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| Mayor Rahm Emanuel scores one point. |
One thing we are always arguing here at Arts Dispatch is that the arts have a social component, that they are more than a matter of an artist wrestling with the muses and then the rest of us contemplating the artist's creation.
For example, many cities, including Portland, have discovered that a scruffy little arts district can gentrify into something far grander. People like to be around the arts for some reason -- the energy, the creativity, the "hipster quotient," whatever -- and they eagerly attempt to integrate themselves around concentrations of artists.
It's difficult to create an "arts district" out of whole cloth, and even when you do, it quickly evolves into restaurants, boutiques, a few galleries and high-end condos, which is fine and even pleasant, but the benefits to the city, aside from the boost to the tax base, are confined and "decorative." That's why we've argued for a broader approach to thinking about using the arts for development purposes. The distribution of the arts and the development they bring should not be confined to the downtown core.
We have an ally in this -- the new mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel.
Here's what Emanuel said about the arts as development tool before his election:
Just as the theater district revitalized the Loop into a thriving entertainment area, I would like to see that same energy invested in neighborhoods around the city. Pilsen has become a hub for independent artists and small galleries. Ravenswood’s old industrial buildings are quickly being converted to artist workspaces and administrative offices for some of the city’s small theater companies. I would like to see these neighborhood-based artistic communities grow across the city by prioritizing zoning and development funding for arts and cultural hubs.And then he reiterated the point after he was elected in an interview with the Chicago Tribune: “We have great theater in this town,” he said, perhaps suggesting a change from the mostly downtown emphasis of the previous administration, “because we have great neighborhood theater.” He also cited the importance of having a great opera to the recruitment of Boeing's headquarters to Chicago, how Old Town School of Folk Music, located on Chicago's North Side, showed how “one neighborhood cultural entity can be powerful enough to flip a whole neighborhood,” and talked about the role of the arts in education. "Emanuel also said that he plans to focus on the role of the arts in after-school programs, saying that he firmly believed the arts would best help him reach 'the souls of those children who seem to be left out of our civic and cultural life.'"
This all sounds great, but before we start to unpack those statements, a few caveats for those of us in Portland, Oregon (where the mayor also frequently talks about the importance of the arts):
1. Chicago (city and metro) is a lot larger than Portland -- around 9.5 million metro to around 2.2 million. Its cultural institutions are far older and richer than Portland's. Most Chicago mayors have understood this legacy, though perhaps Emanuel is distinctive in thinking of the arts at the neighborhood level. Politicians have boilerplate on various issues.
2. We all know that these various discrete issues and positions rub against each other and always find themselves in competition with each other for resources and time. Will Emanuel's ideas about neighborhood-based arts investment survive the press of Big City problems? We have no idea.
3. I'm not making any sort of general argument about Emanuel's election in Chicago. I don't know much of anything about local politics there.
