchen - by Dawn Weleski and Jon Rubin

“I will not bomb Iran” is the promise with which I christened my class at the International Studies Academy in Potrero Hill. For ten weeks, Mr. Hall, the international relations teacher, has allowed an artist to take over his class and collaborate with his students on a project; but let’s not talk politics; but why not?

What is the role of the socially engaged artist in provoking confrontation within a civic framework? And what is the artist’s responsibility to create new frameworks that normative institutions, artistic and civic, fail to provide? With a responsible, responsive, and flexible framework, artists can antagonize the system; infiltrate from the inside; re-activate defunct connections; lend agency to the constituents of these institutions. This work lives and breathes with its audience and participants and, if evaluated with rigor throughout the process, has the potential to live beyond the artist’s engagement. An artist, an outsider, an amateur, a citizen has the ability to privilege first-person opinion over expert and objectified knowledge. Within the opinion is the capacity for action, and an artist can gather, highlight, and frame these subjective opinions, serving art and non- art audiences alike. Could one initiate an artist residency at World Bank, the United Nations, or UNESCO; their local school district, city council, or mayor’s office?

My students, on their first day of class with me, were asked to author commitments to non-action on behalf of the United States government, “I will not bomb Iran” being one. We discussed the responsibility of heads of state who create situations for which they could not or refuse to apologize. The students were also requested to write apologies that they wanted to hear from folks in their personal lives: “I want an apology from everyone for making fun of my shortness”; “I want an apology from my ‘grandma’ for turning her back on family and making the past year and a half of my life a living hell...Also for trying to make me someone I’m not”; “I don’t need an apology from anyone because what they do doesn’t define me, it just pushes me forward”. Poignant and humorous, hopeful and vehement, their apologies will be the bridge to a discussion of global politics and their role in these seemingly distant matters. And how will I know, as class continues, how to direct this discussion? I’ll just have to wait until the students lead me there.

Thursday, March 8, 2012

ART/CITY: Larry Rinder

Photo by Ben Blackwell

BAM/PFA has just completed a new five-year strategic plan. The plan’s goals are meant to define who we will be a year after moving to our new downtown Berkeley location—on Oxford Street between Center and Addison Streets--in 2015. The very first goal reads as follows:

“BAM/PFA is a uniquely dynamic, diverse, and engaging cultural ‘town square.’”

At our new location, one block from the Downtown Berkeley BART Station, on a street that sees ten thousand pedestrians per day, and in close proximity to major civic and cultural institutions such as Berkeley High School, Berkeley Rep, the Magnes Collection, Berkeley Farmers Market—and, of course, UC Berkeley itself—BAM/PFA has the opportunity to become a unique cultural agora, or “town square.” We aspire to embrace the tremendous energy of our new, diverse communities and to incorporate the liveliness, contrasts, and contradictions that come with being a cosmopolitan, urban cultural center. We will reach out to underserved communities, including schoolchildren and elders, by demonstrating the ways in which art can be relevant to individual life and community vitality. We will be a place that not only celebrates art and film, but which also serves as a place for cultural and social discourse on topics of timely relevance to our audiences. At this strategic location, we will serve as a vibrant meeting point of campus and community, a place where the most creative ideas and practices of the university are made accessible to the broader public.

ART/CITY: Kim Anno

In relationship to arts and civic life, what i am struggling with is how to create a more mutually cooperative relationship between all stakeholders of the city, university, citizens, youth, government, schools, etc. regarding arts and culture. We have a rich area, that is unmatched in intellectual and creative individuals and organizations. Arts and culture can provide a more nuanced and long lasting education and economic benefit to all citizens in our area. This photo is an example of young adults in the townships of Durban, South Africa who are all creative and talented and have no access to higher education except through a non-governmental organization I worked with. They were hungry to be in the world contributing to society, and what i did with them (video project) was the blink of an eye. How can we make a society that benefits the future generations? Berkeley has so many resources at its fingertips, hands need come out now and touch each other.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

ART/CITY: Susan Medak

Photographer: Lisa Keating

“In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is…” what is the future of ‘place based’ arts when the concept of community is being to radically redefined. So much artistic creation has, historically, been informed by a specific location, a relationship with a specific geographic community, and a very real sense of presence and live engagement. Many arts organizations continue to feel that their most important relationships are based in real time, local, interactive experiences. And yet, the concept of community has transformed from one of geography to one of shared interest, from one of proximity to one in which geography is irrelevant. The value of local has become a much less potent concept in an age where the global is so exciting. How does a locally committed arts organization thrive in this new environment? The impacts of globalization on audiences, on philanthropy, on access to artists and a wealth of other factors I haven’t even begun to consider, will inevitably leave us all profoundly changed.

ART/CITY: Suzanne Tan

“In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is…” how can smaller organizations like Berkeley Art Center continue to play an important role in the civic dialouge in connection with and collaboration with larger arts organizations and other multi-disciplinary organizations, in a way that encourages collaborative and community input and a sense of belonging in one's own community--our city being one that is highly unique, educated, and creative. I would like to explore the importance of organizations and institutions as community meeting places and "hubs" of activity, and ways to be responsive to community-based issues and create individual and collective ownership in the organizations that serve the cultural life of the city.

Monday, March 5, 2012

ART/CITY: Noah Simblist

What is the role of the university in a city? Are we, as an institution, cultural producers providing the city with content such as exhibitions, lectures, or public projects? Are we organizers, facilitators or interpreters of civic life? Or is our primary role to train students to be cultural practitioners that can either act as cultural workers in our city or elsewhere? This last question can often become a significant choice between encouraging students to stay and act locally within Dallas or to travel to major global cultural centers such as New York, Los Angeles, London or Berlin.

Right now both Dallas and my institution, Southern Methodist University are at a particular crossroads in terms of these questions. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in an arts district populated by buildings designed by blue chip international architects such as Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, and OMA. Next to these buildings is a new city park that is being built on top of a highway to add green space to the area. In addition, The Trinity Trust project seeks to redevelop the long neglected waterway that runs next to the heart of downtown Dallas into a major public park. A Santiago Calatrava designed bridge, which connects the arts district, park, and waterway with a neighborhood called West Dallas is about to open.

With this as a backdrop, SMU invited Creative Time to spend a year in 2010 to study the cultural landscape in Dallas, essentially to see as outsiders what the relationship between the arts and civic life looked like. At the end of this process, Creative Time produced a report that was published in an online forum of D magazine: http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2011/02/building-a-thriving-artistic-community/. In addition to the report, SMU worked with Creative Time to address some of the most pressing issues coming out of the ambitious civic projects mentioned above through a conference in 2011 entitled The Freedom of the City: Models of Urban Engagement & Creativity in the 21st Century.

Toward the end of Creative Time’s visit, SMU had been approached by developers that owned a good deal of property in West Dallas to rent from them. They wanted us to build a presence of artists in the neighborhood through exhibitions or performances. After some discussion with Creative Time, we decided that rather than export artists from our campus to West Dallas, we should engage community organizers in the area to see what they wanted and needed. As a result, this past year, we sponsored an artist in residence to engage two community centers together with some of our students through social practice classes.

We are also hiring a new position, an Assistant Professor of Art and Urbanism to begin working with our students to address this radically shifting local landscape within the global context. Through this search it has been interesting to note that artists have addressed these issues from multiple backgrounds in architecture, urbanism, social practice, documentary film and photography, alternative publications, and experimental music. So, something at the forefront of our minds right now is, what is the best model for us to use for our students and our city?

Some helpful links:

http://www.thedallasartsdistrict.org/

http://www.thetrinitytrust.org/

http://www.theparkdallas.org/

http://www.dallascityhall.com/citydesign_studio

ART/CITY: Kathleen Reinhardt

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is... how engagement-based practices through an anchoring of the artist in the community and space-making through art can occur and why. I am focusing on several projects by black artists (Wangechi Mutu, Edgar Archeneaux, Rick Lowe, Theaster Gates) committed to creating sustainable cultural moments, and how these cultural moments can be of importance not only for the community they are created in, but also for an art audience. I want to engage theories of participatory art, examining how artists negotiate the ongoing institutionalization of social practice. How is their artistic practice different and perhaps more relevant than efforts of community organizers? I want to critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of art in community art projects like the Dorchester Project in Chicago for example, contextualizing the artist's aim to provoke new emancipatory relations in the community and flesh out the political and aesthetic limitations of these works of art.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

ART/CITY: Sue Bell Yank

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is whether it's possible for arts organizations and artists to willfully create the conditions for long-term civic redevelopment and permanent social change on a large scale. I have recently participated as an advisor and evaluator for projects of differently-sized ambitions, primarily focusing on neighborhood revitalization through the arts - Watts House Project in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, The Asian Arts Initiative in Philadelphia's Chinatown, and the UCLA CityLAB visioning project in Westwood, Los Angeles. Each of these arts/research organizations are of limited internal capacity, budget, and scale, but each advocate sweeping civic change in their regions through an activation of arts and culture. Their methods all rely on civic and community partnerships and, to some extent, the deployment of artists in project-based residencies. Through advisory convenings and visionary publications, these organizations have brought together city agencies, business leaders, university representatives, local religious and neighborhood association leaders, and outside arts advisors to pinpoint perceived problems and access broad-based solutions related to neighborhood decline. Though I am optimistic about the possibilities raised by these complex and fascinating conversations, I remain skeptical about their implementation. For me, this cynicism boils down to a few conflicts that persist in the delineation of ongoing partnerships – very different (often either too limited or overblown) understandings of art’s role in civic life, divergent values for the neighborhood and community’s future, lack of resources, and a resulting implementation paralysis. These problematics can quickly destroy even the most well-considered projects, but I am also buoyed by small successes. Partnerships between the Watts House Project and USC have led to completed improvement projects in the neighborhood and laid the groundwork for further friendly relationships between previously skeptical neighborhood stakeholders. The research arising from CityLAB’s visioning project has influenced the workings of the newly formed Business Improvement District, and several neighborhood initiatives like “Westwood Live” and a weekly Farmer’s Market were spurred by conversations in their advisement convenings. I can point to a few other well-known instances where singular arts organizations have had a measurable impact on neighborhood revitalization through leveraging partnerships – Project Row Houses in Houston is a well-known example, and Public Matters LLC is doing amazing work in LA to mitigate food deserts in partnership with USC and UCLA. Progress for these projects is slow and must be realized over a matter of years and decades, and real systematic issues more often than not prevent their sustained effectiveness. Much can be learned through examining these instances of art/civic partnerships and analyzing the relationships, risks, values, agendas, and behaviors that lead to real and lasting change.

ART/CITY: Harris Steinberg

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is how to balance support for the organic growth of a grassroots art culture and arts organizations with traditional institutional art venues, offerings, management and support.

We are currently conducting a study for the William Penn Foundation that investigates the impact that a contemporary performing arts festival has had on neighborhood revitalization in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Live Arts and Fringe Festival have been successful over the past 15 years in helping to create an identity for Philadelphia as a city that supports leading-edge performing arts. What began as a scrappy, 16-day festival that highlighted local talent and performed in unique, underutilized post-industrial spaces in edgy neighborhoods has grown to become more established – using establishment performance venues along Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts as it showcases world-class artists. Can the festival evolve and maintain both its edge and its central place in Philadelphia’s creative economy?

Contrast this with Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts – a $250,000,000 arts palace on the Avenue of the Arts that opened in 2001 and houses five resident companies and four performance venues – including serving as the concert hall for the legendary Philadelphia Orchestra. Yet, the Kimmel has struggled since it opened with operating costs, the impact of union labor and the difficulty in living up to the expectation that it would become an important public space. In 2008, we led a public process and a design studio at Penn to help the Kimmel learn to become more integrated into the public life of Philadelphia –a process that has been difficult for the organization to implement as it runs counter to the established notion of arts and civic life.

These two arts organizations exemplify the tension between grassroots artistic energy, organizational evolution and establishment culture. Contemporary cities tend to embrace the creation of large-scale arts facilities as an important economic development tool – think Bilbao. They do so at their peril if they neglect the vibrant independent arts scene. Balancing support for an inculcation of both the traditional and the avant-garde is critical to ensuring that new artistic expressions will bubble up and continue to attract public interest and funding, while contributing to the perception that the city is a vibrant and vital place of ideas, energy and activity. Operationalizing a policy to support these outcomes is a question that I am currently wrestling with.

ART/CITY: John Spiak

Can an institution expand upon its current, more traditional, institutional structure – a structure in which community members must physically enter its doors to engage – to create a new vision that breaks down the barriers, creating an institution that considers its entire community as its activation space.

Can a series of Social Practice residencies be developed through a respectful, artist-driven approach, an approach that not only allows artists to engage and take full advantage of the resources of a university, community and its neighbors, but also supports and works to retain the cultural identity of the downtown in which it is located? Can these Social Practice residencies encourage relationships and dialogue to occur that are inclusive of existing businesses and individuals living in the institutions zip code area – individuals who activate a community through their presence? And can this occur in a unique city that, according to the 2010 census, reported being 78.2% Hispanic population (total population 349,889), in a direct zip code area that reported 88.9% Hispanic population (total population 53,908), with 81.6 % of Mexican origin?

Will the institution be able to gain collaborative partnerships with the individual including: school children who traverse and gather in downtown before and after school; members of the surrounding low-income residential communities which include many young families (Avg. Person Per Household: 4.26; Avg. Income Per Household: $33,728; Median Age: 27); a large homeless community who converge on the streets during the day; young professionals from visiting the developing restaurant scene for lunch and dinner; artists who occupy studio spaces; young 20s-30s crowd frequenting an emerging nightclub scene; and government workers of local, county and federal buildings located in the downtown civic center?

Will current standard of granting practice and philanthropy fund and be open to collaborative support in consideration of a series of Social Practice residencies to realize a forward vision for an institution? Is it possible for these residencies to be truly artist driven, while at the same time focus on revitalizing community and relationship through collaborative, social responsibility practices and engagement? Can the invited artists break down barriers and bring community together - yet still retain high quality artistic vision and relevance within contemporary art practice? And can institutional initiatives create mutually beneficial outcomes through creative process, with emphasis on engaged collaborative creation of art over the passive consumption of art.

Is it possible for an institution to receive funding/grant seed money to realize new and innovative projects without pre-determined outcomes/exhibitions. Can an institution truly be allowed to measure/report the matrix of success, not by the numbers, but by the quality of the outcomes?

In addition to the standard matrix measurements, will institution be allowed to measure, validate and share the success of project through the following supplementary and alternative methods: gathering of personal stories and testimonials (artist, institution, organizations, community); presenting at national conferences (American Association of Museums, College Art Association, Open Engagement, Creative Time Summit); creating web and print based documentation (website, blog, catalogues); writing and publishing articles in national journals (Museum and Social Issues, Art Education, Journal of Art for Life); and direct sharing with colleagues at peer institutions.

ART/CITY: Mary Ann Merker

“In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is…” leveraging funding due to the budget problems currently in place with local governments. The silver lining in this money challenge is the new partnerships we have been able to forge with community agencies that are not the "usual suspects."

The city has partnered with the Audubon Society for a functional public art project in the Berkeley Marina and with Earth Island Institute for a shared public art project in the downtown. A new partnership with the Downtown Berkeley Association for public art for the BART Plaza is currently being worked out.

The past partnership with Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the US and UC Berkeley Professor won awards for out Addison Street Poetry Walk and published Anthology.

Internally the challenge is learning to do more with less support staff and learning new technology methods to help the administrative work.

I would be very interested to hear how others are dealing with the money crunch and what they have found to assist in administrative staff work.

ART/CITY: Plinio Hernandez

In October of 2011, I was asked to come on board as the public relations manager for a urban renewal pilot project called popuphood. This project gave six months free rent to five local groups of people to start businesses in previously empty storefronts located in the historical Old Oakland neighborhood, a few blocks south of downtown Oakland. Through a cross sector partnership (civic, private and community based) as well as a rebranding and marketing plan for the neighborhood and groups of stores, popuphood has become one of Oakland’s homegrown jewels. The success of popuphood comes from what I believe is a grassroots effort from the conception of the project to the consumer that shops at each business.Calling myself the only artist involved in popuphood is far from the truth, every merchant as well as the founders of the project are well known in various creative communities in the East Bay; from bicyclists, to jewelry makers, gallery owners and visual artists, popuphood is a melting pot of creativity.

As a result, I am interested in how artists, particularly artists that are invested in a given community, can be agents of change in projects that are outside the creative space of the studio. This is beyond the idea that artists can change communities because they have a unique aesthetic perspective, or because the artist studio is located in economically marginalized community. It is the idea that artists, like any other person, are interested in a livable, healthy and economically viable community.

ART/CITY: Jonathan Green

“In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is…”

…how to continue to move artistic inquiry into a central position as an essential component of civic investigation and discourse in Riverside California, a city where 17% of the population have less than a high school education, only 22% have a Bachelor’s degree, where the medium income is $31,000, and where 59% of the freshman class at University of California, Riverside, are the first in their family to attend college.

UCR has recently brought together its three premier art institutions to create a new cultural complex, UCR ARTSblock, whose mission is to provide a cultural presence, educational resource, community center and intellectual meeting ground for the university and the community.

ARTSblock is committed to simultaneously working on the cutting edge of contemporary artistic disciplines including art, dance, performance, music, theater, film, photography, media, literature, and spoken word, and at the same time allowing community practitioners, university students and faculty, and internationally recognized artists, to present and engage in these disciplines. The challenge is to move away from a model where the community just participates as audience toward a more inclusive model where the community participates as vital and equal partners and presenters: to create a site that is both a major cultural presence and a deeply inclusive institution.

It is the architecture that provides the first force for integration with the community. The architecture of ARTSblock, in general, and of the new Culver Center, in particular, allows engagement to coalesce in a defined place: the compelling renovation of an ornate, 1895 department store. In its very physical existence, Culver provides the gravitational pull: its history and reuse provokes inquiry and speculation.

The Culver Center of the Arts gala opening events of a year ago provides one model for operations: it was built around three days of programming that supported significant community performances in parallel with vanguard presentations. For example the spectacular Mt. Rubidoux SDA Gospel Choir and American Idol finalist Tori Kelly were on the same program as the Riverside Philharmonic and the Riverside Lyric Opera. Dance presentations featured children from Riverside’s jazz and hip-hop Bre Studio together with eminent choreographer Susan Rose’s most sophisticated explorations of movement and space.

Other projects during this first year have moved toward similar amalgamations of vanguard work and local participation: the weekly screening program brings to Culver local filmmakers as well as festival winners from around the world. A summer video workshop for disadvantaged teens transformed 30 teenagers into actors, directors and cinematographers, culminating in a screening of their work open to the entire community. An exhibition by Jeff Foye and Gordon Winiemko invited community participation in making a documentary video on the foreclosure crisis. Margarita Cabrera’s installation Pulse y Martillo, focused on the intersection of indigenous Mexican Folk art and the creation of fair working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. Her exhibition included an extraordinary sound performance by undocumented Riverside students and workers, a panel discussion with undocumented students and activists, and the screening of two related films Los Invisibles and Maquilapolis. These events drew both participants and audience from a broad swatch of the Riverside and university community.

The conflict and the challenge at the basis of ARTSblock programing is very real. It is the sustained clash between the high modern desire for singular, broadly, even internationally, recognized elite artists, and the new modern obligation to relevance, context, and local production. At our best we synthesize and ratify both and raise the level of empowerment and thoughtful engagement for a community that is not historically a functioning arts environment nor a constituency for vanguard art.

ART/CITY: Michael Caplan

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is how best to generate the next generation of funding for emerging arts projects around the City – and how best to leverage that funding for maximum impact.

ART/CITY: Lisa Bullwinkel

How to create more vibrant downtown districts in light of retail jumping to the Internet and leaving vacant storefronts? Bring in the arts! Fill those empty spaces with visual and performing artists who are clamoring for space. The landlords need to become involved in creating a simple process to allow this to occur.

ART/CITY: JD Beltran

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is the question that I’ve always struggled with, as an artist, a public artist, and a public art administrator: how do we convey the necessity and essentiality of the arts in our culture? I think that one thing that is particularly common, at least from what I’ve seen in our culture, is that many people feel they don’t understand art – they’re even afraid of talking about it. It always surprises me how when I start to talk about an artwork with someone who’s not in art circles, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is “well, I don’t know much about art..” But then they proceed to have an opinion about it. So everyone has an opinion about art but they’re afraid to say they really know something about it, which I find really fascinating. I think it comes from a lot of people being frustrated that they don’t understand art. And with public art, this becomes an even bigger issue. People in the art world or art circles will go to galleries or museums, but the general public doesn’t do that unless they’re interested in art – yet they’ll happen upon public art in their daily lives. So I think that public art has a greater role and responsibility in educating people about art – to either create a dialogue about the art itself, about an artist’s practice, about creating meaning or experience through art and its universality, and/or how art reflects history, among other things. In that sense, it’s truly exciting to be part of the San Francisco Arts Commission because I believe that is one of our most important missions – to expose the public as well as people beyond our city to great art, and all that that brings.

ART/CITY: Laura Inks

We are working with a group of citizens and the Mayor's office, to examine an area in town called the Funk Zone. It has been designated an arts, marine and tourist district and is one block from the beach and our main tourist area, the wharf and State Street. Developers are buying up huge plots of land and are raising the cost of living in an area traditionally known for being a cheap rent arts neighborhood. While the developers would also like to keep the funk in the zone, it must pencil out for them and their investors. So my question is: How do we reconcile the various stakeholders values and goals and serve everyone's need for economic vitality, creative community sustainability, improve the area, but not too much, so the funky flavor is maintained and artists can remain?

ART/CITY: Annee Knight

"In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is..." is connections between city committees and city officials. There is a disconnect between information channels, also raising awareness of the Public Art Committee’s role in the community at both city and citizen levels is necessary. Also, I am interested in how the energy for interesting/innovative projects can be maintained once a program becomes mainstreamed…

ART/CITY: Debra Walker

In relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is how to keep artists in the urban areas, even as costs go up and available support goes down. How can we include the cost of public art and access to public art as a cost to the infrastructure....and mitigate the cost of keeping culture in our society as we develop.

ART/CITY: Mary Lou Breiman

This effort you are spearheading is one that is very important and, as we see in Berkeley to date, a real change agent.

First: PARKING. PARKING. PARKING. I have taken classes at the Crucible, Albany Adult School, Richmond Art Center and exhibited at Richmond Art Center. All have ample free parking. On the rare occasions I decide to go to Zellerbach, PARKING is my first and main concern. It is easier for me to go to SF on BART than to the UCB art gallery on Bancroft. I only live at Spruce and Eunice (approximately), but am 70 and will not walk the distance and certainly not at night when I can't even see the sidewalk. I worry whether there will be spaces for me to park in the Zellerbach parking structure. I took two classes at the Student Union - very poor classes - and paid $7 - $10 each time.

I get a parking ticket whenever I park in downtown Berkeley unless I park in a neighborhood, walk, and be very sure I'm back at my car in well before two hours. This is not conducive to spending much time losing myself in admiration and enjoyment of art, or in taking classes. I don't think I am alone. Therefore, let us consider expanding the arts into the neighborhoods where parking is free; and public transportation can't be much scantier than it is in Berkeley's hills. As far as I know, having taken classes at the Crucible and Richmond Art Center (RAC), attended exhibits and shows in North Oakland, read about the art going on in the old Oakland Veterans building for years, these out-of-downtown venues work. As far as I'm concerned, it is because of the availability of parking (I am 70 and distance and expense are considerations. Perhaps young people also have this problem.)

Let's agree that we cannot identify the great artists in their tender years; but they must at some time feel called, begin to learn their craft and refine their ideas. We can concur, also, as to how much and in how many ways regular art experience, whether instruction or appreciation (not just in classic art but in the current scene) helps children and young adults. If there is not agreement with this assumption, Google can provide references to studies that will be helpful in coming to a conclusion. No need to argue.

Naturally, obstacles to implementation will be encountered: you know that. This is not to be considered when planning. Obstacles are there to be overcome, and usually are, or ameliorated with persistence.

My specific proposal is that art centers be many and located in neighborhoods near schools - the more, the better - for after school or evening attendance. Three- or -more -room spaces can be found and "paid" for (perhaps with a tax deduction or grant or just permission) to offer visual art, music, dance, and exhibit spaces for the immediate community, staffed by volunteers with or without credentials (with someone trusted/bonded to open, supervise, and lock up the facility). Please don't think "Oh, we don't have appropriate spaces like this. We don't have the money. Once we say, "WE CAN'T, WE CAN'T." These spaces might be in somebody's house....change the regulations.

Try reaching out to the artists in Berkeley for volunteers in introducing aesthetics, techniques in painting, sculpture, origami, acting, dance, and exhibit the works of the students along with works of the teachers. As a student at RAC I have learned quite a bit from seeing my work in the same gallery as that of my teachers. It gives me a measuring stick, a standard. Even if a student copies the master, that is what must happen to develop technique while the ability to conceive and recognize a "form" develops over time with a little blessing. Children don't need constant upbeat comments. These are best in measured doses along with generous doses of generous role-models (think of baby ducks) and practice of their passion.

Each of these small, neighborhood places can be done one, a few, then many in sequence. Cheap once we've gotten through the legal hurdles.

Hoping everyone is feeling adventurous!

ART/CITY: Zach Pine

The Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley is sponsoring the symposium "ART/CITY" on March 16, 2012. Participants have been invited to respond to the prompt “in relation to the arts and civic life, the question I am wrestling with right now is…” in advance of the event. This guest posting is by Zach Pine, organizer of Soul Sanctuary Dance in Berkeley.

As an artist whose work primarily consists of engaging people in participatory collaborative events, how can I best use public places in my work? One form my work takes is engaging the public in collaboratively creating ephemeral sculpture using natural materials. I’ve carried out many local public events in a diversity of settings: in Berkeley parks, on pavement (street festivals), on private property bordering sidewalks, and even on the lawn in front of Berkeley’s Old City Hall. For some of these events, I felt confident of my rights and responsibilities -- for example, as part of a permitted street festival with a designated “zone” for my event. For other sites, I felt uncertainty :“Is this legal? Am I being a good citizen or might I be viewed as a public nuisance? Could I keep coming back to this place and become part of the fabric of civic life here?” My art serves to connect people with the natural world, and also with each other. It is a training ground and an exemplar for constructive collaboration, and as such it has civic value. I want to engage the public where I feel I can have a strong impact, for example, in downtown Berkeley. But those high-impact places seem to engender challenges. For me, and others like me, who want to overcome those challenges and engage the public in public spaces, who are our best partners in the community and in the city government, and what practice models can enlighten our action?