We’re all excited about the Artspace Distance Learning Pilot Program!

Remember the painted shovels all lined up and waiting to sink into the dirt in Elgin? We broke ground in Elgin, IL in October for 55 units of live/work housing.  The event was well attended by over 100 people including the State Senator, State Representative, Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Pat Quinn, executives from Bank of America and the Education Foundation of America, as well as several Artspace staff. It was a great celebration!  The project is planned to be completed in fall 2012.

Attached is a nice article and several nice photos from the day -

http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/8280120-418/artspace-breaks-ground.html#.Tp7Kc1QnQEs.mailto

I left personally and professionally inspired.

We all have our roles to play and I love working in a field where the arts are upheld as a tool for social change. Artspace’s work to build communities through the arts is one great way to empower artists who truly impact the world we live in.

We then returned to Oglala Lakota College (OLC) to hear from Gerald One Feather—an elder, Kevin Killer—an Oglala Tribe Member and State Senator, and Michelle Tyon—a Soros Justice Fellow. Our organizers paused the itinerary to acknowledge that many of us had just visited the powerful and sacred Wounded Knee.

Listening to the voices of the elder generation and the thoughtful response and articulation of a vision for the future put forth by Kevin Killer made me reflect on the significant new energy and focus that we saw in both Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge.

My Artspace colleague Naomi Chu and I met with Gerald Cournoyer, who is Rosebud Lakota. Mr. Cournoyer has his MFA and teaches art at OLC. He has been teaching out of traditional classrooms, with no studio space, storage space, or other support space that exist in most art classrooms. He has taken it upon himself to go outside the system to identify an empty, former Head Start building and has received permission to turn it into the first dedicated fine arts classroom at the college.

Future OLC Fine Arts Classroom

When we returned to OLC we heard from Tawney Brunsch, Executive Director of Lakota Funds, and Ivan Sorbel, Executive Director of Pine Ridge Area Chamber of Commerce. The two shared important stories about their economic development efforts on Pine Ridge.

The next stop was to Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (TVCDC). The TVCDC has truly ramped things up—they have a new headquarters facility on their acquired property, complete with a community organic garden.

We also went to the TVCDC Community Center Facility where we participated in a Community Visioning Session, the same type of session that they have been doing with many stakeholder groups on the reservation.

We wrapped up our learning tour by visiting Sun Dance ceremony grounds where the idea of the TVCDC was created.  This is a very sacred and powerful place, and we felt very fortunate that Nick Tilson of Thunder Valley made this visit possible.

We are extremely grateful for the people we met and the places we saw, and we look forward to building on and strengthening the relationships as we work with the people of Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River. What a wonderful trip!

Eagle Butte

Our day began with breakfast at the Native-run Outrider Café. The Chief Administrative Officer of the Cheyenne River Tribe joined us.

We spent a significant amount of time at Eagle Butte Upper Elementary School, a newly constructed building and modern in every sense. The session focused on Tribal Ventures- and Four Banks-initiated youth programs, such as financial literacy programs as a part of the school curriculum, beginning in kindergarten.

We heard from the faculty, and the honesty, passion and articulation of their efforts blew me away. I haven’t heard four educators speak that well about curricula—ever!

Four high school students who were participating in paid internship programs spoke. The programs, funded by Tribal Ventures and Four Bands, pay hourly wages to students working in local businesses.

Our bus rolled out of the Cheyenne River Reservation through the plains with a brief stop and Badlands National Park. The landscape was powerful and breathtaking as we made our way to the Pine Ridge Reservation.

A stop in Badlands National Park

We had dinner and were treated to a short program at Oglala Lakota College, which included a video guided tour of a museum on Wounded Knee, and a spoken word performance by Tiana Spotted Thunder, organizer of the Pine Ridge Youth Speaks/Poetry Slam competition. Tiana just turned 18 years old and is using spoken word to help youth find their voice and address the ongoing youth suicide issues. She was flat-out amazing!!

We started our day with a bus ride from Rapid City to Cheyenne River Reservation. En route we passed Bear Butte, a place of great importance to the Lakota people, where significant ceremonies are held, such as vision quests. The site is directly adjacent to Sturgis, and recent protests and confrontations have resulted due to the proposed construction of the world’s largest motorcycle bar at the base of the butte.

Our first stop in Cheyenne River was Takini School. Takini, which means “survivor,” is the village where survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre returned, after having being attacked en rout to Pine Ridge, where they were headed to participate in the Ghost Dance.

We toured the school where we saw five high school girls perform the hoop dance and five high school boys present their “winter count” drawings—a modern day equivalent to ledger drawings that graphically depict their achievements and experiences over the past year. Due to the remote location of the school, students must travel 1 to 1.5 hours each way on a school bus to get to school each day. Parents typically are not able to visit the school given the distance and lack of reliable transportation.

We also talked with Eileen Briggs who runs Tribal Ventures, an organization whose mission is poverty reduction. Tribal Ventures received a 10-year, $9.5 million grant from Northwest Area Foundation (NWAF) for that purpose, and Takini is home to the Lakota Cultural Consortium component of the grant initiative, which focuses on cultural learning, healing, and day care cultural immersion.

Next we went to the town of Eagle Butte, which is the Cheyenne River tribal headquarters. Here we had a session at the HV Johnston Lakota Cultural Center that focused on entrepreneurship efforts on Cheyenne River, also funded in large part by NWAF. Tribal Ventures and Four Bands Community Fund led the discussion, which included presentations from six entrepreneurs who have received start-up funds from Tribal Ventures and Four Bands.

In the evening we had the huge honor of a visit with Arvol Looking Horse—the keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Woman sacred bundle and sacred pipe. The White Buffalo prophecy was made untold years ago, foretelling that when a white buffalo calf is born, it is a wake-up call for peace, sustainability, and balance in life.

Looking Horse is the keeper of this belief, and has dedicated his life’s work to religious freedom, cultural survival, and revival. His work includes founding the Bigfoot Riders, who reenact the Wounded Knee Ride from Cheyenne River to Pine Ridge every December, and acting as a leader for World Peace Day efforts and talking with a United Nations Special Reporter and the Dalai Lama. It was a privilege to close the day spending time with him.

At the invitation of the First Peoples Fund, Four Bands Community Fund, and the Open Society Foundations, Artspace colleague Naomi Chu and I joined a group of grantmakers, artists, and other social justice practitioners on a three-day learning visit to the Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge Reservations, September 26-29.

The purpose of the visit was to grow our collective knowledge about social justice work across Indian Country through dialogue with community leaders, activists, and artists working across a range of issue areas at the local, regional, and national levels.

For the next three days, I’ll post blog entries about the places we saw, the people we talked with, and the connections we made as we had the honor of embarking on a journey to the Cheyenne River and Pine Ridge communities.

Cheyenne River Main Street

El Paso Mountains

Creating communities of artists transcends the real estate realm. Such is the case in El Paso.  Though we’re at the stage of nearing site control of a partial block in downtown El Paso and that triggers the hard core real estate development work, it is the community of artists that makes this project special.  Here’s where it starts to get exciting both on masterminding the real estate pieces of the puzzle but also in having more substantive conversations with artists, cultural organizations and creative businesses who want to be downtown. El Paso del Norte, its historic name, is on the border of Mexico and shares the Rio Grande with Ciudad Juarez, a much larger sister city of 2.2 million people.  The flow of traffic, jobs, culture and  commerce is 24 hours though in recent years more people on the U.S. side have become wary of the drug cartel violence and crime. Almost everyone I’ve met either grew up in Juarez or somewhere in Mexico before coming to El Paso. They have sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles and parents in their Mexican twin city.  They describe Juarez as a place of great change and with complex issues.

Much of the art you see is reflective of the border issues, the bright colors of Mexican art and with a sense of strong cultural heritage.  See this image from last year’s “Chalk the Block” festival, a 48 hour temporary installation of sidewalk and building facade art.

Chalk the Block Festival Art

The streets of El Paso look like the streets of Mexican cities. My tall Gringa self stuck out like a sore thumb though no one seemed to notice. My command of the Spanish language is limited though at one time I was fluent.  Hence, it’s fun to pick up a phrase now and then and realize that the possibility is still there.

Streets of El Paso

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of one of the many Quinceañera shops.  With my own daughter turning 15 in two weeks, I imagined her loving this celebration and its ornate, frilly wedding-like dresses.

Quinceañera

Watch for news about the site, about the artist community and about the people and the place.

We also met with four artists, including our on-site property manager Stuart Payne, who will be the core of our Grand Opening Celebration Artist Committee. They plan to have activities both outside and inside the building, in the public areas, as well as open studios for most of the evening. This is going to be a spectacular Grand Opening!

We at Artspace, along with a team of partners, are entering
the final week of conducting a regional survey to learn more about the space
needs of the creative community in L.A. For nearly two months, artists,
organizations, and creative businesses have been sharing with us their ideas about
and needs for space. (www.CreativeSpaceLA.org).

We hope to capture as much information as possible so that we can lead the way to
create new spaces, provide opportunities for the creative community here to
thrive, and impact the landscape of L.A. with a deeply rooted arts and cultural
foundation. What an exciting time to be in L.A.!