Conflict Kitchen: Phase 2

Back in July, I posted about a Pittsburgh project called Conflict Kitchen that is serving the community cultural understanding via delicious food experiences. The folks at Conflict Kitchen have asked me to post an update on the second phase of their project, an Afghan cuisine restaurant called Bolani Pazi. They are looking for community support to get the restaurant up and running. Visit their website for more information.

Solar Farm Doubles as Art Installation

Beautiful and breathtaking- you must check out this post from inhabitat.com on Light Sanctuary, designed by Martina Decker and Peter Yeadon.

Image from DeckerYeadon.com.

WFU Grad Explains How Photovoice and Psychology Came Together in Kenya

Janelle recently helped me make a discovery--North Carolina has some booming activity going on in Photovoice.

Janelle Summerville is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University and a current doctoral student at the University of Virginia. While attending WFU, she traveled to Kenya for a summer and asked female students there to document their identities using a digital camera. Janelle is a student of psychology, and these photographs provided her with wonderful qualitative data that helped shed light on the values of Kenyan girls--but I divulge too much. I'd rather let Janelle's words speak for themselves. The text of a short e-mail interview I did with Janelle is provided below. And thanks again for sparking my interest in Photovoice. I had no idea there was such a deep pool of scholarship and activity going on in this field. I can't wait to share posts on other NC projects later...

Janelle with the girls of Saint Edwin's Children's Home in Kimende, Kenya

Triad Community Arts: Why photography? What made you choose this medium to study self-esteem in Kenyan girls?

Janelle Summerville: As I was preparing to go to Kenya, I read several articles and books about incorporating art into psychological research. I became particularly engaged by the idea of utilizing different methods to encourage the power of the participant to actively play a role in representing themselves, rather than simply be represented by the researcher. Photography stood out for me for several reasons. From an artistic standpoint, the thought of seeing raw photography was fascinating to me. I was intrigued by the concept of what level of honest work would come out of girls who had never used a camera before and had lives that are not as image/media-dense as we have in the States. Secondly, I felt that photography gave the girls an opportunity to capture snippets of their lives in ways that transcends conversation and is not restricted the same way by self-perceived talent like you would find using painting or dance. Thirdly, the permanence and emotional power of it. Photography provided a way to capture a small segment of the reality of their daily experience and bring it back to present to others and share the experience, share their struggle in a way that a thousand words could not. Pictures speak to people and make things real for them, so I felt that it was my responsibility to bring that all back with me.

TCA: In the article I read [on Wake's website], you stated that Kenyan girls do not tend to value themselves as individuals the same way U.S. children do. What values did you find some of the girls had?

JS: In the short time I was there, I found that academics were highly valued, being useful to the group as a whole (through work to sustain and maintain the children’s home such as cooking, cleaning, food errands, etc.) was also highly valued. Girls as young as 7 would participate in the daily operations of the building in a way that many U.S. children would not be allowed to – but it was of vital importance that the girls worked together to promote the well-being of all. Physically, long hair was valued, although the girls all had their hair completely cut off. Additionally, I was a bit surprised to hear how highly valued light skin and more caucasian traits were.

TCA: How was the process of using photography to collect information different from using surveys or interviews? What benefits and drawbacks did you find with this process?

JS: They worked so well together. Photography opened up conversations in interviews that would have never happened and allowed for a starting point for discussion and exploration. Surveys, in my opinion, often offer a preliminary understanding similar to a sketch before it is filled in with paint or a skeleton without flesh. It’s a wonderful base and support from research, but neglects some of the detail you can get with interviews and an artistic method. In the end, I used a mixed-method approach and photography was an integral part of the full picture of self in the context of an orphaned Kenyan girl. The only drawbacks came from the organizational aspects such as downloading and labeling the COUNTLESS photos that the girls took. Additionally, the director of the children’s home did not want me to leave the cameras with the girls for fear that they would be assaulted for them or feel driven to sell them for food, etc. I felt silly for not considering that possibility, but was able to adjust my plan in order to accompany them to different places and spend enough time with them each day that we could get diverse photographs to represent their daily lives and experiences. The major benefit was the look on the girl’s face taking photographs as they ran around capturing anything and everything. It was such a joy being able to be a part of that and giving them a chance to represent themselves in that way.

Grant to Fund Master Plan for Business 40 Bridges

Today the Winston-Salem Journal published new information on the Business 40 bridges project. The Creative Corridors Coalition will administer a grant to the Arts Council and City of Winston-Salem to assemble a team of urban designers, artists, and planners to create a master plan for the two-year construction project.

My hope is that the new bridges will allow for safer, more inviting pedestrian activity. I did some basic research a few years ago on bridges for the Florida Community Design Center in Gainesville, Florida. Here were a couple of my favorites:

One not so practical for two- or four-lane traffic:

By Miro Rivera Architects, this bridge is over Lake Austin in Austin, TX.

Zubizuri Bridge in Bilbao, Spain.

Citizen Artist!

While browsing the Community Arts Network website (pretty much the best resource there is on socially-minded and interactive art), I found a syllabus for a class called Citizen Artist. The collaboration between high school and college students reminded me so much of Transforming Race, a project I posted on earlier, I couldn't wait to get a link to the syllabus up on the blog.

Littoral: Redefining Art

While trying to decipher the meaning of a Lockheed Martin ad I read about in the Washington Post this morning, (It reads, "The shape of littoral dominance has a familiar look." Hmm...) I found a United Kingdom organization, Littoral, whose mission has very little to do with seashores and coasts but everything to do with community arts.

Littoral is "a nonprofit arts trust which promotes new creative partnerships, critical art practices and cultural strategies in response to issues about social, environmental and economic change."

Most of their work, collected under the title New Fields, examines and promotes the relationship between arts and agriculture.

Image from Littoral website.

A particularly unique project involves a collaboration between trade unions and artists called Routes. Littoral puts it best: "Invoking the historical links between the arts and the trade union movement, the project was framed to encourage the unions to rethink their cultural role as promoters of cross community unity in post-settlement Ireland."

In 2003, Littoral learned that "Transport House" (image below) , the trade union headquarters building, would be sold. Transport House was very important both historically and architecturally. Littoral led two artists to document the history of the building and propose future uses (such as a cultural and community arts center for working people) Again with Arts Council funding, two artists were employed to document the history of the building, and its possible future use as a cultural and community arts centre for working people. Visit Littoral's website for an extensive and captivating explanation of what has followed the initial proposal.

Photo of Transport House by Frankie Quinn.

Somebody Visit The EnergyXChange!

About 2.5 hours west of the Piedmont, the EnergyXChange is a center that uses landfill gas (methane and other gases that escape from landfills) as an energy source for a clay studio and a glass studio. Artists can do residencies at the EnergyXChange. The complex includes four greenhouses, three cold frames, a retail craft gallery, a visitor center, along with the two aforementioned studios.

And EnergyXChange encourages group visits, which is why I am emploring you to visit and tell me about it, so that I can post your journal entry here.

Image from EnergyXChange website.

Graffiti: Public Menace and Public Art?

Last night, the Winston-Salem City Council held a public hearing on the possibility of making tighter restrictions to discourage graffiti artists. Graffiti has its obvious destructive qualities, but it's also a form of public art.

Work by artist/photographer, JR.

And in the instance below, discovered at inhabitat.org, graffiti can mobilize a community. Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn work with youth to paint humongous murals in favelas (large squatter settlements) in Brazil.

Images from favelapainting.com.

My Art Generates Power. What Can Your Art Do?

Via the highly informative green design blog, inhabitat.org, I learned of a call for artists for the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI). LAGI describes itself as a program that brings together...

artists, architects, scientists, landscape architects, and engineers in a
first of its kind collaboration. The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative
is to design and construct a series of land art installations across the United
Arab Emirates that uniquely combine aesthetics with clean energy generation.

LAGI hopes to create a tourist destination around the ability to view these sculptural projects that also generate energy.

LAGI is currently holding an international design competition in which design teams can choose between three different sites, one of which is shown below. LAGI intends to see winning concepts through to construction with the artist team that proposed the design. Want to create a permanent land art structure in Abu Dhabi? Get drawing!

Image from www.landartgenerator.org.

Pixels for Food: Artist Bill Brown Uses Design Skills as Fundraising Tool

A friend of mine named Bill Brown, who is a graduate of Wake Forest, spoke yesterday at a conference in New Orleans called Launch Fest, self-labeled a "fun conference for serious entrepreneurs." The project Bill discussed is called Pixels for Food. Bill has been working at a community center and food pantry for the last year called the Community Center of St. Bernard. Pixels for Food is an online donation site inspired by his experience there. Check out a screen shot of the site below. The site is interactive, so be sure to visit yourself.

Gulu Choir Sings "Home"

Although The Voice Project is by no means local organization (it's based in Uganda), it offers a truly inspiring example of social change through art. Ravaged by conflict and war, Ugandan women, victims of rape and widowhood themselves, are using songs to bring home boy soldiers who have fled to the bush in shame and fear of the violence they committed. These songs are played on the radio or sung by women's choirs in villages across Uganda.

I found out about the organization because of an international exchange in which musicians offer up their talent and music in various ways to help bring attention to the work of the Voice Project. The Gulu Women's Choir sings a song I enjoy, "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I applaud these musicians for bringing attention to the project with their voices, but the truly remarkable voices are those of the women who communicate love, acceptance, and forgiveness with their voices.

"Home" in Gulu from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Catching Up with Kathy Ann

Last spring, the Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts enlisted the help of then Salem College senior, Kathy Ann Canafax, to serve as an intern, researching social media and seeking out the best tools for online communication in the Triad. Kathy Ann was an impressively thorough, driven intern, bound for an interesting future. I checked in on her last week to see what she is up to now...

I am currently in my ninth month of AmeriCorps*VISTA service with Arts In Reach
in New Hampshire. VISTAs (Volunteers In Service To America), unlike other
AmeriCorps members, work in a not-for-profit organization to build capacity and
develop resources that increase sustainability. Although my primary tasks
are fundraising/grantwriting, strategic planning, and social media, I have also
gained experience in special event planning, Board governance, media relations,
and program
evaluation.

One of my biggest accomplishments has been assisting the Executive Director in
the creation of a short-term strategic plan. By combining her inner knowledge of
the organization with my academic understanding of planning structure, we were
able to create a working document that has helped us secure almost $20,000 in
grant funds. The greatest accomplishment of the organization this fiscal year
has been our most recent special event. Despite our feature performer
cancelling within two weeks of the event, our Board and staff cultivated a
lucrative guest list, and with the help of a charismatic presenter we have over
$37,000 in received and pledged donations from the
event.

My familiarity with nonprofit use of social media, especially through the
Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts, has been particularly helpful
during my VISTA term. We have already taken a few steps toward greater
engagement of our participants through the internet, including Facebook and
YouTube, but I am hoping to create a persuasive report to be included in our
long-term strategic planning effort, which begins this month, that includes ways
to engage participants, donors, and community
members.

Ultimately, my year with Arts In Reach has been the perfect start to a career in
not-for-profit and arts management. Arts In Reach empowers teenage girls through
arts activity, and I have seen firsthand the transformation of a participant
from awkward and shy to confident and bold, through our group mentoring
activities and various means of artistic expression. Being able to
experience all aspects of a not-for-profit, from writing grants in the office to
assisting monologue practice in theatre class, is an invaluable beginning to
understanding my own strengths and interests in arts administration.

-Kathy Ann Canafax

Esse Quam Videri

I have always thought that North Carolina's guiding slogan, "Esse Quam Videri (To be, rather than to seem)," is about the best state motto for which one could ask, one from which North Carolinians should draw pride. Now an enthralling photodocumentary project, Esse Quam Videri: Muslim Self Portraits has taken on the motto and its connotations to present the personal and varied stories of those who practice Islam in North Carolina.

The photographs are accompanied by a statement from the participants and sometimes an additional audio recording of why the participants posed as they did to present their "Muslimness" and how it has, in part, defined their identities. I've included a few of the photographs below.

Ansar, High Point, North Carolina, 2009

Tamir, Statesville, North Carolina, 2008

Cyclones, Charlotte, NC, 2008

All images are reproduced from the Esse Quam Videri: Muslim Self Portraits website.

Making Sense Out of Garbage: Artist Sayaka Ganz

Every so often, green design blog Inhabitat features incredible examples of environmental art that I immediately can't help but repost here on the Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Art's own blog. Visit Inhabitat for a short profile of artist Sayaka Ganz, who travels the world, absorbing different cultures and making art out of trash.

From Ganz's website:

Stream

Sparkle

Flare

Convergence I

Artist Jefferson Pinder Addresses Race in Video, Installations, and Objects

Click image for link to Jefferson Pinder's video work titled "Juke."

Getting Neighborhoods Talking

Here is a wonderful example of involving a neighborhood in the process of activating the spaces where we interact through art.

Learn more about the installation by Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert at the Detroit Institute for the Arts.

The One-Eyed Monkey

Powerful video by storyteller Mallika Sarabhai who believes the best way to effect change of many kinds is through art (thanks to Doug Borwick for the link to the video!)

Mark Your Calendars!

For those interested in creating community arts projects, mark your calendars for the first ever Amnesty International Human Rights Arts Festival! Scheduled for April 23-25 in Silver Spring, Maryland (right outside D.C.), this is a rare opportunity to view work by over 90 artists and 50 arts organizations in theater, film, dance, visual arts, and music who all are presenting work related to human rights.

You really must check out the list of participants, as many of the organizations and artists are well known for their socially-minded art. Who is up for caravaning to D.C. for the event?

New Year's Resolution: Utilize the Art Roads and Farm Trails of NC

Having stumbled upon a motivating website today called Homegrown Handmade, I decided to make a New Year's resolution to better support and understand North Carolina culture. Homegrown Handmade is a collaboration of artists, farmers, and rural creative entrepreneurs. It promotes sustainable tourism in rural areas of North Carolina through self-guided driving tours. It's an economic and tourism development project, but it also helps us understand how agriculture, rural living, and art have all come together to form specific and different pockets of North Carolina culture.

When one visits Homegrown Handmade's website, you are given the option of exploring one of three trails: Foothills, Piedmont, or Coast. Each "trail" is really a wealth of information on festivals, art studios, wineries, and farms to help a potential tourist to plan a trip.

Here is a long weekend trip I've already planned from the Foothills Trail for June:

Starting out Friday, leisurely drive to the Mount Airy Fiddlers' Convention. This weeklong festival is filled with old-time music performances and free demonstrations by skilled musicians. Spend the day listening, dancing, and visiting. Saturday morning, visit the Downtown Cinema Theatre for the a.m. taping of the longest-running bluegrass radio program in the United States, "Saturday Merry-Go-Round." Saturday afternoon, take a short drive to Westfield to kayak at the Hanging Rock Outdoor Recreation Center. That evening, enjoy the sunset view and listen to MORE bluegrass and folk music at Round Peak Vineyards. End the trip with a scenic drive back down 89.

That's just one trip of so many across the state. If you're interested in planning a trip, Homegrown Handmade has a great guidebook available here.

Music Kitchen: Musicians and Homeless Men Exchange Thoughts on Classical Music

Journalist Daniel J. Wakin recently reported in the New York Times on a violinist named Kelly Hall-Tompkins who, along with other well-accomplished musicians, offers performances to homeless men through a program she started called Music Kitchen.

Read the article here.

Violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins