DIY Art Spaces Don’t Need Stopping — They Need Saving
When news about the fire in Oakland broke out, I couldn’t help but recall the first story I wrote for my first internship at a small news startup in Newark, New Jersey. The story was about how artists were leaving posh neighborhoods in New York City like Chelsea and SoHo and opting to move to Newark for cheaper rent and inexpensive gallery spaces. I interviewed Gallery Aferro co-owner Emma Wilcox, who not only stressed the importance of affordable spaces in the midst of Newark’s rapid gentrification, but also spoke of the difficulties that artists have with finding a place to live.
It’s a tricky situation. Artists migrate somewhere more affordable, then once a city — or even a neighborhood — starts seeing the profits alongside the culture that artists bring, the needs of artist communities become secondary to revenue.
“Until recently, I’ve only lived in one hundred percent illegal industrial spaces for most of my adult working life,” Wilcox said during our interview.
It’s been a little over a month since the tragic fire that killed at least 36 people during a show at Ghost Ship, the worst in the nation since 2003. Both an artist studio and music venue, Ghost Ship is not unlike many other multipurpose DIY spaces in cultural centers around the country. Newark and Oakland are not standalone cities. Affordability is a crisis that forces DIY spaces like Ghost Ship to pop up nationwide. More often than not, people lack the funding and know-how to open a law-abiding art space. And the artists that are trying to make a safe, all-ages venue happen are likely to get stuck in a web of red tape.
Jes Skolnik writes about the barriers she and her friends faced while trying to open an arts space in Chicago. Skolnik and friends were already active in the DIY scene, had a solid business plan and budget, yet Skolnik says, “We’ve been close to signing a lease numerous times. What has happened time and again is this: someone higher up in the property management firm has decided that they’d make more with the building standing vacant than they would taking a chance on a startup nonprofit arts space.”
Despite the benefits of an arts space in the community, Skolnik says, “if it doesn’t have a dollar value, they don’t care.”
Meanwhile, a nationwide crackdown on unregulated DIY spaces has gone underway. Cities like Nashville, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles have already reported closures just to name a few. Artists were also swiftly locked out of a DIY space called the Bell Foundry in Baltimore earlier last month, without so much as a warning and with very little time to collect their belongings. These artists are not only displaced, they’ve lost their homes.
DIY spaces are for more than partying. The DIY scene serves as a haven for queer people, people of color and provide local artists and musicians a platform they would not otherwise have. From fine artists, photographers, writers, musicians, or even spectators, the DIY community is comprised of a diverse, proud weirdo population that owes much to the community’s tight-knit nature. Take away DIY spaces and you’ve stripped away raw, inclusive art scenes and cultural epicenters in any given city. But like I said, it’s not about the scene — it’s about the money.
Artists take these sub-par spaces and turn them into hubs of cultural activity. Otherwise, these spaces would remain in the periphery, unused and unloved. That’s why city officials turn a blind eye to unregulated DIY spaces until something goes wrong. For this reason, lawyers defending Ghost Ship manager Derick Ion Almena said in a statement, “It is our intention, if the need arises, to defend vigorously by showing that the real culprits are the above agencies who didn’t do their jobs.”
While Oakland’s fire chief claims the warehouse has not been inspected, an attendee at a Ghost Ship show in 2014 says they’ve seen firefighters inside the building. To make matters worse, Oakland was without a fire marshal for about three years until last spring and despite adequate funding, the department had 62 vacancies. Whether the responsibility lies on Almena, the city of Oakland or both— it’s possible to protect DIY spaces and culture moving forward.
People like Melissa J. Frost have been protecting DIY long before the Ghost Ship incident, hosting basement shows at a house she bought in Philadelphia at 17, fixing it up and living in it communally. Frost, alongside architectural designer S. Surface launched saferspac.es , providing free information for DIY organizers across the country. This information can be put to good use, especially after Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf passed Executive Order 2017–1: “Improving Safety of Non-Permitted Spaces While Avoiding Displacement.” Owners of Oakland’s DIY spaces have at least 60 days to comply with safety regulations listed in the executive order, in which Schaaf also said, “The City of Oakland has long been in the forefront of adaptive reuse and live-work strategies for many former warehouse and industrial buildings, developing code compliance strategies and life safety standards that assure safe use of such buildings.” On top of that, Schaaf announced a $1.7 million grant for maintaining safe and affordable artist spaces. This is a start, considering that other DIY spaces like the SUB-Mission in San Francisco closed because the safety updates required to remain open were too expensive.
Safe doesn’t have to be lame. But it’s going to take some work to find a balance. DIY, including its underground culture, shouldn’t suffer as a result of negligence. The scene should continue to be as vibrant as ever, with shows that are accessible to people from all walks of life and that means allowing the freedom and creative license DIY spaces bring. It will take cooperation from cities and its artist communities to lay the groundwork to keep DIY spaces both safe and unconventional.
But why should anyone care if creatives are pushed to the margins?
Nina Simone says it best — “You can’t help it. An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” To value the arts is to preserve a generation’s voice. Artists need these spaces, for creative expression and community. And that means we do too. Otherwise, we’d seek a reflection without having anything to look at.
