An excerpt from the forum that aired on Morning Edition on Thursday, July 28th.
Complete recording of the forum:
Transcript of the excerpt:
DON MAYS: We’ve been talking about how your administration might support artists in financial ways, which is important, which is really important. Are there other things that you can speak of specifically that might support artists in, in doing their work. And we’ll start with you, Brett.
BRETT SMILEY: Well, I would like to start on housing, because I think that the housing piece of the puzzle is critical. And part of the reason that Providence has established itself as an arts center is because historically, we have had ample live/work space, inexpensive live/work space, that has really been the perfect incubator for much of the work that’s happened. And with the rising housing prices, and things like the more strict fire code, these mill spaces are evaporating. They’re getting converted, frankly, a lot of the things that are within eyeshot of us here, fit that bill. And so we need to preserve and protect the live/work space that exists. And continue to build our housing stock so that we can relieve some pressure on the housing crisis in Providence. And like right across the river Nicholson file where there’s a ton of working artists, and they’ve got fire code issues. And so the city needs to intervene to not displace people and have it become high price condos, but to rather help them meet some health and safety issues through low interest loans or grants to, you know, bring that building to a place of safety without displacing working artists. And there are dozens of other examples like that around our city. So I really think that the housing piece of the puzzle is one of the most important pieces. The other is the, you know, you point out workshops and spaces. But sometimes physical space is something that the city has to offer, whether it’s performing space, rehearsal space, for the performing arts, access to some of our schools and community centers for space to work. Sometimes that is a rate limiting factor where we have assets that can be provided for relatively low or no cost to the city. There’s lots of ways for us to get creative with what we have to offer here in the city. I think that there is a role to play and an opportunity for earned income for our artists to work in our school system to both inspire young minds, to earn a little bit of money, but also have access to space along the way. It’s a win win win for the community. And so I’m confident that there are other ways to be supportive, but I do think it starts with housing.
NIRVA LAFORTUNE: So in my earlier answer, I did specify housing and also spaces where they can live and create and also have studio as well as performing space. But one other area is mentorship. Because you do have artists who are new to art. But mentorship is a really important component, a pipeline to to create opportunities for our young people to become artists, I would love to see an artist apprenticeship program. And for us to show people that you can be an artist, and also thrive, right? And you can have — you can build a foundation for yourself to be able to take care of your individual self as well as your family. But I would like to see more arts happening in our schools and creating an infrastructure to expose kids to artists that might be through artists residency program, we can work with some of our nonprofit organizations, some of our universities, to bring some of their professors or their postdocs, but also during the summers and throughout the school year, creating space for our kids to create as well. And also to get compensated for it. The city should have funding to compensate our young people for their creative work. And one of the things that – I grew up, you know, in a family and in a culture where the arts was used for social change. In fact, when I was a student at Temple University, I was a part of a program called playback for change. And what we would do we would use art and we would perform, to, to talk about to have deep conversations about social issues. And Joe Wilson has been doing that as well at Trinity Rep. And so this is an opportunity with everything that’s happening: the climate of our nation, the climate of our community, for us to create space for our adults as well as our young people to to really elevate some of the issues that impact people on a regular basis and use art. I think it’s really important, ensuring that we have mentors to support our artists apprenticeship program. A pipeline to create more artists from the city of Providence, I think is also critical.
GONZALO CUERVO: So we’ve heard a lot of important issues. I agree that housing is a critical issue. When we talk about housing accessibility and affordability, we usually default to talking about low and moderate income families and young professionals. But we’ve seen a significant crisis amongst the creative class. You know, as Brett mentioned earlier, one of the great things that fueled the creativity of Providence in the 80s and 90s, early 2000s was that people could rent inexpensive live/work space. That’s gone. We need to create that environment and ultimately, that boils down to two words: political will. The city is incredibly creative at developing financing schemes for any type of development. We are creative at TSAs (tax stabilization agreements), we’re creative at at incentives, we can put together the most fabulous financing schemes ever for large scale development. But when it comes to supporting such an important sector, that represents who we are, our essence, our soul, we come up with 50 different excuses. We have to change that reality. We have an opportunity to develop housing that’s affordable for artists’ housing that allows them to work. We can do that we have the tools, we have the PRA, we have Providence Redevelopment Agency, we have the Providence Housing Authority, we have CDBG money at our disposition. We have a ton of money that the state is lining up to spend on housing, that they don’t even know how to begin to spend it, right? All the tools are there, what we need is political will. And in the area of resources, the city’s Department of Arts, Culture and Tourism has grown and grown and grown as a developer of programming. And I think we need to move away from that programming model and get more as a facilitator model and say, how do we invest these dollars that we have to encourage the best growth of our art sector to encourage those smaller organizations to thrive. And that also includes partnering, having closer partnerships with RISCA with the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, with the Council on the Humanities, to figure out how do we provide that technical support in a way that’s not redundant, that we’re not kind of overlapping effort.
