Arts Build Community
CDCs now recognize that art and cultural activities can be useful tools toward building a community's identity, meaning, and spirit. But bank regulators have not yet reached a sufficient level of comfort with this new strategy.
The Cultural Ramifications of Gentrification in New Orleans
Gentrification is not just physical displacement; it’s cultural appropriation across entire neighborhoods. Artists have an obligation not to participate.
Affordable Housing and . . . a Museum in Harlem
For over 30 years, Broadway Housing Communities has developed its own formula for meeting the housing needs of West Harlem's lowest-income residents. One of its unorthodox ingredients has been art galleries, and now, there's a children's museum in its newest building.
The $9 Jar of Artisanal Pickles: Equity and Local Food
Sustainability is about thriving, not just surviving. We will not thrive if we are poorly paid martyrs to a good cause, and thus, in a healthy, diverse and vital food system, some of our efforts might need to be directed to those who can pay nine dollars for a jar of pickles.
Educate, Motivate, Organize
An Interview with Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi
Not All Artists Are Young. Or Childless.
On Dec. 3, the Ghost Ship fire in Oakland became the deadliest in the city’s history, claiming the lives of 36 individuals. The warehouse...
The Next Generation of Indigenous Knowledge Keepers
A tribal college program works to preserve crucial Native American cultural elements while training indigenous women to step into leadership roles in their communities.
Interview with Rip Rapson, president and CEO of the Kresge Foundation
If you look at what Rip Rapson has accomplished and the insight he brings to his current work, you'll get a much better picture of who he is and the challenging work he spearheads at the Kresge Foundation.
If We Want the Arts in Baltimore, We Need Its Artists
Artists have left their mark on Station North and paved the way for an arts district, but the organically-developed communal live/work spaces that play such a vital role in helping make Baltimore an arts mecca are an endangered species.
Poem: “Tires Stacked in the Hallways of Civilization”
Yes, Your Honor, there are rodents, said the landlord to the judge, but I let the tenant have a cat. Besides, he stacks his tires in the hallway.
Poem: ms. margaret on her landline phone with ruth, talking about her new neighbors...
A poem engaging equity for the author's godmother and other women who begin their sentences with the word "chile."
Urban Art or Graffiti Vandalism?
Review of Stations of the Elevated, by Manfred Kirchheimer, 1981.
A Community Planning Process–Even A Good One–Is Not Enough
Just the inherent language of community “transformation” signals that what has come before is not worth holding on to, and renders the history of these public housing sites insignificant.
Harnessing the Creativity of Artists to Unlock Community Wealth
With collaboration among Dallas' arts community, a place-based initiative called CultureBank invests in social impact artists in order to steward community assets to promote the health and well being of residents.
The Catalyzing Power of Art
Art can be an economic engine for neighborhoods, but sometimes locally-based artists need some support to kick their businesses into gear, and community-based organizations are stepping up.
Poem: “Gentrification”
I have seen a neighborhood eat itself for dinner
Poem: “What Must Be Done”
Do not hate them.
Do not be angry with them:
The real estate agents, appraising
the value of other peoples lives,
calculating the profit that someone’s home
of twenty...
Regrets of an Accidental Placemaker
Had I unintentionally contributed to the gentrification of my neighborhood and other neighborhoods around Washington, D.C.?
Keeping Seniors Healthy by Fostering Connections and Community
For high needs seniors with chronic illnesses, health is not merely—or even mostly—a matter for medical professionals.
Not Your Average Community Garden
A good community garden is a space that nurtures hope, natural abundance, and growth, and eventually moves beyond food and into the realm of relationship-building that can help sustain healthy communities.