BRATTLEBORO — With all due respect to the author, I feel compelled to respond directly to the numerous claims, assumptions and accusations put forth by Byron Stookey [“Should the arts really shape place?,” Viewpoint, Oct. 23].
As someone who grew up with extremely humble circumstances in Springfield, Mass., during decades of disinvestment in our inner-city neighborhoods and once-glorious downtown; who witnessed firsthand the downward economic spiral of our nation's working class; and who personally employed the arts to forge his way out of the cycles of poverty, violence, despair, and illness that surrounded me as a child, I have earned permission to tackle the strong-minded opinions put forth.
Let me first address the issues raised about the Vermont Downtown Action Team (VDAT) and CoreArts process of seeking public input and involvement.
Considering that the VDAT team was here to discuss post-Tropical Storm Irene recovery efforts, and the CoreArts team is charged with identifying prospects for broad-based creative place-making, both held in multiple public forms, the opportunity for all of our citizenry to engage in candid dialogue about enhancing the quality of community life should be a concern for everyone.
This includes those of us that are feeling hard-pressed to get a leg up - a demographic that surely includes a good number of working artists, artisans, and crafters, as well as the many other “underprivileged” people the author is speaking for.
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What's great is that socially, ethnically, and economically places like Brattleboro are more likely to house culturally active neighborhoods and are thus more likely to maintain demographic diversity over time.
Philadelphia, for example, has documented clear links between cultural engagement, social diversity, and community capacity-building. Residents who actively participate in civic discourse, regardless of social status, also tend to engage in other types of cultural activities. These activities stimulate community connections and promote a form of cross-participation that helps to enhance their quality of life.
Tagging these forums as “elitist” is wrong-headed.
As for whether, or not, the less-well-off among us should consider cultural programming and creative place-making to be of “interest,” allow me to make a few points.
To begin, it is well-documented in nationally-recorded child-welfare studies that low-income neighborhoods with high cultural-participation rates are more than twice as likely to have low truancy and delinquency, compared to those in low-participation neighborhoods.
And even though poor children who are subjected to years of “doing without” are half as likely to be taken to museums, theaters, or to the library and are less likely to go on cultural outings, it has been proven time and again that the use of music, drama, and art helps to create a balance between students from poverty and children from higher-income families. This form of expression comes from within and requires creativity, reflection, and intelligence, thus rendering more superficial differences, like wealth, obsolete.
What's more, students who experiment with art will begin to practice their craft because it's fun and exciting. This practice and determination will eventually lead to a more-focused student who then offers attention to other intellectual tasks.
Young people who are turned on to the arts, therefore, will cross their interests into other academic subjects and produce outstanding results for even the most challenged of students - like I was.
Additionally, studies show that theater, drama, and other performance-arts activities have demonstrated improved emotional intelligence, timing, reflection, memorization, and processing skills, while building social status, respect for diversity, and helping students make friends. The arts even improves SAT scores!
To put it bluntly, arts build young people's operating system just as well as anything else we have in our school system. So, if improving your child's opportunity for success in school, and in life, aren't good enough reasons to take an interest in improving access to the arts in our community, I don't know what is.
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Stookey asserts that economic development focused on arts and cultural activity will inevitably lead to a sole focus on upscale, wealthy, boutique-focused businesses.
Let's first remember that the horrific economic inequality that has exploded in the United States over the past 30 years should be attributed to massive structural changes - including globalization, the decline in unions, and de-industrialization - and not the rise of bustling Main Streets, a renewed focus on edible urban landscapes, or a gross over-expenditure in resources for the arts in our communities.
So let's pick the right fight. I'd rather ask: Can cultural investments help ameliorate poverty?
Yes, more and more hard-working Americans are being denied involvement in local financial systems, social institutions, and broader civil society while struggling through the transition from an industrial to an information-based economy.
Thankfully, a ton of recent research has reframed our understanding of the role that the arts play in our communities. To begin, we now understand that the “culture” sector includes nonprofit, public, academic, and commercial organizations as well as independent artists. In addition, we've learned how the “informal arts” play a critical role in building social networks and connections across racial, political, and socioeconomic divisions.
What does this mean for more inclusive economic development strategies?
First and foremost, unlike many other hierarchical systems, the cultural industries rely heavily on a community-based ecosystem that includes many people who operate both within the locality and beyond. This “flattened” ecosystem views the connections and flows between collaborative agents and resources as more important than individual entities.
An effective revitalization strategy for Brattleboro that employs a large dose of local cultural investments, therefore, should be place-based and people-based; that is, it should be grounded here but have active connections with other economies throughout region.
Thus, this interconnected approach to developing the “creative economy” is a way to integrate our residents with the regional economy and civil society, not push them out.
Unlike other processing, manufacturing, high-tech, or other “blue collar” jobs that place its labor-force in stale factory silos, the craft, design, fashion, music, theater, and cultural-products industries often feature a web of small-scale, labor-intensive shops and firms that cluster in dense arts-industrial districts that churn “agglomeration economies” or “networked enterprises” that generate synergies and an environment of innovation.
Yes, other cultural providers, individual artists, and knowledge-industry investors tend to locate in these types of communities rich in cultural resources. But unlike most other economic-development activities, culture-based enterprise bridges the divides of geography, ethnicity, and social class.
This modern focus gives us an amazing opportunity not only to stem an outflow of residents to “more affordable” communities once things improve, but to proactively build strong social networks within and between our neighborhoods. Practical cultural engagement and workforce development will foster our collective capacity, especially within Brattleboro's low-wealth demographics.
If the creative sector's success is based on the social organization of many people with different skills and aptitudes, the creative economy might indeed provide the foundation for a variety of new jobs not covered by current definitions of creative workers (i.e. boutique shops and art galleries).
The mental and manual work that is required for production provides a fertile ground for examining opportunities for an urban workforce. But to do so, we have to identify the range of skills that, while not creative in the conventional sense, are critical to successful operations.
Someone has to lay the fiber for the web designer; someone has to sew the costumes for the dancers. Someone has to build new art studios, weld the bike racks, print the magazines. Someone has to landscape the river walk, deliver the architects' drawings, pour the concrete for the new amphitheater.
We're not only talking about a transfer of knowledge and skills into a nebulous “information age.” We're also talking real labor.
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Finally, to address the fear of Brattleboro turning into some sort of yuppie-ville, it's worth noting that the social benefits of the arts are not only persuasive but also relatively well-documented. Social-impact studies across the country find a consistent set of positive effects associated with community arts and culture.
Robust arts towns bridge barriers of class and ethnicity as well as differences in age and gender. They foster social and institutional connections both within and between neighborhoods. They animate their public spaces by creating value in the form of attractive physical amenities.
Many towns have the potential to become “cultural hubs” that can benefit all who live there. But to truly pay dividends for the entire populace, nothing will succeed without coordinated action that engages both artists and citizens in planning and design, action that welcomes flexible, open-minded approaches; innovation; critical thinking; and people-centered solutions.
Thus, through open participation, our unique lifestyles converge by blending our culture and the expression of individual identity.
Ultimately, to succeed on all grounds of sustainability and social justice, Brattleboro must integrate economic opportunity and cooperative inclusion. And for our burgeoning creative economy to evolve into a healthy society, we need to see one another as more than cogs in the machine.
We need to acknowledge ourselves as neighbors working to develop a brighter future for all.
And that, my friend, means showing up and participating.