{"id":10327,"date":"2021-10-04T20:54:24","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T20:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/media-archive.blackartinamerica.com\/?p=10327"},"modified":"2021-10-05T14:56:46","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T14:56:46","slug":"around-the-block-what-does-a-thriving-local-arts-community-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/earthexhibitions.org\/media-archive\/?p=10327","title":{"rendered":"Around the Block: What does a thriving local arts community look like?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Around the Block:<\/h2>\r\n

What does a thriving local arts community look like?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n
By D. Amari Jackson<\/pre>\r\n
Alice Lovelace makes no bones about telling you she\u2019s \u201cbeen around the block.\u201d Since arriving in Atlanta in 1976, Lovelace has forged a trailblazing artistic path as a performance artist, teacher, poet, organizer, author, playwright, and arts administrator.<\/p>\r\n
In 1979, one year after linking with artists Toni Cade Bambara and Ebon Dooley at the Neighborhood Arts Center, Lovelace became a Writer-in-Residence and helped organize poetry readings and classes while holding meetings for the Southern Collective of African American Writers (SCAAW). In 1983, she and Dooley founded the Southeast Community Cultural Center. A year later, the nonprofit opened the Arts Exchange in an old elementary school, a space replete with art, dance, and recording studios, galleries, a theater, and a home base for the Atlanta Writers Resource Center. In the late 1990s, Lovelace became executive director of Alternate ROOTS, an artists-led southern regional organization, and executive director of the Atlanta Partnership for Arts in Learning (APAL), which she founded along with Dr. Lisa Delpit and actress Jane Fonda.<\/p>\r\n
Today, Lovelace serves as president of the board of the rebranded \u201cArtsXchange,\u201d now based at 2148 Newnan Street in East Point after relocating in 2019. Given her \u201cblock\u201d is now East Point\u2014the future home of the Black Art In America Headquarters on Connally Drive in 2022\u2014Lovelace speaks to the current climate of the arts in the city while advancing what a thriving local arts community looks like.<\/p>\r\n
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Alice Lovelace (red headband, white top), with Ebon Dooley (male), Malkia M\u2019Buzi Moore (far left in purple hat), and Barbara Mobley (far right, glasses)<\/p><\/div>\r\n
\u201cSo, first, you have to have a public policy before there can be something that somebody can hold you responsible for,\u201d says Lovelace, who has years of experience on numerous public policy committees for art at the municipal, county, state, and national levels. She points to such representative models as Fulton County, Hapeville, and Atlanta. Certainly, stresses Lovelace, \u201cthe reason that the city of Atlanta thrives is because it has a healthy policy on the arts\u201d that encourages and accommodates artists and arts organizations with \u201can environment that nurtures. But, first, you\u2019ve got to have a policy.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cPolicy is a lot about regulation, about sometimes giving exemptions to certain groups,\u201d explains Lovelace. “When you go to a reception in the city of Atlanta, I don\u2019t care what it\u2019s for, there\u2019s wine flowing, maybe an open bar and different things that the city allows for the arts organizations to have through special permits to do that very easily,\u201d she offers. \u201cThat\u2019s something that would be a good regulation that would make for a healthy environment for arts to thrive because open houses and gatherings around art and art centers are important, especially in the visual arts and performing arts. So one has to actually be thinking about those things and come up with ways to encourage them.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\r\n
That said, Lovelace clarifies that \u201cthe mayor and the council people definitely support the arts. I think that\u2019s what makes this an excellent time.\u201d She cites ongoing efforts like the public art displays around the marketplace and the Wednesday Wind Down concert series. \u201cI do believe that they understand the value of it, and that they appreciate art,\u201d acknowledges Lovelace. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s a lack of will or respect, I just don’t think they fully know what to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Joshua Butler, IV East Point City Councilman Ward D at Large<\/p><\/div>\r\n
Councilman Joshua Butler believes the city has recently been doing a good job of putting the pieces in place. \u201cI think we\u2019ve been doing what we can do by investing the time and resources in developing the arts for more than two or three years now,\u201d offers Butler, an art collector and East Point native who grew up under a painting father that was an integral part of the Atlanta-area arts scene. Butler\u2019s collection includes paintings by John Biggers and Glenn Ligon, and he is hoping to acquire a piece from famed Atlanta artist, Radcliffe Bailey, who studied under his father in high school. The Morehouse College graduate points to East Point\u2019s ongoing revitalization and its increasingly regular public ballet recitals, concert series, and outdoor art. \u201cWe are big supporters of art and now we have a program where we\u2019re getting into public art, where we decorate some of these street corners with art,\u201d says Butler. \u201cSo, yes, East Point is investing substantial time and money in the arts.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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Over the past two years, along with welcoming the ArtsXchange, the city has moved to further promote itself as an arts-friendly destination by establishing an Arts Commission and implementing its first Public Arts Master Plan, which includes public performances, murals, and additional artistic displays adorning public spaces. During the plan\u2019s inception, Mayor Deana Holiday Ingraham stated how such a program would \u201ccultivate vibrancy in our downtown and neighborhoods, create gathering spaces that promote community connections through art, connect our youth to art and artists, and serve as a branding opportunity for the city to display our unique identity and enhance our gateways to the city.\u201d Three months ago, the city received a $6,000 Project Grant from Georgia Council for the Arts to further fund its ongoing projects.<\/p>\r\n
But whether planned or not, for the past three decades, East Point has enjoyed a compelling relationship with the arts. Home of Tri-Cities High School, a visual and performing arts-based magnet, the city has produced such notable stage, film, TV, and musical artists as Kenan Thompson, Kandi Burruss, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, Sahr Ngaujah, Antwan \u201cBig Boi\u201d Patton, \u201cAndre 3000\u201d Benjamin, Saycon Sengbloh, Denise \u201cD. Woods\u201d Woodgett, Shanell \u201cSnL\u201d Woodgett, and rap group, Goodie Mob, among others. Along with the ArtsXchange, the city has hosted numerous arts-related institutions, including Ballethnic Dance Company, Seven Arts Center, the Windmill Arts Center, the Ludacris Foundation, the East Point Main Street Association, and several cultural and community centers.<\/p>\r\n
Given his rearing in an artistic environment, Butler promotes why such a relationship is essential. \u201cArt is important not only as a form of expression, as they are a form of mathematics,\u201d insists Butler, citing how kids introduced to art commonly perform better in math, and how it helps one think creatively at an early age. \u201cAnd if you continue to nurture that creativity, that creativity can lend to different areas of one’s life,\u201d offers the councilman who, as a student, excelled in physics and math. \u201cI just don’t happen to study my community in the political space, and part of how I got to this position and how I serve is based in some form of solving problems creatively, thinking outside of the box, and thinking more than in black and white, but in vivid colors. And if we had more people that are politicians that were a little more understanding and had a real empathy for people, then they would be able to see there are different ways to solve the same problem, that we don’t have to have our differences expressed in an acrimonious way, because art is a very accepting.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\"\"\u201cArt is an economic engine,\u201d puts forth Lovelace, whose organization is gearing up for the annual Ebon Dooley Art & Justice Awards<\/strong><\/a> on December 5th. \u201cWe provide production studios for 13 independent artists to actively engage in the marketplace and in the act of creating works that impact and inspire,\u201d she says, further characterizing art as both \u201ca creative class and an industry. People can see it when they look at a movie, but they can\u2019t see all those component parts that are in that movie. So somebody, when they were young, had to be inspired to go into the theater and, instead of wanting to be in front of the camera, wanted to learn how to be behind it and do incredible things with the technology and the science of it. That\u2019s art.\u201d When looking at a magazine or the design of a building, continues Lovelace, \u201cyou can\u2019t help but see art everywhere. When you look at designer clothes and geometric features, and you look at gallery walls, or dancing, how can you encapsulate what art is?\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cIt\u2019s everything<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
Going forward, Butler is looking to see more of it in East Point, and not just for the foreseeable future. For while public art represents a step forward for a city looking to increase its artistic footprint, the councilman recognizes these current efforts are ultimately far more significant than the posting of colorful images around the block.<\/p>\r\n
\u201cWe\u2019re in the process of redeveloping our Commons area,\u201d acknowledges Butler, of the Commons in downtown East Point. \u201cSo when I think about that redevelopment, I think about what this is going to look like 30 years from now, because it is a 30-year investment. I\u2019m not thinking about what the people need today, but what they need 30 years from now. And we have to begin to think about the world in that way.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
\u201cEast Point is making a tremendous investment in the revitalization of its theater,\u201d confirms Butler, of the renewed city commitment to renovate its 90 year-old East Point Auditorium.\u00a0\u201cIt will be a place for us to continue to have ballet recitals and music concerts, but it is also a way of investing in something historical and bringing it up to the present.\u201d Many don\u2019t realize, he continues, that the historic building \u201cwas once a place for African-American artists like Count Basie who could not perform in traditional theaters in Atlanta and had to come to East Point and perform in that <\/em>theater.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
So, adds Butler, \u201cwhen we are talking about an investment in the arts, that\u2019s a tremendous investment.\u201d<\/p>\r\n
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AMARI JACKSON <\/b>is a creator, author, TV\/web\/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel,\u00a0The Savion Sequence<\/i>; creator\/writer\/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look<\/i>; writer\/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier<\/i>; and current writer\/coproducer of Listen Up!<\/i> on HBCU GO\/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.<\/p>\r\n
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