Paolo Friere, We Make the Road by Walking (P11)

Julia Di Bussolo

Making the Road

“I think that one of the best ways for us to work as human beings is not only to know that we are uncompleted beings but to assume the uncompleteness.”

Paolo Friere, We Make the Road by Walking (p11)

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the growing chorus of young community artists entering the field and to provide my perspective on the simultaneous growth of organizations and the people within. With the growing number of educational institutions offering degrees in community art and cultural work it is important to maintain a critical eye on the link between theory and practice, especially upon first entering the field of community arts. I found my greatest struggle in remembering that the process is how you connect your practice to theory. So eager was I to put the well intentioned theories I had learned in school to work, that I often forgot that there would be no ‘finished product’ but an ongoing and ever-changing journey.

The Glass Ship on the Hill

The campus of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) protrudes out of the small historic neighborhood of Bolton Hill. Boasting such feats of modern architecture as the glass-clad Brown Center, the building overlooks the boundaries of class and race both visible and invisible. MICA and the Bolton Hill Neighborhood are surrounded on 3 sides by low income and impoverished neighborhoods that sprawl North, East, and West. It is within this dichotomy of the have and have nots, that I spent four years of undergraduate and one and a half years of graduate study. As an undergraduate student I felt isolated in what students affectionately call the ‘MICA bubble’. Students did not leave their area of comfort and residents from the surrounding neighborhoods rarely crossed over the highways and throughways onto campus. It was through the undergraduate Community Arts Partnerships program that I became familiar with the field of community arts and began to gather four years worth of experience working in after school programs all over the city. Originally enrolled in the Master’s of Teaching Program, I soon became disenchanted with the confines of the school system and more interested in the teaching methodologies of community arts. Community Arts allowed me to see the world differently and begin pushing boundaries.

Attracted by the program model of gaining experience and learning theory simultaneously, I decided to continue in the field of community arts through the Master’s of Arts in Community Arts Program. I found the program to be challenging, informative, and vigorous. It was, however, very short and before I knew it, I was graduating. The program had prepared me to work within organizations, teach art in an experiential way, write grants, and see myself as an agent of change. Learning how to trust my intuition as a leader and professional were lessons that came slowly as I struggled to shed the mindset of a student.

On the Road

Stepping carefully over the enormous trash pile littered with glass and tired looking cats I picked my way to the front door of The Club. Aside from the vacant row home adorned in faded, once colorful paint, there was an overwhelming feeling of gray to the bleak landscape. The Club at Collington Square had opened in 2001 as an after school program in the East Baltimore neighborhood of Collington Square by parent organization Episcopal Community Services of Maryland (ECSM).

Originally, The Club worked with the mission of providing middle school students a safe place to go after school. Noticing a growing need for academic and homework help, The Club developed a strong focus on tutoring and academics. In 2006, the ECSM board and Executive Director saw that The Club needed a fresh approach to how they served the youth. Attendance fluctuated and it was hard to develop a rapport with students that came and went as they wished. Students often brought with them the anger and frustration that they encountered at school, at home, and on the street. Yes, The Club offered a safe space to play basketball and get homework help, but many youth needed more.

Executive Director, Jean Cushman and Director of Development, Nancy Fenton began to research best practices visiting a myriad of sites offering creative approaches to after school programming. In their search, they came across MICA’s Master’s of Arts in Community Arts Program (MACA). Learning through meetings with MACA Director, Ken Krafchek that Community Arts takes an asset-based approach to working with people and communities of all ages, they began to envision a new future for The Club. In a neighborhood lying in the shadow of John’s Hopkins University offering a multitude of services to address the deficits of the neighborhood there was very little celebrating the vibrant life that existed within the Collington Square park and its residents. The decision to transform The Club from a recreation program to a Community Arts program came from the top down, with very little consultation with the present staff at The Club creating tension within. At the time I was hired I was unaware of the lack of process that had brought me to the program and was therefore presented with the challenge of creating a process that would address the frustration of staff who had been with the organization for years.

On the day I turned in my thesis to complete my Masters of Arts in Community Arts degree, I attended a presentation by ECSM speaking on their hope to transform the Club from a recreation and academic program to a community arts program. After graduating from the MACA program in 2007 I got the job as Co-Director of The Club and enthusiastically accepted the challenge of putting my theories to practice in real space and time. It was not until my first day that I realized just how daunting a task I had taken on.

In the distance I heard the school bell ring from across the street. Although The Club was only a few hundred yards away from Collington Square Elementary and Middle School, there was very little dialog between the two. I attempted to introduce myself to the aging principal who was close to retirement in hopes of forging a partnership but was ignored. It was not until the following year when a young energetic principal became the replacement that The Club was able to begin working collaboratively with the school.

It was the first day of Club and my first day on the job. Located in the deep basement of Trinity A.M.E. Church, a yellow beam of sunlight filtered through the barred windows of the large cavernous room. A basketball court dominated most of the space with 4 long tables situated opposite the net. Within a few minutes the room was filled with 10 young people talking, shedding their backpacks and stiff school shirts as they walked in. Already the sound began echoing with the voluminous voices of only 10 people. I had a well-intentioned plan for the day to make self-portraits addressing the issue of identity, but soon realized that the basketball court was far more enticing.

Tensions within the staff at The Club ebbed and flowed as I struggled within my position as a leader with a young face and little experience managing staff. My relationship with my Co-Director was continually strained because I was a full time staff person and he came to The Club after teaching a full day at school. As my Co-Director became harder to reach I grew closer the supporting staff of youth mentors Miss Tee and Miss Henrietta, 2 unbelievably strong older women who had been living and working within East Baltimore for their entire lives. Having worked at The Club since it opened in 2001 they shared stories of the many young people they had seen come and go over the years. Some stories had heartbreaking endings, while other stories stood as a testament of the resilience and hope of the young people. Although Ms. Tee and Ms. Henrietta were wary of me at first, we worked together to develop ‘Club Time’ where Club youth would choose an activity led by a staff member. Ms. Tee, the on-staff grandmother taught cooking and singing while Ms. Henrietta would work with a wily group of boys in writing and performing hip-hop. By working to bring the strengths and creativity of the staff to the forefront, I gradually began to win the trust of these very talented women.

Over the coming months with the help and patience of AmeriCorps Artist in Residence, Emily Vaughn, we were able to dedicate two days per week to art. The first major project we were able to do was the Race for Mayor of Collington Square, a project based on the local mayoral election challenging The Club youth to think of what they would do as Mayor of Collington Square. The project culminated with a dinner and Election Night Event where the teams of youth made speeches as candidates for Mayor. With over 60 people in attendance, the event should have felt successful. However, the space was difficult to control and there was chaos at the end resulting in the broken headlight of a co-worker’s car. The Club continued through the winter with a project on Japan and a Kimono Fashion Show.

With moments of success few and far between, I felt I was working very hard to keep my head above water and lacked the time and energy to develop a long-term view of where the Club could go programmatically. Personally I felt that I had lost sight of what community arts was all about. Having come from the supportive and stimulating environment of the MICA graduate program, I often felt isolated from the broader conversation of community arts. The Club needed so much work structurally that I felt I had to set aside my desire for empowering experiential education for the sake of maintaining a sense of discipline and order. Due to the limitations of having one huge space with no divisions, programming was typically limited to one project or activity at a time limiting the options for the youth. I found it very hard to find a practical application of theories of consensus building, experiential learning and inclusive dialog when it was a struggle to get through a day without spending the majority of my energy and time addressing major behavior problems.

In March, a glimmer of hope came in the prospect of a new location in a brand new apartment building, Collington Commons, located only a few blocks away. Our location in The Club basement was tucked away in a back alley with no signage or hint of our program’s existence. Collington Commons had been designed and built with community in mind offering 3 rooms for community use. In the same month I was able to move my office from the remote location across town to the Collington Square Neighborhood and I became the full Director of The Club. I had been commuting to The Club each afternoon from my remote office location across, but now would be working within the community on a daily basis allowing me to meet new residents and build more personal relationships. As a result, I began to develop a more personal and active stake in the community by being there day in and day out. When I attended Community Association Meetings as a representative of The Club, other residents seemed to see the program for the first time and were excited about the prospect of youth becoming more involved with Community Association functions. Club youth began participating in neighborhood clean-ups and became positive force in the neighborhood. Finally, I saw the disconnect between the program, myself, and the community begin to shrink.

At the end of March 2008 we moved The Club from the dark Church basement to occupy 3 community rooms in the Collington Commons. Immediately we were able to restructure our programming to allow multiple projects and activities to happen simultaneously. Overnight, possibilities seemed to multiply exponentially. The Club was finally in a position to create the journey rather than working within the barriers of a difficult physical space. Today, The Club is open to youth ages 5-14 and is home to more than 30 students Monday through Friday from 3-6. We extended our age range to welcome the many young children living in the apartment building. We make art, do homework, study, and share meals in our beautiful space.

Introducing an afterschool program to an existing community of residents brought the unique challenge of not becoming an imposition upon the people who lived in the building. For the young families who enrolled their children in the program The Club was an asset, for many elderly residents the program risked being seen as a nuisance. The Club faced a true test as a young community arts program of becoming a creative catalyst for communication and unity. Offering art workshops for all ages and asking residents how they wanted to see The Club evolve, the Collington Community Art Group was formed by a group of mostly elderly women. Once again, I relearned the importance of process. Meeting on a weekly basis attendance went through highs and lows while I tried to encourage residents to become the driving force in organizing and project planning. In November 2008 AmeriCorps volunteer Emily Vaughn helped organize a community art show of prints made by the residents, but the residents were still reluctant to take a leadership role.

As overall funding for The Club began to tighten, I began pushing the Collington Community Art Group to begin making and selling work in order to buy materials for projects that the group decided on collectively. The women began making pillows, table clothes, and napkins becoming a united force around the selling of their goods to support their group. Since their first sale, leaders have emerged and begun to empower one another in becoming more active within the group. Most recently, the Collington Community Art Group has appointed leadership offices to members giving each member a very important stake in the group as a community.