Small City, Big Art

Riverzedge Arts

Rebekah Speck

Woonsocket, RI

Project Dates:

On going since 2011

Tags

Workforce Development

Posted Date:

Jan 8, 2013

Many deindustrialized New England mill towns have long histories of segregation along cultural, racial and economic lines. Historical narratives are constructed of the stories of immigrant groups coming to work in the mills and overcoming discrimination and hardship to make a better life. As each group "made it," along came the next group to suffer the same indignities for a better life. For many cities, new groups are still coming but the days of "making it" are long gone. As we create a new future with art, design and architecture at the core of what is most precious in our cities, how can we overcome long entrenched obstacles to inclusion, now made more complex by globalization and changing attitudes to immigration? Perhaps the power of art really is the only answer!

Project Goals

What were the project goals?

Small City, Big Art project partners breathe new life into our small historic industrial city through big imaginative events, pop-ups, physical fabric enhancements and public art that surprise residents and visitors, inspire and invite creativity and build momentum for continued inventiveness in community revitalization. Our highest goal is to enliven and revitalize the City through the development of a creative sector, support artistic excellence and the growth of public appreciation of the arts as a means to realize the city's full potential. We know art is a valuable economic engine and community builder. High performance partnerships and public appreciation fuel the engine; public engagement that harnesses the talents and energies of local youth and indigenous artist voices, and program processes that create opportunities for disenfranchised populations lay the tracks. Supportive tasks and objectives to this goal encourage more artists to live and work in the City; transform the Main Street/Arts District from an area with many vacant storefronts into a thriving hub of activity; install new public art that will meet the highest standard of artistic excellence while engaging the public; and build a base for public appreciation. The delivery of these tasks revitalizes public space and revives City street aesthetics by implementing streetscape design from our nearly completed Main Street Livability Plan. Other goals are to engage and leverage the work already occurring in the City’s existing art organizations and connect artists and the general public through the BCSA activities and public art installations. The collecting and assessing artists’ needs and desires (obtained from surveys, focus groups and interviews of artist) will be made available to other communities who may wish to encourage artists to live and work in their community. SCBA processes and products restore a sense of optimism and pride in place by applying the expertise of arts pioneers, non-profit organizations, businesses and city agencies to solicit meaningful public input into the place making process among populations traditionally remote from economic and arts engagement. RiverzEdge and the City work in partnership with NeighborWorks BRV to build upon a successful national community revitalization pilot program called Our Neighborhoods embarked upon by Woonsocket in 2009, to creatively employ the ideas, energy and talents local residents directly in the design process. Due to the linkages of this project to existing visioning and planning processes and the unique engagement of mobile and transient populations and disenfranchised urban youth in the process, this project could serve as a national model of how historically significant spaces can be re-imagined by underrepresented voices and re-purposed to better meet the needs of the community. Encouraging more artists to live and work in the City, transforming the Main Street/Arts District from an area with many vacant storefronts into a thriving hub of activity, and installing new public art that meets the highest standard of artistic excellence while engaging the public and building a base for public appreciation can create a platform for improving access and resource application for the widest spectrum of residents if adherence to inclusion goals is met.

Have they changed over time?

While diverse and authentic public engagement was and continues to be an originating goal in this process, implementation with existing resources has made it difficult to maintain the high performance engagement standards of partners with the depth and scope necessary to overcome entrenched divides. The SCBA program design necessitates specific deliverables and it is all too easy for the actions that most ensure diverse participation to drop in priority when there are so many moving parts in converging planning and implementation processes. This workshop will explore both our successes and these challenges, putting forth potential solutions and engages workshop attendees in sharing their observations, concerns, experiences and ideas as well.

Who are the project partners and stakeholders?

Primary partners include the City of Woonsocket’s Planning and Economic Development Departments and RiverzEdge Arts, a nationally award winning youth development organization and social enterprise, working in conjunction with NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley, a nationally award winning non-profit that hired a one-year Main Street Manager tasked with creating an inventory of available commercial properties due to be completed in early 2013, the recently formed Woonsocket Arts Guild, Woonsocket Main Street Riverfront Initiative, YWCA and other Main Street Livability Planning Steering Committee members, St. James Baptist Church, Woonsocket Police Department and other MLK Memorial Sculpture partners, Chafee Blackstone Valley Heritage Cooridor, Museum of Work & Culture, etc.

Project Specifics

How was the project implemented? What were the steps taken?

SCBA is morphing out of our Woonsocket Creative Placemaking Project funded by an NEA Our Town grant in conjunction with Main St. Livability Planning through a HUD grant, market research funded by RI LISC, bike path planning and implementation in conjunction with the Heritage Corridor and RI DOT and finally culminating out of a Wayfinding Master Plan that was completed in 2010 by the Main Street Riverfront Initiative. There are many moving parts and sometimes it is difficult to tell where one plan/process starts and the other ends. Recent successes include erecting a new MLK memorial sculpture off Main Street last January at the transition juncture between the poor neighborhoods in Woonsocket and the wealthier neighborhoods that begin over the town line. A truly diverse team completed the project and over 150 people attended the opening and lunch after at St. James Baptist Church. Over 80 people attended a Main Street focused visioning event that was held at RiverzEdge in October, the city is currently rebranding, getting ready to launch a new logo (currently being designed by RiverzEdge youth!) and then a new website. This year's Holiday Stroll was put forth as an arts driven event with multiple new pop up galleries, and it saw a surge in attendance about 3 times more than in previous years. A core group of about 50 people, who might be called the low hanging fruit, is now deeply involved with efforts to improve Main St. through a variety of lenses, and the arts community regularly convenes through the Arts Guild a self formed outgrowth of Our Town planning and implementation processes. 400 to 500 people can be called upon to volunteer and thousands show up to events. RiverzEdge and Neighborworks consistently engage diverse youth and families, but more needs to be done. This workshop will share what we consider to be best practices whether they are universally adopted, and create a forum for group exploration of how we can all collectively do better.

Have they been refined over time?

Project implementation is guided by grant deliverables, but our approaches to inclusion are continuously refined. What often gets left out of grant narratives is the authentic relationship building through on going projects, collaboration and service that project outcomes are predicated on. Per the obstacles described below, our cadre of contemporary arts partners who have been working together on multiple initiatives are up against very challenging opposition to progressive change characterized by inclusion and leveling the playing field of opportunity. At the same time, our success is dependent on working with the largest cross section of the stakeholders so we have to maintain good working relationships with all sectorsto keep moving forward. RiverzEdge and NeighborWorks have robust embedded relationships throughout the spectrum of low income communities and create diversity as we enter into any endeavor. RiverzEdge, as the main community arts resource, has successfully bridged divides that are harder to bridge in other sectors. Many of our partners, who share our values, have successfully enlisted our help to broaden their reach. The Chafee Heritage Corridor and NPS brought many more people of color into their headquarters/education center through their support of this project http://www.accessanddenialproject.org/ than in any other event in 2012 and their commitment to inclusion is consistent.

Obstacles

What were your major obstacles?

Obstacles to success include long entrenched notions of identity, a history of socially acceptable racism, clash between the old guard and the new in the city and in the arts community, a tendency to settle for less than optimal results, and a lack of dispersed skill sets in achieving artistic excellence. Powerful forces of change are at play in this city for reasons that have nothing to do with our Small City Big Art project. They stem from shifts in cultural norms toward statewide transparency and rooting out corruption, from having outside scrutiny through a budget commission saving the city from receivership, from new leadership in the police force, education department, city administration. Our small teams of arts pioneers has been remarkably successful at creating widespread respect and appreciation for our vision for the city and the role that art plays in improved outcomes, hard won through the suggestions we will be putting forward below.

Who or what was instrumental in overcoming these obstacles?

Concentric circles of partners that build outward from a group of 4 women who have built strong trusting relationships. We call ourselves Urban Women Warriors. We are all planning, art and design junkies, and totally committed to a beautiful, healthy and more equitable future.

What top three suggestions would you give to others attempting a similar project?

Inclusion and diversity cannot be an add on. Rather, projects should be viewed as vehicles to leverage improved social and economic results to move a community forward. Play nicely with EVERYONE, even if you categorically disagree with what they put forth and how they put it forth. There is always a pathway to a positive statement. (This will be demonstrated and role played in the workshop.) Be the leaders that lead the leaders: Never back down on what you believe in, and model the leadership you want to see!

Project Impact

How has this project contributed to creative community building?

In addition to the successes already listed above, since the project was conceived to align with goals identified through multiple planning processes it enjoys widespread support from sectors that were previously contentious with each other and characterized by a negative view of the future. Years of groundwork, visioning, relationship building and tenacity through success and failure, paved the way for SCBA to produce dramatic results in terms of participation and a shared notion of the path forward as having creative economy building as a central feature in new zoning, planning, reuse, etc. That is bigger than the big art!

How did it achieve your original goals?

The biggest most visible successes of all the convergent planning processes have been rooted in the creative sector. New avenues for collaboration across diverse sectors have been created. Lead partners ensure that low income and marginalized cultural and ethnic groups are centralized in project design.

Were there unexpected impacts?

The most unexpected one is how respected our leadership teams have become when where we started could be characterized by knocking on closed doors that saw no reason to be open. Time is now truly on our side as more and more voices rise and more and more people are convinced through performance and results that creative economy building is the best path forward.

Creative Economy

Upcoming Event

Small City, Big Art