My year listening and serving socially engaged art
When I was a little girl I asked my mother to take me to the theater. I wanted to see the actors on the stage. She wouldn’t take me because she didn’t like the theater, she told me that the opera was much better, “like theater but sung,” she would say.
Art has always been present in my upbringing and in my professional endeavors as a force of fascination and solace. In adolescence, I used to escape from the world, submerging myself in a book, sitting by a tree.
Artists of all types are brave people who dare to inspire and to change the world by portraying things as they are, without embarrassment.
In January 2017 I started my MA in Social Journalism in one of the best schools of journalism in the world, the public CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. The program and the year have gone too fast; as rapid as the changes our trade is immersed in.
Social journalism is the solution my masters colleagues and I have been employing to try to address the journalism crisis: The loss of trust, the loss of readers, and the loss of news outlets.
In practicing social journalism, you have to identify a community and its informational needs, professors Carrie Brown and Jeff Jarvis told us from the beginning. The words we’ve heard and used the most during the year have been: Listen, community, and engage.
I knew my community was going to be related to art. I was thinking about art therapy when Simon Dove (curator and artistic director of the nonprofit Dancing in the Streets, in The Bronx) told me about artist Tania Bruguera, the Artist-In-Residence program (PAIR) at the Department of Cultural Affairs of NYC, and social practice art (also known as socially engaged art and participatory art, among others). It was the first time I heard about it: Artists co-creating with a community, artists cooperating with public institutions to address social issues. It sounded great.
I started listening to the community or, as LA Times journalist Carolina A. Miranda puts it, to these “individual artists who are doing projects for a variety of personal and political reasons.”
I listened not only to the artists but to all the stakeholders. Journalists like Miranda, funders of socially engaged art like Elizabeth Grady from the organization A Blade of Grass, people who put together art shows like Nato Thompson, socially engaged art gallery owners like Monika Wuhrer, socially engaged art documentary makers like Ava Wiland and Rafa Salazar, scholars like Greg Sholette and Jan Cohen-Cruz, and public officials like Diya Vij. I also attended events, more often than not, just to observe and listen.
Everybody talked about socially engaged art and the projects they were developing with a lot of passion, but there needed to be more recognition of the practice outside their bubble. Throughout the year I found myself repeatedly having to explain what socially engaged art and social journalism are.
Both disciplines share the same principles. The artist or the journalist are no longer the gatekeepers of information or of creation. In socially engaged art and in social journalism, the members of a given community (physical or not) collaborate in the process of reporting or art making. They share their skills and talents to inform. In both disciplines, the process is as important as the result.
One of the ways I could serve a socially engaged artist was to document and root for their work. I did it with Ronny Quevedo and with Renee Sills, two artists I followed closely throughout the year.
I also did a Facebook Live with Laura Raicovich, the president and director of the Queens Museum, one of the institutions that is spearheading the change of what a public museum should be.
and published a couple of traditional journalism pieces at the respected arts and culture blog Hyperallergic. One on Catalan arts institutions and another one on Maria de los Ángeles, an artist and DACA recipient.
A social journalist and a community member
During the three last months of the program I engaged in a listening effort in my physical community, Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The Trinity Grace Church from Crown Heights is renting a storefront space that is used by its members and by a neighborhood organization. Their aim is to engage with the broader community.
I helped to discover whether the community would be interested in having a space and what would be its use.
They had the right approach. Before deciding any programming or seeking funding, listening to the community gave the church data and ideas to pursue.
I helped Levi Johnsen, a church member and director of networks and campaigns of the nonprofit Many Hopes, tailor a survey based on the positive attributes of the community. What they could offer, what they dream of, and how these assets could benefit their neighbors.
Though I am not a member of the church, I led the survey effort. I did as a social journalist, as a community member, and as a socially engaged arts advocate.
"What do you think is the best way to use a small store-front community center on Kingston Avenue?," was one of the questions that 106 people answered.
The three main uses for the neighbors would be:
- After school programs
- Arts & culture activities
- Community building
“I think it should be a place everyone feels comfortable being or coming for advice or someone to talk to.” Vanaysia, 16 years old.
“Art exhibit of a community project. Community organizing. Poetry night.” Sarah, an anthropologist who is been living in Crown Heights for 3 years.
“Open it up to all ethnic groups, take into account the diversity of residents living there.” Carl, 71 years old.
The information we gathered will be shared with neighborhood organizations, including the Brooklyn Museum, and we are also planning a vision event in which we’ll invite everybody surveyed in order to showcase the results and to continue brainstorming about the future use of the space.
Lessons learned
I’m very proud of the Cultivate Brooklyn effort. In the span of a month and a half, I managed to speak with 80 residents of my neighborhood. With the help of the other three volunteers, Saskia Batteau, Amory Parks, and Jerome Michaux, we reached 108 residents.
Listening to their needs, their dreams, their skills. Looking at their eyes, their expressions, their demeanors, how their faces light up sometimes with certain questions, enjoying their laughs. Isn’t this the essence of journalism? Listening, observing, and reporting. Knowing that all of this knowledge can be used to better the life of the neighborhood gave it all the more meaning.
A socially engaged artist or a critic of this type of art would go on and tell you that just engaging in the conversations, just sharing a moment of inspiration and knowledge, already constitutes a work of art. As Elizabeth Grady (Programs Director at A Blade of Grass) told me “the artwork is not in an object that can be viewed; it is an experience that evolves.”
If I had to start all over again, I would have looked for an organization or artist to work/collaborate with earlier on. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with stakeholders and attending events, I spent much of the year in the listening process and acquiring knowledge, when I could potentially have had more impact in the community if I had started cooperating with a project earlier on. Cultivate Brooklyn has the potential to be a terrific socially engaged (art) project, it just needs time and resources.
Having engaged with an arts organization earlier on would have amplified the impact of my work, reaching the target audience by being published, shared, or hosted by them and their social media presences.
Tips for Covering Socially Engaged Art as a social journalist
- Start and end by observing and listening.
- Identify all the community stakeholders and talk with at least one from each category. Develop a relationship, send emails with information that might be helpful to the stakeholder.
- Develop a project with a socially engaged artist who is starting out and who will benefit more from your skills than an established one.
- Read lots of books and articles on social practice art.
- Develop a strong skill such as video production/photography/social media; this comes in very handy for this community, which has a strong need for project documentation.
- Develop a taste for writing. Documentation in this community is also commonly found in a narrative format.
- Be careful! Some artists are mesmerizing and enchanting. Learn how to distill facts, real impact, from fiction, philosophizing. Like in traditional journalism, verificate the information.
- Listen to the people who engage with socially engaged art projects to measure the real impact of these projects. The artist is not the protagonist, it is the community and the issue.
- Be prepared to get inspired and to see the aesthetics in any mundane activity.
Last words on social journalism
Social Journalism is about caring about a cause. You can’t get involved in something you are not invested in. It requires developing and sustaining relationships, which are more powerful than “just” sources; it requires doing check-ins and follow-ups. It is like investigative reporting but letting the community investigate with you. A social journalist is someone who is part of the community, not someone who is above it, or who acts like a gatekeeper.
Social journalism is about the process not (just) about the final product. And like traditional journalism, it is about persisting.
I also learned how rewarding and enriching it is to do journalism this way. By having to collaborate and cooperate with so many different stakeholders, you become an expert in a field. People respect and trust you more when they see how much inside knowledge you have.
“Laura has been an important part of the Cultivate BKLYN team, and a tremendous asset in our development process. Her heart for the community, and integrity in the research and survey process has contributed to what our organization will ultimately become. Her thoughtful approach to community-building demonstrates an intent to build upon the assets of our neighbors, and has been a value-add for us and our partners,” said Levi Johnsen, church member and director of networks and campaigns of the nonprofit Many Hopes.
And Renee Sills, a socially engaged artist from Portland, OR, who I engaged with throughout the year and who sent me these texts after I helped her out during an event in New York City.
Social journalism is about quality over quantity. Social journalism is about solutions rather than likes. Social journalism is about effecting change. Social journalism will always be about storytelling because that is all we have, our tales.
