Arts and Community Development

In a corner of the reading room in a public library near downtown Brooklyn, an artist/educator guides a group of children through the process of grinding up insects with a mortar and pestle and then using a muller to mix the resulting red powder with water. “By crushing the cochineal beetle,” she says, which lives on cacti in arid regions of Mexico and is still used as a natural food coloring for ketchup and many other processed foods, “medieval and early modern artists could produce this wonderful red color for their paintings.”

Main streets in rural Colorado are getting a jolt of creativity and economic vitality thanks to an innovative partnership between the State of Colorado, philanthropic funders, local leaders, and a nonprofit housing developer. The Space to Create Colorado initiative, launched in July 2015, is transforming rural communities throughout the state by providing affordable housing/workspace as well as community spaces for creatives.

In 2001, activist Sadie Roberts-Joseph founded the Baton Rouge African American Museum "after Baton Rouge refused to make black history a mandatory part of schools' curriculum," as CNN reported. Last month, Roberts-Joseph was killed, and in August, a month following her tragic murder, the museum has been vandalized, part of larger anti-justice movements in a polarized country.

Colorado Media Project (CMP) seeks to meet the information needs of Coloradans by working to strengthen Colorado’s diverse local news ecosystem, as the project's website explains. CMP is a grant-funded organization orchestrated by the University of Denver and the Gates Family Foundation, a local Colorado foundation, among others, including Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, as Nieman Lab reports.

“Art in the public realm activates public space for its intended democratic purpose,” noted Anne Pasternak, former director at Creative Time and currently director at the Brooklyn Museum in an NEA interview.

Thousands participate each year in Minneapolis' Art-a-Whirl, the largest artist open studio tour in the country, according to a recent article in Next City. But a recent survey-based study on the gentrification of Northeast Minneapolis found, among other things, that “the act of creative placemaking has driven Northeast Minneapolis’ unique form of gentrification in the Twin Cities,” with Art-a-Whirl as the sign of that change, as Next City reported.

Seven leaders from across the United States were recently named Knight Public Spaces Fellows, an initiative of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to advance the creation of public spaces that strengthen community engagement and connection, according to the press release.

Adults age sixty-five and above are currently the fastest-growing segment of the US population. In 2016, there were 47.8 million individuals age sixty-five and over in the United States (US Census Bureau 2017), and this number is expected to more than double by 2060. By 2040, nearly half of older adults are expected to come from diverse racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds (Vincent and Velkoff 2010; Johnson, Rodriquez-Salazar, et al. 2018). San Francisco’s population of older adults is higher than the national norm.

A "free people's university," the University of Orange in New Jersey, emphasizes civic participation and its free courses range from music theory to urban planning to empower the residents of the city of Orange, as Next City reports.

In Building Stronger Communities Through Media: Innovations in local journalism, public media, and storytelling, Wyncote Foundation's new report, innovative local and regional media projects are highlighted for making a difference in local communities with local support, as one of the report's authors, Sarah Lutman, writes in Medium.