Art as Activism: Displacement Prevention in the Twin Cities A PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Stephanie A. O’Donnell IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF LIBERAL STUDIES December 2016 © 2016 Stephanie A. O’Donnell To my mom, who instilled in me a hunger for knowledge and a passion for justice. i “The imagining of a city is one of the most powerful and important opportunities for citizens to experience and express their collective potential. And yet the design is often generated away from any public engagement. When I have been involved in change projects, I have seen what can happen when people discover the power they have to make their world. They move from consumer to producer, shifting from passive to active. They become designers, capable of engaging the world, questioning and challenging, and imagining possibilities.” --Bruce Mau ii CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ......................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................v GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................................. vi CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................1 METHODOLOGY AND SIGNIFICANCE ........................................................................5 CHAPTER TWO: PLACE-BASED ART AS STORYTELLING ..................................................8 CREATIVE PLACEMAKING AND NEIGHBORHOOD AESTHETICS ........................8 PUBLIC ART AND NEIGHBORHOOD NARRATIVE .................................................10 THEATER ARTS AND NEIGHBORHOOD NARRATIVE ...........................................18 FUTURE NARRATIVES: ART AND THE CREATIVE SECTOR ................................21 CHAPTER THREE: COMMUNITY-CENTERED REVITALIZATION ....................................26 ACCESS AND INCLUSIVITY ........................................................................................27 RADICAL OCCUPATION ...............................................................................................31 DIALOGUE AS CHANGEMAKING DISCOURSE .......................................................35 CHAPTER FOUR: EMBRACING COMMUNITY CAPACITY ................................................38 ENGINEERED POWER AND OPPORTUNITY .............................................................39 COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS ....................................................................................44 COMMUNITY-OWNED ..................................................................................................47 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................53 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................58 iii ILLUSTRATIONS PHOTOGRAPHS Figure 1 – From Wing Young Huie’s Lake Street USA .................................................................12 Figure 2 – From Wing Young Huie’s University Avenue Project (Volume II) .............................16 Figure 3 – From Wing Young Huie’s University Avenue Project (Volume II) .............................17 Figure 4 – Juxtaposition Arts’ mural, “Who We Are” ..................................................................24 Figure 5 – Community members in front of “Who We Are” mural ..............................................25 Figure 6 – Lake Street USA bus shelter installation .......................................................................32 Figure 7 – Man observing installations on Chicago Avenue .........................................................33 MAP Figure 8 – 1935 planning map of Minneapolis, updated in 2014 ..................................................42 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My sincerest gratitude goes out to my advisor, Anita Gonzalez, PhD, whose patience and tact helped me persevere; to Neeraj Mehta whose class and general guidance provided me with a wealth of materials and inspiration; to my instructor, Jack Johnson, my reading partner, Amy Lembcke, and my dear friend, Laura Nelson, all of whom gave thoughtful feedback throughout the writing process; to Wing Young Huie, Mixed Blood Theatre, Juxtaposition Arts, and the other wonderful artists and community organizations in the Twin Cities without whom this research would not exist; and a special thanks to my husband, Justin Fischler, for supporting me along the way. v ABBREVIATIONS CANDO – Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization CBA – Community Benefits Agreement CNO – Corcoran Neighborhood Organization CURA – Center for Urban and Regional Affairs FNA – Frogtown Neighborhood Association JXTA – Juxtaposition Arts LGBTQ – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer PaCC – Pathways to College and Careers POC – People of color PPNA – Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association VALT – Visual Art Literacy Training WBC – West Broadway Business and Area Coalition WBCC – West Bank Community Coalition vi GLOSSARY Changemaking is the straightforward idea of acting to make a difference, typically with the goal of improving social justice. Community capacity is the recognition of a community’s potential while acknowledging existing barriers and challenges. Creative placemaking is the act of allowing local artists to both shape and represent neighborhood identities. Cultural displacement occurs when residents are excluded from the benefits of neighborhood change. This can be due to economics, discrimination, or merely a lack of inclusionary practices on behalf of the new residents, businesses, and services. Displacement is the broad concept of being forced out of one’s place. This can be a physical act, when residents are priced out of their homes and neighborhoods, or it can be cultural in nature. Disinvestment is the act of reducing or halting financial resources. Equity occurs when measures have been taken to insure that individuals and communities have what they need to be successful. It is different from ‘equality’ because it recognizes that different individuals and communities do not necessarily start on the same playing field with the same access to opportunity. Gentrification originally meant the replacement of working class residents with middle- and upper-class residents. In this research, it is defined specifically as a process of targeted new investment and development in urban neighborhoods. Latinx is a gender-inclusive term that replaces the traditional “Latino” or “Latina” descriptions of people of Latin American descent. Narrative is, at its core, a story or account of an experience that can be embedded with rhetoric depending on who controls its telling. Revitalization is a way of introducing new investment, development, and general attention to a given area. vii CHAPTER ONE: AN INTRODUCTION Lillian: “A performance space?!” [kicks over sign] Kimmy: “Cool kick, Lillian!” Lillian: “This neighborhood is changing and none of us are gonna be able to live here...and they painted over the neighborhood mural of Biggie! Now how are we supposed to remember he’s dead?” Titus: “Why would anyone paint over a mural in this neighborhood? It’s just gonna get tagged.” Lillian: “But it hasn’t. Yesterday this happened. 24 hours and not one graffito. What a disgrace.” In season two, episode 3 of Netflix series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2016), character Lillian Kaushtupper becomes determined to stop the threat of gentrification she sees encroaching on the New York neighborhood she calls home. Specifically, she notices arts spaces and artisanal-obsessed, millennial hipsters moving in and is suspicious when she observes that no gang tags or other graffiti have appeared on a newly-painted wall. While in the past, developers have been depicted as money-grabbing villains in media, more recently the script has flipped. Gentrification has increasingly become the butt of jokes wherein development is seen as somewhat positive, or at least largely innocuous. Meanwhile, the individuals concerned about neighborhood change come off as paranoid or naive. In Lillian’s case, she is even determined to keep violence and crime an active part of the neighborhood, seemingly more concerned with maintaining the status quo than potentially improving quality of life. 1