The Arts are Not Far from the Systems that Impact Community Development
Part of the 2024 GIA Conference Blog
Rachel Dukes
When our group arrived at the National Public Housing Museum, in the midst of the sandy construction site was the colorful HOOPcycle, a mobile basketball court that merges a tricycle with contemporary basketball and Meso-American style hoops. Designed by artist Marisa Morán Jahn and architect Rafi Segal, the mobile basketball court encourages what they referred to as recreational equity, stressing the importance of play for folks of all ages and abilities. Still excited by the innovative game, we walked into the museum where we had an opportunity to explore the space that was already filled with art installations that were created to engage visitors through the sensation of home while also detailing the history of public housing in Chicago. We were all greeted by the museum staff who walked us through the museum and talked us through how each room would be used after the official opening of the space.
The National Public Housing Museum’s Associate Director, Tiff Beatty, welcomed conference attendees into the fishbowl-style setting for our conversation that morning. She recited a beautiful poem that sketched a picture of what public housing means to the people who have lived in them. She ended with the powerful question “Hey, love. Do you know what's happening to the land?” From here, NPHM Executive Director Dr. Lisa Yun Lee segued into the land acknowledgment that was tailored to the space and acknowledged the museum’s existence on Native land and the history of displacement of primarily Black people from the site of the museum. Her land acknowledgment also weaved in the history of Chicago’s founding by Jean Baptise DuSable, a Black man, and his wife, a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa, to further solidify their vested interest in understanding the history of the land where the museum now stands. The introductions were essential in understanding public housing as a major facet of the cultural makeup of the city, as well as the NPHMs commitment to changing the narrative about public housing with it being so deeply tied to racialized stereotypes.
The introductions and overview of the NPHM prompted three major questions for grantmakers:
What major narratives need to change in the work that you’re doing?
What does it mean to be an American and why does the nation state matter to a foundation?
What does solidarity look like, and how can civic institutions be those spaces to build some sort of cross all divides, political class, race, gender?
Using the NPHM as a model, Mia Khimm from the Joyce Foundation offered the following: “This work is so powerful because we're not solely focused on housing. We are working with public housing residents to share their own stories, working with scholars and policymakers, and bringing everyone together around this issue of public housing and housing more generally. But we can't look at housing alone, because that's just not how we live as people, right? When we choose where we're going to live, if we can choose, we're thinking about schools, we're thinking about access to transportation, we're thinking about the health and environmental issues where we're living.”
This discussion ultimately highlighted the fact that the arts are not far from these very urgent and real-life issues that people face daily, and funders should be actively interrogating these systems to continue the development of our communities.
ABOUT THE SESSION
Arts at the Intersection of Housing Justice at the National Public Housing Museum
Tiff Beatty, Mia Khimm, Lisa Yun Lee, and Jenny Siegenthaler
Join National Public Housing Museum Executive Director, Lisa Yun Lee, for a dazzling tour and fishbowl conversation at the recently opened Museum that is connecting the arts and culture with public policy. The offsite event includes a tour of public art by Amanda Williams, Olalekan Jeyifous, an ephemeral Monument by Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), a tribute quilt by Mama Dorothy Burge, an animated history of segregation by Manual Cinema, Joyce Award winner Marisa Moran Jahn’s installation participatory artwork, a WPA sculpture garden by Edgar Miller, poster exhibit with a new poster by arts educator, William Estrada, and the innovative Museum store, funded by Good Chaos, which is a cooperative owned space with public housing residents contributing to the solidarity economy. Following the tour with coffee and cookies from a legendary Italian bakery, Lisa will lead a fishbowl conversation with program officers from the Joyce and Terra Foundation, funders of the museum's programs, and public housing residents (a part of the Museum’s cultural workforce program) and museum staff, for an honest storytelling session about both the limits and the radical possibilities of art and artists fighting for housing as a human right.
