Tucson Immersion: Connecting arts, culture and community across Arizona
By Melissa Dunmore
In pursuit of deepening relationships across Arizona, a cohort of nine took time away from their respective disciplines to learn from three organizations that approach creative placemaking and placekeeping in distinct ways.
In February, nine faculty and staff members from Arizona State University’s Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and the ASU Library traveled two hours south of the Phoenix Metro area to Tucson to meet with experts in the field of creative placemaking and placekeeping. This is the third Faculty Academy cohort with ASU’s Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities, a peer-learning program focused on the integration of arts and culture into ethical community-based work. With this year’s selected theme of centering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) experiences of joy and rest in mind, they met with the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, Borderlands Theater, and The Dunbar Pavilion in the communities where these organizations situate their work and praxis. A return to in-person travel for the Faculty Academy program after the COVID-19 pandemic made this excursion extra special.
The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona is a non-profit that serves artists and their communities in 15 distinct counties and tribal nations through programming, funding and collaboration. Faculty Academy participants learned about the SaludArte program, which, in partnership with the Pima County Health Department, aims “to find ways in which community engagement, health, and art can intersect to amplify the voices and experiences of our community while also helping to increase health equity, access, literacy and COVID-19 mitigation across Pima County.” In this project, artists are connected with communities to tell their stories, with community members as an integral part. Fifteen individuals each from five of the areas hardest hit by the pandemic are selected to serve on an advisory panel which will give feedback from the very start of the program, from artist selection, to development and final installation of the work. Community participation is paramount, and so considerations such as financial compensation, accessible scheduling and childcare services are included to minimize obstacles for individuals to participate. In this way, the SaludArte program centers both the wisdom and needs inherent in communities and allows for both so that their story can be told.
Anna Alvarez-Loucks, the Senior Program Coordinator for Faculty Academy, reflected:
“After speaking with Executive Director Adriana Gallego, and hearing about SaludArte and the other programs they were working on, I was so excited to have our Faculty Academy cohort visit! There was so much overlap with the values and goals The Studio is also working towards, and I was so impressed with the levels of intentionality built into the program.”
The next visit was with Borderlands Theater, a nonprofit organization whose work for more than three decades has been ingrained in the heritage, narratives and lived experience of peoples rooted across the Sonoran Desert and provides innovative theater and responsive cultural programs. At the Sosa Carrillo House on the grounds of the Tucson Convention Center and the site of their first Barrio Stories project, artistic directors Milta Ortiz and Marc Pinate gave an overview of how they work with communities to amplify local voices and empower residents. The Barrio Stories projects (Barrio Viejo — 2016, Barrio Anita — 2018, Barrio Stories: Nogales — 2022, and their most recent project, West Side Stories — April 20–30, 2023) are interactive theatrical productions held in public spaces that highlight the local history, culture and heritage by involving local residents and culture bearers. By focusing on just one or two of these immersive projects per year, Borderlands Theater is able to slow down from the pace of traditional repertory theaters, focus on innovative and impactful projects that reframe the narrative of a place, and support creativity and the arts in the local community.
Lastly, the group met with Barbara Lewis, vice-president of the Dunbar Coalition and former student of the Paul Lawrence Dunbar School, Tucson’s first and only segregated school, operating from 1912 to 1952. Since 2008, the Dunbar has transformed into a community center that houses a variety of businesses and hosts various community events. Walking around the grounds with Ms. Lewis, the ethos of Dunbar — “preserving our culture, cultivating our future” — is apparent. She shared fond memories of the school, her teachers and their community and a vision for increasing awareness and understanding of the historic and cultural impact of the Black and African American community in Tucson. Currently, the Dunbar still houses a school (the IDEA School, an independent, non-profit K-8 school), which is important to Ms. Lewis as a nod to both the history and mission of the place, and Drutopia, a black-owned native plant nursery, among other businesses. Plans are underway for further renovations that will allow for more community engagement and events, so that both locals and visitors can learn about the history of the Dunbar.
Regarding her experience, Jessica Salow, Assistant Archivist of Black Collections at Arizona State University (ASU) Library, said:
“The Faculty Academy Tucson immersion experience that took place at the beginning of February 2023 was one, in a recent line of professional experiences, that changed my understanding of how I show up in the work I do here at ASU. The relationships and connections I built with the people on that trip will last me a lifetime, and I feel I have a real support system within ASU that understands the struggle of being a Black, Indigenous or Person or Color within academia. I personally learned a lot on that trip from the Dunbar visit on the second day. To get to hear from community members about their experience at Dunbar and what the current executive director is thinking regarding reimagining the space while also celebrating its history was inspirational. I hope to be able to make connections with the community surrounding Dunbar to learn how I can support their efforts to keep the memories alive at Dunbar and tell the amazing history of that area.”
With these immersive visits, Faculty Academy participants had the opportunity to learn firsthand from the experiences of artists, administrators and local stakeholders about the work of meaningful engagement with communities: the challenges and the successes. With this deepened understanding, cohort members continued to meet monthly throughout the spring semester to explore issues of creative placemaking and community-engaged work and apply those learnings to their own research, teaching or practice. This work of building and supporting healthy, equitable and more just communities thrives with introspection, intentionality and collaboration, which is what the Faculty Academy seeks to foster and encourage. After the disruption and disconnection of the past three years, it has become increasingly clear that occasions to gather, share experiences and perspectives, and learn from one another are important and necessary for the work of creative placemaking to take root and thrive.
About Faculty Academy
The Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities’ Faculty Academy builds the bench of faculty focused on creative placemaking and placekeeping. The academy is a learning cohort connecting scholars from across ASU and in multiple disciplines to community leaders in order to inform institutional practice and curriculum related to equitable creative placemaking and placekeeping. The program is intended to help participants build the skills, personal reflections and insights needed to do ethical work. This requires interrogating the most strategic roles of universities in redressing historic inequity, shifting current dominant concepts of community engagement and building robust community alliances.
Melissa Dunmore is an artist and alumna of ASU and AmeriCorps.
