The Goldin Institute has two projects, both aimed at training community organizers at effectively creating change by amplifying assets that are already found there.  The first project is in Chicago, where Goldin is based, largely dedicated to peace building.  The second one has a Global focus. Both have 20 Fellows who go through a curriculum called “Gather“.  They meet weekly on zoom and discuss the assignments and materials for that week.  I have been honored and humbled to have been selected as a Global Fellow for 2024, am the oldest one in our group and the only one from the US this year.

My fellow cohorts!  These faces have become dear to me as we have met weekly and their stories become more and more familiar.  Click on the image and you will end up on Goldin’s site where you can read their bios:

The issues they are working on often demand a great deal of courage as some are in countries that have been dealing with war, oppression or rampant violence for a long time.  They are working to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, for growing entrepreneurial opportunities, several have sustainability and the environment as core efforts and some seek to fulfill basic needs, like having access to menstrual pads, freedom of speech, or protection against sex trafficking.  Meeting them has given me so much hope for our world.

The Gather curriculum is based on “Asset Based Community Development”, or, as commonly known, the ABCD Initiative.  Instead of looking at what is lacking in our communities, we instead focus on organizing the assets that are already there, helping them get more support and attention. This philosophy was developed by John McKnight, a social worker turned academic at DePaul University.  He passed away recently, but left us with study guides, videos and followers who spread the good works.  I learned about this through my friend, John Zeigler, who has mentored me for many years.  I wrote about him and the ABCD approach on my personal blog a while back.

The ABCD approach looks at building community by empowering local strengths.  John explained:  “Traditional models look for outside help to fix our problems.  The outsiders come in, do an assessment and recommend or even implement structures that are imposed on the people.  They usually fail because the people had no voice in the process, so they rebel or they just don’t want to participate.  But, when ideas come from the people and the community endorses them, we see growth and change.”

Here’s a short video that explains the difference:

My “project” floats around in my head…  I’ve had a hard time coming up with a concrete image of the potential that I see.  I was invited to this Fellowship because of the collective that I run, Artizan Made (this site) and our commitment to the environment.  Earlier this year, I launched Artizan ReMade, an effort to organize artists around the issue of waste and how we can intercept the cycle and use waste as a valuable material.

Within that goal, I also wanted to study what is actually happening in that chain of events:  what is being thrown away, the toxicity of the materials, alternatives that can be used, etc.  There are many, many other groups out there that support the upcycling movement, where artists and makers share their projects, but I have not seen any others that are really addressing the core issues behind our waste problems and how we can truly make a difference in capturing these materials to keep them from ending up in landfills.  I wrote one post on Fast Fashion and then started looking at the paper industry, cardboard, etc but have not had brain space to write more yet.  I also started a Pinterest board for our group where I have been saving interesting links as I see them.  There is SO much inspiration and information out there that it becomes overwhelming!

Our Artizan ReMade group on Facebook has grown quickly. We now have almost 150 members and most are seasoned artists who have been upcyling for many years.  But, few people have contributed to the conversation and it is clear that I need help in motivating the group.  Hopefully, leadership there will arise as we continue to develop.

The Gather exercises have helped me clarify, at least for myself, what my assets are and how I can contribute to both my local and online community.  And, that, bringing the two together, is something that truly excites me!  I have had a rich life online since 2010, when social media first started becoming a “thing”. At first, most of my connections were through artists working with textiles and fiber art.  But, when I launched Artizan Made in 2013, I started expanding those interests to how the arts impact our local communities economically and socially.

My first introduction to the Creative Cities movement was in the early 1990’s when I managed an artisan’s co-op in Chicago, 4th World Artisans.  We had funding through the MacArthur Foundation for training and workshops and they sent me to several symposiums that looked at how music, dance, art, etc. infused distressed communities with enough money to provide jobs and attract tourism, creating profitable destinations for the people who lived there. I’ve now had over 30 years of experience in the handmade community and all along, have been interested in how we can tap into these resources.  The challenge for these communities has always been in keeping local control over prosperity.  Time and time again, I saw Chicago neighborhoods thrive because of artists who were then pushed out by mainstream businesses who priced them out of their businesses and homes.

Creative Cities and Paducah, a UNESCO Creative City

My grandparents (I made an embroidery of them) were Minnesota dairy farmers. Their town, Harmony, like many MidWestern rural towns, slowly lost its population until even their local grocery store died. The Amish bought up a lot of farming land and offered some amenities. At some point, some artists started buying up some of the distressed properties in town and eventually, it became an interesting place to visit and even to live.   Their tourism office boasts:

“Harmony is known as “Biggest Little Town in Southern Minnesota” because of all that it has to offer, including grocery store, restaurants, Niagara Cave, Harmony-Preston State Trail, biking, movie theater, post office, Gundersen Clinic, schools, senior living and convenience. Harmony is also close to State Lands, the Root River and the Upper Iowa River offering plenty of outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing.

Harmony is also a tourism destination with people from all over the world coming to visit. Some of the biggest attractions are the Niagara Cave and the Amish. Niagara Cave is rated one of the top ten caves in the United States. It offers tours, mini golf, gift shop and picnic grounds. The Amish of Harmony is the largest Amish community in Minnesota. People can take a guided tour, purchase Amish goods, including Amish furniture, quilts, baked goods, baskets, gifts and more.”

There are abandoned towns and neighborhoods all over the United States and around the world, places that have unique assets that can be tapped into to make a place come alive.  A couple of years ago I read an article that said that the arts sector in the United States (including Hollywood) bring in more revenues than the agricultural one.  I was shocked!  We are not treasured in this country.  Most artists, musicians, dancers, and other creatives struggle to meet their bills and to find audiences for their work. Yet, they contribute tremendously in making a place livable, fun and interesting enough to draw tourists.

Paducah, Kentucky, where I live, is a Unesco Creative City.  I have been here for 20 years now and have witnessed how the arts have contributed to the life of this city.  It’s truly wonderful!  One of our Gather exercises was to create an asset map.  I made this graphic and wrote about it here.

The background image was photographed by Paducah Drone and used with permission from Vick Patel.  The placards show just some of the creative assets we have here.  It truly is astounding! At the bottom right, my assets are Artizan Made (this site) and the Green Roof International House, where I live (funded by a silent partner).

Another exercise had us interview people in our community to find out what they wanted to see happen here.  In the same article, I described some questions that I put together and the responses people gave.  I only did ten but they were eye openers!  I “knew” five people for a long time and the other five were new people to me.  I found that they had a lot to say, were reflective and would benefit from further discussions on our identity and potential as a Creative City.  They were also interested in international connections and in more opportunities for diversity and inclusion in the area.

Paducah is a small city of less than 27,000 people.  We are on the Ohio River and in the middle of a triangle that connects St. Louis, Memphis and Nashville, all major cities that are 2 to 3 hours away.  People who live in the rural areas and don’t want to deal with the traffic in the major hubs come here for jobs, shopping, entertainment, medical care and legal aid, sometimes doubling our population during the day.  About 72% of the population is White and 21% is Black.  I like to tell people that there at least two of every nationality here….  Almost 22% of the population lives in poverty.  The creative assets we have are mostly found in the downtown area and in LowerTown, an artist’s neighborhood that has lost many of its founders but still has vitality.

How can we create more opportunities with the wonderful creative assets we already have?  That has been a question that I have been chewing on for over five years.  The Goldin Fellowship has helped me come up with concrete ideas that I think can enhance what we already have.  The big questions are how to include this population that is living in poverty and how to disseminate the opportunities that are already here.  For example, we have a wonderful art school here, but few low income people I have talked to know about it.

The Impact of Visual Art on Distressed Communities

I have two videos here to show how artists have changed the perception of ostracized communities, both in how they perceive themselves and in how others look at them.  Murals and public art are an impactful way to make big statements, to cast a light on something that has been blighted.

This first one is already 10 years old, but I like it.  “Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn create community art by painting entire neighborhoods, and involving those who live there — from the favelas of Rio to the streets of North Philadelphia.”  It’s a TED Talk.

This one is by the French artist, JR, who has done amazing work with photography.  His signature is creating huge images on paper that can be seen by drones or on big walls.  He did one about Palestinians and Israelis a few years back, photographing the same professions being funny and pasting them all over, on both sides of the walls.  In this one, he works with a group of men in high security prison and the process opens all kinds of emotional doors for them.  We have some great programs in Kentucky, too, where inmates train dogs and get to live with them in their cells, or grow food in gardens.  Art is healing.  Paint and visual stimulation can go a long way to break down barriers.

We have beautiful murals along the river here in Paducah, showing the history of the area, and now we have a Quilt Mural Project, so apt as we are known as Quilt City, USA.  Artist Char Downs talks about the first one in the project, “Corona 2” by Caryl Bryer Fallert-Gentry, a beloved quilt artist who used to live here in Paducah.

We have been making Green Roof into a more creative space, in the hopes that it will inspire others to do the same. It does take money and I am so grateful to my silent partner for her funding of our upgrades!  Check out our outbuildings:

Before

After

We worked on outbuildings and a ramp in the Fall of 2023.  Still not finished, but what a difference!  It cost $13,000, spent on paint and labor.

What if we created a program to help others fix up their places?  The blight in our city is huge!

UNESCO

There are nine UNESCO creative cities in the US and we are SO fortunate to be one of them!  Mary Hammond was the driving force behind the relationship we cultivated, as a city, with other UNESCO cities.  She passed away suddenly, earlier this year (2024), something I still have a hard time accepting.  We shared a passion for the international connections and planned on brain storming when “she had more time”.  She talked about how exhausted she was and that we would take time to brainstorm once she retired.

Mary had so much knowledge, so many relationships built that went with her when she died.  This is a huge problem with many projects.   So much can depend on one person, another reminder of how important it is to create structures where there is documentation and records of what has been built.

The UNESCO Creative Cities listings leave much to be desired.  Mary had an active relationship with many of her counterparts, but the site is outdated, with no interactive features.  And, yet, we have sent artists and musicians to several countries and have received several here.  It’s a wonderful exchange!

The Creative Cities movement, also known as Creative Placemaking, is huge in the United States.  It is also quite unorganized.  I was looking for a video on YouTube that would explain the key components of what makes a creative city and found hundreds of long, boring reports instead.  But, the National Endowment for the Arts does have a nice list of resources for Creative Placemaking and there are many other websites that we can tap into.

Assets as Passions

Several years ago, I heard Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk on the importance of “Why?”.  His talk was a game changer for me because he explained the clear importance of making decisions from a passionate place, that believing in something is contagious and will draw much more support than the “what”.  Simon tells us how he figured that out in this short video:

Three Focus Areas That Excite Me:

Creativity, Diversity and Sustainability

When those three come together in harmony, we know we have found the recipe for happiness. Oftentimes, these places spring up in areas that have many challenges, but because the people decide to shape their environment, they move towards those directions.  Paducah, as a city, has a lot going on in the creative arena and has welcomed diversity by attracting many age groups, the LGBTQ community, and immigrants.  But, it has not made a commitment to sustainability.  MayaMam Weavers in Guatemala, one of our Artizan fair trade members, shines as a community where all three are thriving: they have developed an excellent product line, are inclusive in how they present themselves to the world, and they plant a tree for every sale that they make.

Within those three areas, I see ways in which I can help strengthen my online and local communities.

Some ideas: 

Communication

• Use zoom to discuss topics or have guests from around the world talk about what they do.
• Have a local Creative Cities study group where what we learn is broadcast online.
• Create an international directory based on creative passions.  (This is in development.)
• Set up Pen Pal groups.

Economic Development

• Use Artizan Made to test new products.
• Create manufacturing opportunities that use our waste.  Glass is high up on my list as we don’t recycle it here and there are tons of products we can make with it instead of throwing it away.
• Start a Maker Space where art supplies and other materials are collected for teachers and makers.  I’ve started saving some places on a Pinterest Board here, but the most amazing example of what can happen is this converted mall:

• Create an indoor market (similar to our farmer’s market) that operates all year and offers online sales support.
• Salvage construction materials, tools, etc and teach people how to fix their properties.

Environmental Initiatives

• Make a real push for recycling.
• Clean up trash city wide.
• Plant trees all over the city.

Travel

• Have more residencies and exchanges, perhaps tied into our art school.

These are just a few projects I have thought of that I would love to see happen.  I can’t start them, but I can help brainstorm and be supportive.  There is so much that can be done and plenty of room for all of our passions.

What would you like to see happen in your community?  How about online? 

Do leave comments and ideas here as I will write more as things develop.  I still have a couple more months of learning with Goldin and their training will help me solidify strategies that I can then share with all of you.

Inspiration:  Green Urban Development in Pakistan

John (middle), who taught me about the ABCD Initiative was in Pakistan last month and met with Faisal (left) who is a Global Golden Fellow with me.  We see each other on zoom every week!  This article talks about what they are trying to do and how they used an asset map to draw out their strengths.  Change happens every day!