Marianne Dorais is the executive director of
Michigan Youth Arts. She formerly served as a foundation and government relations officer for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, managing a portfolio of $3.4M in annual grant awards. She was also a grantwriter for Children's Hospital of Michigan, raising money for the hospital's pediatric art, social work and child life programs.
Marianne holds a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University and a master's degree in Leadership: Nonprofit Administration from Siena Heights University.
She has two children and enjoys reading, travel, and all types of music, from classical to hard rock to bluegrass to klezmer.
Creative Peoplemaking
For the past few years, those in the cultural funding and urban planning communities have tossed around an idea called creative placemaking. I first became aware of this concept sometime in 2012 when my organization received an invitation to apply for grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts through its ArtPlace initiative. As a longtime fundraiser and grant writer, I was not daunted by the lengthy and esoteric application. The trouble was, I didn't have a clue what was meant by creative placemaking.
According to the 2010 whitepaper commissioned by the NEA that spawned the grant program, creative placemaking takes place when "partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired."
I wholeheartedly support the idea that arts and cultural projects may serve as a catalyst for urban renewal, economic development, and community building. And apparently, so do many other Americans. With or without grant funding, cities around the country have embraced this concept, launching initiatives that are as modest as abandoned houses turned into art galleries and as grand as multi-state consortiums. As a philosophy and discipline, creative placemaking has even been validated by academia: Ohio State University now offers a 10-month graduate program resulting in certified practitioner status.
But as wonderful as all this is, as I tried to frame my grant narrative I couldn't help feeling a bit…resentful. Michigan Youth Arts commissioned a survey in early 2012 that found that approximately 108,000 children in the state of Michigan attend school each day without any form of arts education. Further, those that are fortunate enough to receive arts education must do so in districts that are operating under extremely frugal conditions: on average, an elementary school in Michigan spends approximately $1.67 per student per year on its arts curriculum. How could we as a nation talk about creative placemaking when we don't even provide the children of the communities in which we reside a basic arts education? When arts education in schools in this country has been severely diminished or, in some districts, eliminated altogether?
Why, I wondered, did the focus of these funding initiatives have to be on creative placemaking? Why wasn't anyone concerned about creative peoplemaking – namely arts education in the schools – instead?
After all, research consistently shows that arts in the schools boosts students' motivation to learn, reduces drop-out rates, and improves test scores. According to the Americans for the Arts, a strong standards-based arts education has a tremendous impact on the developmental growth of every child and has proven to help level the "learning field" across socio-economic boundaries. An arts education strengthens problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, adding to overall academic achievement and school success. Access to and participation in the arts develops a sense of community and of shared goals, nurtures important values including team-building skills, and fosters respect for alternative viewpoints, cultures and traditions – leading to improved success in the New Economy. These are exactly the types of outcomes that creative placemaking strategies hope to develop.
Recent news announcements have captured the very real and justifiable community outrage that resulted when an appraiser from Christie's auction house visited the Detroit Institute of Arts. What seems to have escaped everyone's notice is that without art teachers there will be far fewer artists and subsequently, less art. To wit: in late March, the Lansing school district's 23 professionally certified elementary school art, music and physical education teachers were laid off due to budget woes. While these programs aren't being eliminated, the teachers who hold specialty degrees in art, music and PE must go. According to the plan, those duties will now fall to the general education elementary school teachers.
Just last month, the Saginaw Public School District also announced it is laying off its music, art and physical education staff, assigning other teachers to fill those roles. The plan eliminates these positions as part of the deficit reduction plan submitted to the state in July.
These trends are unsettling.
The fact that physical education is often lumped together with art and music as subjects considered expendable when revenues don't meet expenses, reminded me of an experience that was pivotal in my youth. I was a young child in the 1970s, residing with my family in northwest Detroit. At the time, my neighborhood was just beginning to experience the residual effects of the 1967 riots which were manifested in sporadic violent episodes among and against neighborhood residents, an uptick in arson and vandalism, and the onset of "white flight" to the suburbs. Still, my parents were die-hard Detroiters and leaving the city was not something they wished to consider. My father, in particular, dug in his heels and participated in community-building activities with Focus:HOPE, volunteered in Block Club watches, and would often speak to our neighbors about conflict resolution. However, despite my father's ongoing efforts, I remember feeling confused by the tension that was blanketing my neighborhood. It was as real and thick and oppressive as the heat of that particular Detroit summer.
Across the street from where I lived was a small city park that, in the years after the riots, transgressed from a gathering place for families of small children to a hangout for troublemakers who often used the park as a place to smoke, drink, fight, and occasionally fire a handgun. Where I had once spent the majority of my school summer vacation was now a place where I was forbidden to go. "Stay out of the park," my mother would say. "It's too dangerous." Confined to my front yard, I felt bored and restless.
One day not long after my mother's warning, a friend ran breathlessly over to my house. "We have to go to the park," she fairly screamed. "They're doing arts and crafts there!"
My mother reluctantly took my friend and me across the street to investigate the stranger who had taken up residence at one of the picnic tables in the park. The young woman had several large gray duffel bags from which she retrieved a number of soccer balls, baseballs and bats, and rubber balls for playing four-square. Immediately children started dividing up the equipment and organizing games amongst themselves.
For those of us not athletically inclined, the stranger also had a satchel which contained a veritable treasure trove of art supplies. Posterboard. Foam pieces. Googly eyes. Glue. Plastic laces. Paint brushes. Large jugs of watercolor paint. And a seemingly endless supply of plaster statues, from kittens to turtles to cars and trucks, that were waiting to be turned into someone's personal masterpiece. The items were lined up at the far end of the picnic table, and we were encouraged to sit down and choose whatever materials we needed for our art project.
The stranger in our midst was an art teacher hired by the city of Detroit's Parks and Recreation Department, and her job was to keep us kids entertained over those blazingly hot summer months. We loved her immediately – although we never knew her name, we dubbed her the "Park Teacher." In terms of popularity, she was a close second only to Santa Claus himself. Long before text messaging or tweeting, the Park Teacher's arrival in the park on any afternoon would result in dozens of children arriving within minutes to see what she had brought.
I vividly remember my mother giving me a quarter that day to purchase one of the plaster statues, and that I spent a good deal of time carefully considering how I would paint it. I selected two or three paintbrushes and poured various paints into small plastic cups.
As I arranged my art supplies in front of me I became vaguely aware of a presence near me. I turned to see a small group of teenage boys, whom I recognized as some of the neighborhood troublemakers, and therefore the unspoken threat to my safety. I quickly returned my focus to the statue in front of me, silently hoping that they would retreat to the other side of the park where the "bad" kids hung out. But the boys seemed intrigued by what I was doing and one of them approached me and said, "Hey, move over will ya? I want to use the blue paint." I shifted over on the bench and he sat down beside me. The rest of the boys quickly joined us and the five of us proceeded to work on our art projects for the next few hours, admiring each other's pieces and offering words of encouragement.
The Park Teacher's impact on my neighborhood, and other Detroit neighborhoods, should not be trivialized. For many years these patient individuals provided a much-needed service to Detroit youth and helped to galvanize a community. If you look closely, you might see a correlation between this type of city-supported arts and athletics program and what we, today, call creative placemaking. Whatever it was, it was fantastic, and all it took was a teacher and some art supplies.