Artists in Residence

It’s an unusually warm Tuesday afternoon, and a group of Collinwood artists and other community members are sitting patiently in the work area at Azure Stained Glass Studio on Waterloo Road. The group is in the middle of sheet after sheet of brightly colored glass art, the beautiful work of neighborhood artists Mary Zodnik and Ben Parsons. They’re waiting to hear about a major new initiative launching in the North Collinwood neighborhood.

 Then the news comes. Collinwood has been selected to host Artists in Residence, a two-year, $500,000 initiative designed to increase artists’ role in neighborhood revitalization.  

 Thanks to Leveraging Investments in Creativity and the Kresge Foundation, two national arts funders, the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and Northeast Shores Development Corporation have been given the ability to launch a giant experiment to ask: What happens when the neighborhood helps artists … And when we ask artists to help the neighborhood.

 Between now and 2013, the program will provide artists with small loans to help them buy or fix up properties in the Waterloo area (and for long-term artists, to rehab their existing properties elsewhere in the neighborhood), as well as small grants to carry out community projects together with non-artist residents. The program will also work to help artists connect with other homeownership services and will market the neighborhood and the city as a good place for artists to live and work.

 Over the next two years, leaders across the country will be looking at what’s happening in Collinwood to see what happens when artists play a bigger role in community work. They’ll be studying what makes Collinwood special. But then we already know the answer to that.

 Art Grows Along the Railyards

 Artists in Residence is just the latest step in a long history of artists making a difference in the Collinwood neighborhood. Since the days when you could walk down Waterloo to the railyards, neighborhood residents were singing, dancing and painting the neighborhood’s history and culture. From the days of local music legend Frankie Yankovic, Collinwood has been an epicenter for Eastern European performances. You can still enjoy a good polka at the Slovenian Workmen’s Home on Friday nights.

 But we all know that this isn’t just the Polka King Neighborhood. This is a community of painting and photography and sculpture and writing. It’s punk. It’s rock and roll. It’s a place where art is making a real difference.

 Take a look at the Beachland Ballroom. When long-time resident Cindy Barber opened the doors of this nationally celebrated music hall back in 2000, Waterloo storefronts were 70% vacant. Eleven years later, the street is dotted with artsy shops, and the vacancy rate has dropped to less than 25%.

 This is no accident. It’s no coincidence, either. It’s the hard work and passion of Barber, dedicated organizations like Arts Collinwood and Northeast Shores and hundreds of concerned citizens that keep our community safe, economically healthy and a good place to raise a family.

 From Rust Belt to Artist Belt

 Back in 2009, the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture started holding an annual conference called From Rust Belt to Artist Belt. The idea was simple – we need to start networking with other industrial cities and see how they’re getting artists involved in neighborhood work. We need to start sharing our stories and figuring out how to make the “Rust Belt” a place where artists can live and work at a fraction of the cost of coastal cities. And we need to celebrate what artists are doing to turn our industrial cities around.

 What we learned was that artists are making a huge difference. Pittsburgh’s Penn Avenue Arts Initiative, where artists and arts groups got access to loans and grants like in Collinwood’s Artists in Residence program, saw vacancy rates along the street drop from 45% to 20% in just 10 years. Artists have carried out dozens of educational projects with neighborhood kids. In the mill town of Paducah, Ky., more than 50 artists have moved into the Lower Town neighborhood, renovating falling-apart Victorian houses and converting them into art galleries and bed-and-breakfasts. Detroit’s Heidelberg Project has grown from one artist protesting vacant housing with his art to a neighborhood-wide education and tourism program.

 Investing in Rust Belt artists works. From St. Louis to Buffalo to our very own Collinwood, we’re standing up and saying, it’s time to celebrate what makes us strong and to address what makes us weak. Let’s work together, artists and non-artists, and figure out how to make Collinwood the best community we possibly can.

 Something From the Neighborhood, For the Neighborhood

 Over the next several months, Northeast Shores and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture will be talking to residents a lot. We’ll be holding one-on-one interviews, conducting neighborhood surveys and holding neighborhood meetings.

 The reason? We want the people who live in Collinwood, and the people who care about Collinwood, and the people who have ideas about Collinwood to help us build the Artists in Residence program. In the end, this program is a program for the neighborhood, and we want it to be designed by the neighborhood.

 We want to hear from residents, whether you’re an artist or not, about what type of art projects you would like to see happen over the next couple years. We want to hear about what your vision is for the future of the community and about anything that’s getting in the way of that vision coming true.

 Together, we’re going to build something powerful and meaningful. But we can’t do it without your help.

 For more information about the Artists in Residence program, please contact Northeast Shores Development Corporation at 216.481.7660 or info@northeastshores.org.