A response to "Kristi's Rant"

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by Sanjit Sethi

Kristi,

Thanks for your thoughtful remarks. When you state “we need to change something” I am reminded of the quote from the Sufist scholar Rumi that says new organs of perception come about as a result of necessity, therefore in order to increase one’s perception one needs to increase necessity. As you accurately point out Oakland (and other communities) needs more compassion, opportunity, and investment. We may very well be at the state that Rumi speaks of, of increasing our necessity through response to rampant violence, devastating budget cuts, and a society that favors a corporate culture over a creative culture. All of these things have pushed our necessity, as a larger community, further. With an awareness of this new reality comes (ideally) a rich and vigorous conversation on values. What is legal vs. illegal? (You speak compellingly of graffiti artists and their ability to legitimately express a voice.) Cultural vs. commercial? (We see great examples from social entrepreneurship that these can be combined.) And finally, political vs. civil? (The ability to creatively protect people’s physical integrity and safety as well as protecting the right to express oneself and the right to assemble).

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Sanjit Sethi is Director of the Center for Art and Public Life, and the Barclay Simpson Chair of Community Art at California College of the Arts.  Sethi received a BFA in 1994 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MFA in 1998 from the University of Georgia, and an MS in Advanced Visual Studies in 2002 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sethi has been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada and a Fulbright fellow in Bangalore, India, working on the Building Nomads Project. Sethi continued his strong focus on interdisciplinary collaboration as director of the MFA program at the Memphis College of Art. His work deals with issues of nomadism, identity, the residue of labor, and memory. Sethi recently completed the Kuni Wada Bakery Remembrance, an olfactory-based memorial in Memphis, Tennessee; and Richmond Voting Stories, a collaborative video project involving youth and senior residents of Richmond, CA. Sethi’s current works include Indians/Indians, the Urban Defibrillator, and a series of writings on the territory of failure and its relationship to collaborative cultural practice, all of which involve varied social and geographic communities.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

To Face Ruin Is A Victory

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by Kenji C. Liu

In my last post, I suggested framing art as a human right, in the sense that community art is a practice that can sidestep or challenge the spreadsheet mentality that exists in the United States when it comes to arts and culture policy.

This is not to say that we can completely escape this mentality, as recent proposals to zero out arts grants by the City of Oakland show. Oakland is a vibrant arts city despite the lack of robust institutional support. With some notable exceptions, much of it is grassroots or on the down-low.

Although we need this kind of city and state support and should advocate for it, if arts looks for its value only through the affirmation (funding) of the state, we are in dangerous territory. This is because, as Arlene Goldbard rightly points out, our country’s priorities are largely in punishment and destruction. These are profitable industries, and support for arts suffers at all levels because of it.

From 2009 to 2010, I coordinated Oakland Word, a popular program of the Oakland Public Library funded by the California State Library. Oakland Word offered free creative writing workshops at four library branches to the general public in poetry, fiction, memoir, and more. Hundreds participated in classes, public readings, and many were published in an official anthology.

Oakland Word was about community capacity-building and expanding use of public libraries as a free resource. As the coordinator, my premise was simple and drew from Paolo Freire–to write the word was to write the world. This meant that developing the capacity to tell a story was directly related to the ability to shape one’s own world. Libraries are filled with thousands of worlds–why shouldn’t they help generate new ones?

The demographics of Oakland Word’s participants were mostly women and people of color, all people whose lives are often not reflected positively in mainstream discussions. To be able to tell a story and have it affirmed as legitimate was for many a very significant experience. As someone who had benefited from other community writing programs, it was a joy to run.

Despite its great success, the program was unable to continue after a year because the grant was not renewable. In any case, it was also uncertain how much money would be available because they were hacking out the budget up in Sacramento.

These are our priorities as a society. The economic system we live with shapes our political system, which shapes the funding system we petition, which influences the practices and possibilities of the organizations we work for. And of course, this impacts the people who rely on our programs.

I recently watched a short documentary about the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Through his freethinking, socially engaged and very public art, he came to be regarded as dangerous by the authorities.

When the Chinese government bulldozed his art studio, he examined the ruins and declared that it was his greatest work of art. Is there something we can learn from this, the ability to face ruin and flip it, turn it into a victory?

I don’t have the answer, but perhaps we have a piece of it.

 

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Kenji C. Liu is a writer, cultural worker, and 1.5 generation immigrant from New Jersey currently residing in Oakland. He has an MA in Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies and has worn many hats: Asian American Studies instructor, graphic designer, meditation teacher, deejay, and diversity consultant leading workshops nationally. Kenji’s poetry chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes (Finishing Line Press, 2009) was nominated for a 2009 California Book Award. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in or is forthcoming from Tea Party Magazine (not related to the conservative movement), Kartika Review, Lantern Review, Kweli Journal, and the anthology Flick of My Tongue (Kearny Street Workshop, 2009). He is program director at the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse which offers arts-based youth development and leadership training for San Francisco District 11 residents. Prior to this, Kenji coordinated the Oakland Word program at the Oakland Public Library, which offered free creative writing workshops to the general public.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

 

Working (our butts off) to Preserve Cultural Policy in Oakland

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by Jacinda Abcarian

I think we all know that our place within Maslow’s hierarchy of needs determines how much time, energy and money we can spend on enjoying and creating art.  For many of Oakland’s youth, physiological and safety needs are top priorities.  This is why free and affordable arts offerings are so important but often left out of cultural policy discussions. Families with money can always find cool, engaging programs for their kids. But what about families that can barely pay the bills, or teens and young adults who cannot afford to work as unpaid interns at progressive arts organizations or focus on their personal development because they need to work? This is where Bay Area nonprofit organizations such as Oaktown Jazz Workshops, Youth Radio and Youth Speaks come in to play critical roles.

Teens and young adults in Oakland are the reason I love to come to work each day.  Their energy, resilience and love of life are refreshing and make my job of chasing funding to keep Youth Radio thriving all worth it. When they walk through the doors of our 20,000 square foot headquarters at 17th and Broadway, they enter a safe, professional and respectful environment.  We provide a setting that stands in stark contrast to the bleak, authoritarian schools and juvenile halls they come from.  Unfortunately, nonprofit leaders are burning out at high rates from trying to string together miracles on a shortage of cash. We need help, but help is clearly not on the way. Today’s headlines show that the government needs to cut 4 trillion from the budget, but is not looking to cut one cent from the Pentagon. As the classic bumper sticker reads: “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”

On my “up” days I like to think that arts and culture can’t be stopped due to lack of funding. Just look at the birth of hip-hop culture in New York City in the early 80’s.  Created by “have-nots” hip-hop culture is now central to a multi-million dollar industry that has spread in popularity worldwide! But back to reality…with so little financial support for implementing cultural policy in our schools and communities, Oakland’s teens are hurting. The dropout rate is at a staggering 40%, making the Oakland schools known across the nation as “dropout factories.”  A little infusion of innovative arts programming would go a long way in this city. Take 17 year old Oakland high school student and participant at Youth Radio, Ria. I saw her crying on a park bench one morning and asked her what was wrong. She told me that her grades were not good enough to secure a work permit, and furthermore, she may not have the credits she needs to graduate. I phoned her principal who stated, “Ria is failing all of her classes except for one.” “Which one is that?” I asked. His reply-“Performing Arts-she has an “A” in that.” Ria told me that she got to take performing arts as a senior but that all of her other classes were so dull she just couldn’t pay attention.  If she had that class freshman year, she may never be in the position she is in today. Of course I do not mean to take away from the importance of hard work and just plain home-work, but I share this story to show how one simple offering, like a class in performing arts, can inspire a young person to get up each day and actually look forward to going to school.

Cultural policy is not just about making sure the local opera house stays open, it is about preserving what most would view as basic elements of a decent and just society including public libraries and public broadcasting. With funding for these and arts education being stripped away daily, as Arlene Goldbard so well describes, our youth need nonprofit organizations now more than ever.

 

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Jacinda Abcarian is a graduate of Youth Radio’s class of 1993 and is its current Executive Director. She moved from a student and peer teacher to an award-winning reporter and producer. She has worked as a reporter for WRFG-FM in Atlanta and as a journalism fellow at NPR in Washington, D.C. Awards include a Golden Reel from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters for Accidental Shooting, and the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton Award for her producer role in the series, Emails from Kosovo. She was recently honored by the Gerbode Foundation with the prestigious 2010 Gerbode Professional Development Fellowship award. Abcarian has been active in initiatives promoting prevention of tobacco use and gun violence among youth. Abcarian earned a B.A. in Sociology from UC Berkeley and completed Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management at Harvard Business School. She is also a member of the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission and The Crucible’s Advisory Council.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

The Civics of Cultural Sustainability

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by Randolph Belle

“Sustainability” is one of the more versatile words you’ll hear these days.  In several conversations there could be several different trustees of any sustainability movement.  You might hear an environmentalists referring to eco-friendly practices to save the planet; philanthropists and foundations talking about the future funding strategies of a cultural or charitable activity, or; what I’ve been focusing on, our ability to preserve the integrity of distinct cultural contributions in spite of extreme external  forces.

By looking at popular culture, it’s apparent to me that you don’t need a unique product or talent to succeed in entertainment today.  You don’t have to be able to sing to be heard- autotune; you don’t need to play an instrument to make music- gadgets; and songwriting must be at an all-time low. So it’s important not to lose sight of the many local artists, who are keeping all forms of art and culture alive and well.

Artists will always do what they do, but the way cities promote cultural engagement is through policy.  Policy can’t control what a person makes as art, but it can dictate what receives public support. Oakland public policy experiences a disconnect between written implication and potential to produce a favorable result.  For many, many years, there has been no comprehensive policy, or sufficient political will to invest in the most bountiful, naturally occurring resources that Oakland has- the arts.  The arts are now often referred to in terms of art and “neighborhood beautification”- huh!?!?  The arts in Oakland are fundamentally an economic and community development issue, and with plenty of proven examples of how to increase economic activity through investments in the arts, we need to force the change we believe in.

With recent city budget proposals, which eliminate 100% funding for the arts, it’s clear that new and enterprising policy strategies need to be developed and implemented now to fuel Oakland’s new-found cultural mecca-tude, lest it be lost.  If there will be no money, then we should certainly demand a plan for the future. Let me be clear though- I am in no way suggesting a protracted “strategic planning process” which yields exactly what I got from the last three- a stack of papers.  (You can view the last Task Force Report on the Arts and Economic Development at the SOA site).

Actually, the Cultural Funding Program, while of significant benefit to some organizations in the city, directly benefits only a small portion of the broader arts community.  Most people involved in the arts have never, and will never receive any public support.  So If current funding for the arts is to be severely reduced or suspended, the opportunity is now to develop a new, restructured, more efficient and effective model that supports all segments of the arts community and promotes economic development as well as cultural enrichment.

New policies should focus on broadening access to cultural opportunities and encouraging public/private partnerships to create jobs and revenue in the creative sector.  The policy reform framework should include a number of key components.  Reforms to the permitting, planning and zoning processes to expedite housing, venues, and special event projects would generate significant impact. Economic development policy reform would provide incentives and business assistance to arts-related businesses.  Organizational restructuring in city government could create an inter-agency collaboration between CEDA, Redevelopment, Visit Oakland, Public Works, Health and Human Services, Recreation and the Police Department.  Such inter-agency collaboration would realize efficiencies in service delivery and budget allocation, thereby accomplishing more with less.

Oakland is in a time of possibility.  There are major challenges, but we’ve also got some major arts policy implementation opportunities available.  Now is the time to mobilize and engage in the process- on boards, commissions, informal groups and as individuals.  Public forums on the arts by the Emerging Arts Professionals, Support Oakland Artists, the Oakland Cultural Trust, as well as others, are a place to start.  Get involved and get it moving!

 

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Randolph Belle has enjoyed 20 years in the arts, business and nonprofit management in Oakland. He’s started several commercial art and design companies and served in a wide variety of civic and service capacities. Randolph is the founder and Executive Director of Support Oakland Artists, a nonprofit art and community development corporation that works to enhance local artists’ ability to thrive and fuel economic development throughout the region.  Randolph has served as the President of the Board of Directors at Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland and Vice Chair for the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission.  Randolph is currently on the board of the Museum of Children’s Art, the Oakland Film Society, the Advisory Board of the Crucible and is the Education and Workforce Development Director for the Oakland Media Center.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

 

Cultural Stewardship (from the San Francisco Ballet to Big Freedia)

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by Eboni Senai Hawkins

“Katrina played a big part in spreading bounce… We were displaced all over the world.  People were trying to find bounce music like it was a drug.” ~ Big Freedia (on Late Night with Carson Daly)

I was introduced to Big Freedia – a transgender star of New Orleans’ bounce music who has a hit song entitled “Azz Everywhere” – last year via Namane Mohlabane and the New Parish.  In that one concert, it felt like all my worlds – Southeast college parties, Brooklyn dancehall sound systems, and gender-fluid Oakland – had collided and settled comfortably around me.  I can only imagine what it would have felt like if I had been one of the hundreds who had come to the Bay Area from New Orleans. The rapid tempo, the booty-shakin’ bass, the gritty, insistent call and response could very well have sounded like “home.”

At one point in the show, the beat dropped out and Big Freedia’s acapella verses hit hard.  We all stopped gyrating and caught our breath to witness this person who was giving her all, working a limelight that was a long time coming and might not last.  I looked around and wondered, how many in the room could feel the history in Big Freedia’s voice and follow that thread to the story of New Orleans?

If we’ve learned anything from DJ Kool Herc having to reach out to hip hop fans to cover medical expenses, we cannot depend on market forces to assign value to the subcultures that make up this nation’s legacy.  It is too easy to equate cultural stewardship with a certain class.  At the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that the cultural forms that have the investment of time and money from their audiences are the ones that thrive and become representatives of what we value as a whole.

One day I found myself inputting plans in my Google Calendar for an evening out.  San Francisco Ballet at the War Memorial Opera House at 8pm… Big Freedia at Public Works at 11. In that moment, it saddened me to think that while the San Francisco Ballet has multiple tiers of support, is touted as one of the city’s gems, and will probably live on for another 73 years, the event at Public Works is only one of Big Freedia’s many solo shows in a packed schedule. She performs up to six nights a week, working the music circuit from nightclubs in New Orleans to SXSW, attempting to bank on a “trend” that’s just reaching cult status after 20 years.

Who will be cultural stewards for Big Freedia and bounce music?  Can we get the hipsters that dive into the safe space of “shaking for Big Freedia” to also support the post-Katrina communities that remain dispersed throughout the U.S.?  Can we get urban Black communities to embrace “Big Freedia, the Queen Diva” AND move towards accepting the LGBTQ community as a whole?  In the attention deficit world of “click, click, done” via Kickstarter campaigns how do you get someone who buys one ticket to one concert to understand the effects they could have on a subculture?

Sometimes you have to start where you are, build relationships, and hope the significance sinks in.

In the dance world, intimate artist-audience conversations are too often a “benefit” reserved for high-level donors.  When I created the DANCEfirst! salons at the Museum of the African Diaspora, attendees jumped right in, taking in performance, asking the hard questions after, and coming back the next month.  In the push for empowered citizens of culture, I am inspired by local institutions who are making the move to deepen relationships.  YBCA’s Big Idea Nights earned it a reputation as “that museum that throws really good parties.”  Oakland Museum’sOakland Standard gets me out almost every First Friday for the eclectic, socially-responsive activities that celebrate local community.

If we look at engagement alone, cultural stewardship is evolving. We are a DIY, participatory culture – we curate our own shows and raise our own funds.  Now we just need to be consistent.  See ourselves as “supporters” and not just “consumers”.  The difference is what will ensure that the art we value, that speaks to our multiple voices, continues to receive the support it needs to be heard.

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Eboni Senai Hawkins is the Producing Artistic Director of see. think. dance.

After valuable experiences in arts administration (Jacob’s Pillow Dance, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts,Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet), she took a leap of faith and started working directly with the art and artists she loved.

Inspired by the opportunity to present intimate performance in a low-pressure environment, Eboni curated a short program for the June 2007 Mission Arts Performance Project (MAPP) hosted by the Red Poppy Art House, featuring dancers Antoine Hunter and Rashad Pridgen.

 

The response from the primarily visual arts/music audience was overwhelming and in collaboration with Todd Brown and the Red Poppy’s Street-Level Curating Program, Eboni established see. think. dance. to produceTruth + Beauty (November 2007), Word. Warrior. Music. Movement. (March 2008), and Urban Art Sessions(May 2008).

May 2008 also marked the formation of and the first performative installment by The Intimacy Project, an ongoing collaboration between artists/educators who draw creative inspiration from their connection to the African continent and are deeply invested in social change through the re-integration of the mind and the body.  Losing a dancer at the last moment and concerned with the flow of the evening’s program, Eboni overcame her fear of the stage to perform a duet with actor Kwesi Hutchful, a movement composition incorporating media installation, tempest tossed by lauren woods and layered with a recorded version of Intro to Kemetic Science by David Boyce.

In 2010, heavily influenced by the REVIVE workshop, Eboni created the annual REflect film series as part of the Black Choreographers’ Festival: Here and Now. Subtitled “The Black Dancing Body on Film”, REflect mines the rich visual history of Black dancers and choreographers on film through a dynamic selection of documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

 

 

Who Can We Be?

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by Arlene Goldbard

In my first post, my goal was to expand our narrow debate over arts funding to include the large and urgent questions of value that should drive cultural policy. I brought up really big issues (such as the fact that we spend more than two annual National Endowment for the Arts [NEA)] budgets on war each day, seven days a week). But even if you want to stay more tightly focused on questions of art and culture, it’s a big landscape.

Every public sector has a cultural policy, whether they say so or not. In some places, it’s explicit. For instance, some nations mandate a certain amount of domestically produced content on TV or in movie theaters, to support their media sector and keep from being overwhelmed by U.S. product. In other places, policy is implicit: what can you deduce about U.S. cultural policy from looking at arts education in elementary schools today? No one has to say it’s totally expendable for us to get that message; public actions do the talking.

Cultural policy is always driven by values. As a nation, what are our goals for cultural development? Whose culture counts? What do we want to preserve, protect, or promote? Values are encoded in the way we allocate funds, in zoning and regulations, in the priorities reflected by our history books and museums.

A couple of years ago, I teamed up with other artists and activists to articulate Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework putting forward five key elements of a new national policy recognizing culture’s central role in stimulating social imagination, empathy, and national recovery.

The Framework didn’t take off the way we hoped. It turned out that the Obama administration was as reluctant as its predecessors to invest in artists and cultural development. The right has been successful in making the arts a toxic issue, and no administration has been brave enough to buck that. But despite officials’ trepidation, the five initiatives articulated there are still key to a viable, democratic cultural policy. And if I had to name the three most important things to do to improve U.S. cultural policy, I’d choose these three underlying principles of the New Framework:

Create a “new WPA,” a public service jobs program addressing all our national goals—clean energy, excellent education, sound economy, good health and more. It should include putting artists and creative organizers to work for the common good using every art form and way of working: providing well-rounded education, sustaining and caring for the ill, engaging elders in creativity, rebuilding community infrastructure to reflect our best. Seventy-five years ago, the WPA supported five arts programs as part of FDR’s program to recover from the Great Depression. It worked. Today, unemployment is a scandal and a shame, and jobs are still the engine of prosperity; when tied to public purpose, no investment brings greater impact.

Invest our resources to promote cultural equity. The right to culture—to honor those who came before, express ourselves and take part in community life—is a core human right. Our national policy should mandate equal opportunity to contribute to and benefit from cultural life, whether our families are indigenous to this land, have lived here for many decades or just arrived; whether we live in cities or the countryside; regardless of color, creed, orientation or physical ability. The way we support, protect and promote culture should reflect our best, our national commitment to equity, fairness and inclusion, instead of favoring the wealthiest and whitest institutions above all others.

Make culture count in public policy. Every community’s cultural fabric is made of shared places, customs, values and creative acts. The stronger it is, the more likely that kids will stay in school, businesses will thrive, neighbors will celebrate and learn from each other. When we forget this, we pay a price. How would our cities be different if policy-makers had considered the cultural lives of the neighborhoods leveled to make way for new stadiums, performing arts complexes and freeways? Cultural policy should be modeled on laws assessing environmental impacts, considering the human and cultural cost of public actions—and not just dollars and cents—before approving plans.

Sometimes simple solutions are the most powerful. Just adopting these three principles would completely transform our national cultural policy from a weak and vulnerable system modeled on private patronage to an engine of cultural democracy.

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Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant and cultural activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics and spirituality. Her blog and other writings may be downloaded from her Web site: www.arlenegoldbard.com. She was born in New York and grew up near San Francisco. Her most recent book, New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development was published by New Village Press in November 2006. She is also co-author of Community, Culture and Globalization, an international anthology published by the Rockefeller Foundation, Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture, and Clarity, a novel. Her essays have been published in In Motion Magazine, Art in America, Theatre, Tikkun, and many other journals. She has addressed many academic and community audiences in the U.S. and Europe, on topics ranging from the ethics of community arts practice to the development of integral organizations. She has provided advice and counsel to hundreds of community-based organizations, independent media groups, and public and private funders and policymakers including the Rockefeller Foundation, the Independent Television Service, Appalshop and dozens of others. She is currently writing a new book on art’s public purpose. She serves as President of the Board of Directors of The Shalom Center.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

TOMORROW

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by Sanjit Sethi

I want to make a distinction between spending the resources to fund or not fund a specific cultural project and the ability to devote resources to think about the long-term direction of where one wants to allocate resources towards cultural cultivation. Inherently cultural policy is a process of navigation. Navigation is about knowledge, the knowledge of the terrain, but just as importantly, it’s the ability to apply a series of skills to ascertain the direction one would like to go based on a range of factors some of which are in your control and some of which are outside of your control. Individuals or organizations that drive cultural policy should see themselves at the helm of a vessel where one is taking into account the determination to go in a particular direction, while at the same time accounting for multiple factors, which try as we might, are uncontrollable. The boat may be under your control, the engine may be under your control. There are many things that are under your control but those aren’t the only factors affecting your journey, and one needs to consider and think through those factors. Cultural policy should work in the same way.

Cultural policy becomes staid and automatic the moment it thinks it is the sole driver for any form of change. Similar to the navigator, the best drivers of cultural policy are ones that act with a degree of humility and with the acknowledgment of the forces they cannot change yet need to exist within. To my mind the two key ingredients to cultural policy for the next ten years are innovation and ethics. Oftentimes it can give us comfort to feel that policy drives programming. I think this is a mistake. Instead innovative programming should provide us with real world examples of how something works or doesn’t work, which then can determine a new direction in which policy itself can move. In the day of the 24-hour news cycle and twitter it is easy not to focus on the details; we can get caught up with the large picture, the big event. As millenials assume their place as the next generation it is important to take note of the many aspects that drive them, of cultural diversity and collaborative models of education, to name a few. The test of cultural policy of the future will be to harness innovation in a manner that continues to involve those individuals not already at the table.

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Sanjit Sethi is Director of the Center for Art and Public Life, and the Barclay Simpson Chair of Community Art at California College of the Arts.  Sethi received a BFA in 1994 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, an MFA in 1998 from the University of Georgia, and an MS in Advanced Visual Studies in 2002 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sethi has been an artist in residence at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada and a Fulbright fellow in Bangalore, India, working on the Building Nomads Project. Sethi continued his strong focus on interdisciplinary collaboration as director of the MFA program at the Memphis College of Art. His work deals with issues of nomadism, identity, the residue of labor, and memory. Sethi recently completed the Kuni Wada Bakery Remembrance, an olfactory-based memorial in Memphis, Tennessee; and Richmond Voting Stories, a collaborative video project involving youth and senior residents of Richmond, CA. Sethi’s current works include Indians/Indians, the Urban Defibrillator, and a series of writings on the territory of failure and its relationship to collaborative cultural practice, all of which involve varied social and geographic communities.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

Kristi’s Rant

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by Kristi Holohan

 

Art is a language. Art can be used as expression and communication. Arts teach innovation, creativity and philosophy. To speak this language we need to be exposed to Art’s tools-materials, positive instruction, and techniques.  We should be nurtured, positively guided through our experience and listen to each other’s expression as a form of cross-cultural communication. The tools of Art are scarcely provided where I live in East Oakland and when they are it is far too infrequent. Oakland’s Cultural Arts and Marketing Department, Oakland Parks & Recreation, Youth Upraising and East Oakland Youth Development Center, East Side Arts Alliance and Community Rejuvenation Project do offer some means to provide Arts but this funding and programming is hard to receive, ALWAYS at jeopardy, and pits Art’s workers against each other. All of this work is amazing, but we need to support neighborhoods that are operating in economic depravity, desperation and isolation from support of the well tax-funded communities. It is on this premise I’d like to speak in relation to the Arts community:

My friend’s story.

My friend (and mother of two) was telling me how she was pistol whipped the other day; it fractured her skull. She lives about 5 blocks from me in between 35th and Fruitvale. She said wasn’t scared, her son is a survivor of gun violence. OPD said they were going to catch whoever did this and put them in jail for life-she didn’t want that. She doesn’t want to isolate her community.

We needed to change something. Oakland needs more compassion, opportunity, and more investment in ALL of our community. We need to have a city where programming is seen as value, opportunity and community has options besides criminal activity and policing.

Institutional Neglect towards the Youth.

It is hard for me to prove the direct comparison between lack of Arts and our community disparity because easily available current public not updated properly. The most accurate depiction of Oakland Street Violence (taken back in 2008 by SF Gate) is a map of homicides in neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods are also lowscoring in the Academic Performance Index (2009) charting Oakland Public School student aptitude effectively removing Arts programming from the school because it is not seen as an essential Core Academic Subject.

Without integrated community Art and Cultural programming in a public setting Art’s are secluded from certain communities.

Criminalization

Young Graffiti Artists in neighborhoods that offer minimal art programs are considered criminals for expression with a spray-can. South of Fruitvale there is no access to art stores for drawing books, only hardware stores with sharpies and spray cans. Representatives from Oakland’s Public Works Agency and graffiti abatement have stated an interest in working with Oakland’s “unsanctioned” painters because murals and integrated community artworks reduce vandalism. Meanwhile Public Employees are tracking graffiti work to chase “GANGS” in neighborhoods and then criminalize painters who associate with gangs with all of the crimes of that vandalism crew. These terms are not only marginalizing but result in increased hostility from all parties. If one were to look closer at graffiti, one would see its life changing aspects. I have had youth interns say to me, “graffiti saved my life from street violence”. It is essential that we support avenues for this form of popular expression. Some of the greatest artists of today are graffiti artists showcased and collected by major International Arts Institutions and holding spectacular events attended by community. I’d like to see integrated community conversations held to provide alternatives.

In addition, our community has a large amount of people who are deemed “illegal”, many of whom are artists who are not allowed to participate in their expression on a legitimate professional level.  Often times, people have had no choice but to come to this country as youth, with families seeking political and or economic asylum. I encourage our governing bodies to lift restrictions on citizenship and to embrace our cultural community at large. We cannot continue to isolate people and expect justice peace and equality in our society.

Oakland Shines

Oakland and can be seen in the International arena with the Scraper Bikes, Oakland’s famous venues, thriving Galleries, cultural events, Hip Hop celebrities, and Turf Dancing sensations. These local Arts gain International notoriety. Arts and Culture are Oakland’s most important asset and an answer to injustice.

Arts in Oakland are essential for community and expression. We need to make strides to nurture instead of marginalize our biggest assets Culture and Arts.

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I’m an artist, teacher, non-profit community worker at ACE Arts and a Directing Member of Rock Paper Scissors Collective. I have worked teaching mural painting, Sewing and Textiles, Drawing, Clay, and Woodworking, techniques in underserved communities and with assistance from a number of established Arts Organizations. I have received a number of public commissions to facilitate integrated community artwork, which can be found around the greater Bay area. My facilitation has been recognized by local and national media sources. I am very passionate about Art’s accessibility to all as an essential tool for a stable and sustainable future.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

Cultural Sustainability in the New (Oakland)

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by Randolph Belle

The (Oakland) in the title of this submission can probably be swapped out for many cities across the country, but the concept of cultural sustainability has been an increasingly pressing issue for me of late. I look at my role in the arts community, my existence as an African American and what distinction should be made for me as an African American cultural worker.  The conversation for me then turns to what other’s roles are and what effort should be made in recognizing and maintaining the contributions of individual cultural groups in what some would call a post-racial society.

With so much talk of environmental sustainability, I find it ironic, and myself left a bit empty, with the thought that we could save the planet and lose a people. Recent reports confirmed by the latest census data shows that Oakland has lost 25% of its African American population in less than a decade. It could be said that as the people go, so does the culture.  Oakland is right where San Francisco was a few decades ago when I was growing up there, (and we know how that one turned out), but having been one of the more active arts participants in Oakland for the past twenty years, I feel uniquely qualified and personally compelled to fully engage this conversation.

The indicators, individually or collectively, are pretty apparent.  Every African American cultural invention has been subsumed into the larger culture to a point where the source is no longer recognizable, and Oakland, as a traditional center of Black culture and one of a number of “Chocolate Cities” around the country is a petri dish for cultural change.  Consider this- Yoshi’s produced a jazz compilation with no Black artists, later apologizing and calling it an oversight.   The First Amendment and the Serenader, where the best live blues, jazz and R&B could be heard, are distant memories. Rap can be heard in every corner of the planet, but as a thoroughly co-opted artform, I find nothing redeeming in what’s been deemed commercially viable.  No consideration was given to the importance and historical significance of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater when the Academy of Art, (ironically), evicted them from their long time home.  Are these just coincidences, or evidence of something requiring more of our attention.

For anyone asking themselves “What’s the big deal?” or “It’s not like that”, or even “You’re too sensitive”- my hope is that you fall in to one of a couple of categories- indifferent or oblivious, because the other option is much more alarming.  You may not feel any responsibility to individual cultural sustainability, or realize that you should, but there are ramifications, intended or not, to that state of being.

The result of that in Oakland has been a persistent tension that can only impede the ultimate potential of the cultural renaissance we’re currently experiencing. This dynamic started becoming evident in the Yerba Buena Center’s two shows about Oakland in the mid-90’s, which, in my opinion, devolved into an issue of race.  It’s also seen in how the Oakland renaissance is commonly represented, devoid of any historical perspective and reminiscent of how Columbus “discovered” America.  The “new” Oakland has no acknowledgement that Oakland has always been one of the most culturally rich and diverse cities in America, waiting for and opportunity to shine.

I totally understand that these issues are far more complex than can be summarized in a single blog post, but it does call for an in-depth, ongoing and honest conversation, which I intend to pursue until we come to an acceptable conclusion.  In the end, I still feel that the cultural contributions of everyone should be enjoyed by everyone, but we should also be mindful that a spirit of reverence to existing and historical cultures; and some attention to the sociological implications of the drastic shifts in populations need to be considered if Oakland is to become one of the great global centers of the cultural arts.

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Randolph Belle has enjoyed 20 years in the arts, business and nonprofit management in Oakland. He’s started several commercial art and design companies and served in a wide variety of civic and service capacities. Randolph is the founder and Executive Director of Support Oakland Artists, a nonprofit art and community development corporation that works to enhance local artists’ ability to thrive and fuel economic development throughout the region.  Randolph has served as the President of the Board of Directors at Pro Arts Gallery in Oakland and Vice Chair for the City of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Commission.  Randolph is currently on the board of the Museum of Children’s Art, the Oakland Film Society, the Advisory Board of the Crucible and is the Education and Workforce Development Director for the Oakland Media Center.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) on Saturday, April 16! Register here.

Art as a Human Right

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by Kenji C. Liu

“I do not want art for a few, any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.” – William Morris

William Morris was a late 19th century artist and socialist who divided art into two types – the type done by and for the people, or popular art, and its opposite, art tied to commerce or capitalism. He saw the latter as contradictory – the tying of something that gives life to something that destroys it.

There are others who have complementary views – Hannah Arendt drew a distinction between work and labor. Work was an activity done by humans to make a beautiful world, whereas labor tied one’s activities to mass production and profit-making.

In the late 1970s, the term cultural work was coined and had an explicitly anti-elitist and anti-capitalist view of art. Cultural workers saw the creation of culture as being a grassroots activity, capable of being done by all, without profit as its primary goal. In this sense the practice of art is democratization and self-determination.

In our current society, the value of an activity is tied to its present or potential economic value. This is implicit not only in the for-profit sector but in the non-profit sector as well, where funding is tied to measurability of outcomes. As funding for arts declines, we may try to measure artistic activities in order to argue, for example, that art too can also fit within an economic calculus, because it improves productivity. Yet funding for arts continues to disappear.

As artists know, creativity is not an entirely rational, measurable practice. One of art’s strengths is that it is a whole other way of understanding the world. Its value, so to speak, is that it offers a practice that is not automatically enmeshed in economic usefulness.

We can stand in that value. The ability to work together for a beautiful and just world while being free from economic calculus and quantifiable value is not in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but perhaps it should be. Would our cultural strategies and policies benefit if we framed this kind of “freed art” as a human right and necessary for true democracy, just like education and freedom?

 

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Kenji C. Liu is a writer, cultural worker, and 1.5 generation immigrant from New Jersey currently residing in Oakland. He has an MA in Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies and has worn many hats: Asian American Studies instructor, graphic designer, meditation teacher, deejay, and diversity consultant leading workshops nationally. Kenji’s poetry chapbook You Left Without Your Shoes (Finishing Line Press, 2009) was nominated for a 2009 California Book Award. His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appears in or is forthcoming from Tea Party Magazine (not related to the conservative movement), Kartika Review, Lantern Review, Kweli Journal, and the anthology Flick of My Tongue (Kearny Street Workshop, 2009). He is program director at the Geneva Car Barn and Powerhouse which offers arts-based youth development and leadership training for San Francisco District 11 residents. Prior to this, Kenji coordinated the Oakland Word program at the Oakland Public Library, which offered free creative writing workshops to the general public.

Don’t miss Reframing the Arts : Advocating for the Public Culture at Oakland Museum of California (OMCA)
on Saturday, April 16! Register here.