The Arts Continue to Build Community in Albany Park

The Arts Continue to Build Community in Albany Park

The North River Commission, which fosters comprehensive community development to improve the quality of life in Albany Park, historically focused on housing and economic development, participating in arts and culture-oriented projects on a somewhat ad-hoc basis. The organization co-sponsored an arts festival here and worked on programs with local schools there, but the agency did not intentionally focus on the arts as a strategy for community development.

About five years ago, NRC began to hear from area residents that someone needed to do so because the arts were not sufficiently supported in their community, and the agency decided to make the subject more central to its agenda during a strategic planning process underway at the time. In 2005, NRC launched a two-year planning process called the Futures Forum, through which hundreds of community leaders set forth common visions and goals in the areas of economic development, education, housing, arts and culture, and parks and open spaces.

When LISC/Chicago launched its two-year Building Community for the Arts program around that same time with support from The Joyce Foundation, NRC saw it as a natural fit. BCA was built upon the “engage, plan, act, document” model pioneered in LISC’s successful New Communities Program, aimed at building similar integration among programs – both among community agencies and within LISC itself -- but focused more specifically on how the arts ties into the larger sphere of comprehensive community development.

“It was a perfect opportunity for us to be doing that kind of planning,” says Melissa McDaniel, Program Director of NRC. “All the things we were learning about arts and culture, we funneled into BCA.” This has led to arts being infused across-the-board into NRC’s other programs, such as education and economic development. “BCA has been the starting point for helping NRC create an arts-and-culture program,” she says.

As one of the three communities to participate in BCA, along with South Chicago and Humboldt Park, Albany Park began “Early Action Projects” and finished its “Arts-in-Action Plan” in mid-2006, based on a vision to increase arts and culture programming and promote diversity, and the constellation of agencies who participated began implementing their strategically integrated projects in 2007.

These efforts have also dovetailed with -- and drawn greater energy and sophistication from -- two other LISC/Chicago projects. In 2008, LISC/MetroEdge conducted one of its signature soup-to-nuts retail studies that provide analyses of how much consumer spending “leaks” from a neighborhood both overall and in specific categories.

And also in 2008, Albany Park was named the first community in LISC’s Great Neighborhoods program, a slimmed down, lower-budget successor to the New Communities Program, which focused on commercial revitalization and arts and culture as key priorities, and which will support BCA’s objectives going forward.

Early Projects and Full Strategies
Perhaps the first project to emerge from BCA was the North River After-School Collaborative (NRASC), which began in 2006 while the planning process was still underway, with a $150,000 grant from the Illinois State Board of Education. The grant led to a total of 11 after-school arts programs in nine schools in the community.

“This was the community saying, ‘We need this enrichment for our kids. After-school programs are needed for working parents,’ ” says Rebecca Rico, Project Coordinator for BCA. McDaniel notes it led to programs ranging from a revived band at one school, to an in-school publishing house at another.

During 2007-08, with the ambitious but realistic plan in place, NRC and its partners implemented the full scope of the Arts-in-Action Plan, built on four strategies: strengthening the multi-cultural community identity and celebrate the history; expanding the availability of arts and cultural opportunities for school children; establishing Albany Park as a premier destination for shopping, dining, culture and entertainment; and promoting and supporting local artists and cultural organizations.

Probably the most significant project that stemmed from BCA, under the first strategy and still a work-in-progress, is a multicultural sculpture park and healing garden that NRC and its partners plan to build in Ronan Park, along the north branch of the Chicago River. The garden will give the Albany Park community a place to heal through gardening, educating others through public art, and celebrating diversity. As a destination at the community’s eastern gateway, the garden could help leverage economic development in the neighborhood by enticing people to patronize restaurants and other businesses.

Another very visible project to come out of BCA has been the light-pole banners hung along Lawrence and Kedzie avenues, which serves to buttress the destination-making strategy around those central streets. A competition funded through BCA and the Joyce Foundation, in which a dozen local artists participated, resulted in a multicolored design showcasing Albany Park as Chicago’s Gateway to the World. The banners were designed by an immigrant from Poland attending nearby Northeastern Illinois University, which Rico says fits the feel of the community nicely.

Collaboration and Relationships Forged
BCA helped to forge new or expanded relationships with area residents and businesses, including most particularly artists and arts incubators, as well as a variety of other institutions who have been connected to the process through a mix of projects, most notably the sculpture garden.

The Cambodian Association of Illinois, Lawrence Hall Youth Services and Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) have been the lead partners along with NRC. Other BCA partners have included The Old Town School of Folk Music, North Park University, the Chicago Park District, Guatemalan Cultural Community Organization, and Korean American Community Services.

“It was an opportunity to expand relationships and re-establish relationships,” McDaniel says, “which is great for us and for the community.” NRC relied on partners for input, planning and implementation – “all phases of the process,” she says. These links provided a variety of benefits, for example, NEIU waiving its customary fees to allow the NRC and its partners to hold a daylong CPS parent forum in its student union building.

The BCA effort led to partnerships that went beyond Albany Park, as well, to include citywide and regional institutions like NeighborSpace and Chicago Botanic Garden. The Chicago Children’s Choir provided inspiration and information to NRC and its partners, which led to the founding of the Albany Park Neighborhood Choir, an after-school project that began with 40 children and now has 58.

In turn, NRC helped the choir – the eighth such community choir that the Children’s Choir has founded -- find rehearsal space at nearby North Park University’s Anderson Chapel, which has turned out to be a win-win. “They call it the Cadillac of their choir spaces,” McDaniel says with a laugh. “They’re usually in church basements.”

Challenges Faced
BCA created a number of challenges for NRC and its partners, starting with the process-related issue of finding ways to work together to create their multifaceted, multipartite plan aimed at promoting greater integration of arts and culture and community development strategies across agencies.

Finding land for certain projects proved a significant challenge given the density of the community. No one expected the circuitous path to the securing of a site for the sculpture garden, originally planned on land owned by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District at Lawrence Avenue, west of the Chicago River, which fell through when the MWRD decided it might need the land for its own purposes and EPA issues turned up.

“It was never a lack of community involvement or enthusiasm,” McDaniel says. “Physical projects are always the most difficult to realize – persistence, patience and perseverance are always needed – whether it’s affordable housing, transit-oriented development, or a sculpture park.”

That experience prompted NRC and its partners to “jump on the opportunity” when they found out Ronan Park was going to be expanded, Rico says. The process has Alderman Mell’s blessing and awaits Chicago Park District approval. NRC does not lack for partners in the effort, which she terms “an opportunity and a challenge.”

MetroEdge Impact
The MetroEdge report, released in April 2009, pointed to an array of retail opportunities based on the buying power of the neighborhood – and revealed how arts, culture and entertainment could play a more significant and strategic role. The main strategy that emerged was to change the perception of Albany Park as crime-plagued or, at best, too far off the beaten track to be worth visiting.

The resulting marketing campaign for Albany Park touted cultural attractions like the Cambodian Museum in addition to ethnic restaurants. “We didn’t want to say, ‘Eat and leave,’ ” says Liz Griffiths, Director of the Albany Park Chamber of Commerce and Lawrence Avenue Development Corp. (LADCOR), for which MetroEdge performed the study. “Create an evening out of it. That was an important outcome of MetroEdge: It showed the opportunities.”

The report has underscored “the understanding that there are always opportunities for the arts, in every project,” Griffiths says. Most centrally, as the Chicago Transit Authority works through its planning process toward the TOD at Lawrence and Kimball, community agencies should “think intentionally about what the building will look like. How will [the arts] be incorporated?” she says.

Another tie-in between BCA and MetroEdge has been efforts to encourage businesses to display the work of local artists – both to spruce up their interiors and to promote the work of the artists, including teenagers from the local Lawrence Hall Youth Services agency. The MetroEdge also report has helped to inspire targeted marketing efforts like the calendar of events on NRC’s Web site, which publicizes everything from movie nights hosted by civic organizations, to park district events.

Online audio slideshows and the “Burnham Tours” held in conjunction with the celebration of the 100th year anniversary of the Burnham Plan in 2009 – which will be expanded in 2010 after sell-outs last year – provided further opportunities to change perceptions of the neighborhood. “They were talking about change of perception, and we thought, ‘How better to do that than through highlighting our cultural diversity?’ ” McDaniel says.

In May, the Albany Park Chamber of Commerce together with NRC co-sponsored “Bon Appetit,” a restaurant crawl including 18 local establishments. The event drew in 150 people who traveled from establishment to establishment in buses provided by NRC.

Recent Projects Through Great Neighborhoods
The spirit of BCA has carried into The Great Neighborhoods program, launched in 2008, which focused on arts and culture, neighborhood revitalization and communication among its chief strategies for the first year and is adding affordable housing to its plate this year. The community’s participation in Great Neighborhoods has led to other opportunities based on the track record of BCA.

Among the more visible projects to date has been a summer “Concerts in the Parks” series that began in 2009, drawing a total of 800 people to three events, and is continuing this year with events through Aug. 5. “We saw that as an opportunity to showcase that Ronan Park is an underutilized space in our community and could be a community gathering place,” McDaniel says. “We showed that would be the best space for the sculpture garden.”

NRC began (AP)²: Albany Park Art Project this past spring to foster community participation in beautifying the neighborhood. The project encourages building owners of empty storefronts to allow NRC to install area school students’ work on display in their windows, “so they’re not an eyesore, which taps into the pedestrian-friendly and safety issues,” McDaniel says. This project also includes local artists and many artists previously unknown to NRC who have begun participating in the project and at the commission’s community meetings.

NRC continues to work with schools involved in NRASC. When the ISBE grant ended in 2007, NRC continued to be a connection and resource for the schools, helping some obtain foundation grants on their own, including a grant from the Field Foundation that went to two of them, as well as teaching administrators and parents the “how-to’s” of writing a grant.

“The [grant writing] training is continuing,” Rico says. “We just had a successful workshop on how to diversify your funding beyond Chicago Public Schools and the state – how to tell your story, write a proposal, everything from start to finish.” In spring, NRC sponsored another workshop focused on best practices, titled “Proposal Writing 101.” Added Griffiths, “NRC’s role is evolving from writing grants, to teaching people how to write grants.”

The shrinking funding pool now that BCA has ended and Great Neighborhoods has begun means that NRC and its partners will need to become more creative in finding money, Rico says. “We’ve been talking to many foundations for the past several years,” McDaniel says. “This year we’ve really branched out to our elected officials,” such as state Rep. Deborah Mell, State Sen. Iris Martinez, and U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, all of whom have expressed support for the sculpture garden; Quigley specifically has asked for an application for capital dollars for 2011 appropriation funds.

Both he and Mell have come through for NRC and its partners already. Quigley pulled in $100,000 for after-school arts programming in 10 schools for the 2010-11 school year, while Mell secured a $25,000 state grant into the capital budget for the Montrose and Kedzie node, which could be used to extend the light-pole banners and other seeds of street life like mosaic planters and benches.

NRC and its partners also have secured pro bono help, mostly for the sculpture garden: including about $50,000 worth from architect Tannys Langdon, who sketched a two site designs for the sculpture garden; $10,000 from NEIU for the bases and installation of the sculptures; $10,000 from the Chicago Botanic Garden for the time of a plantsman as well as plants for ornamental gardens; and $5,000 to $10,000 apiece for the sculptures themselves, McDaniel figures.

“That [sculpture garden] is going to be the major initiative that we hang our hat on,” predicts McDaniel. “It will benefit multiple stakeholders, showcase our artistic [talent] and cultural diversity, and provide an opportunity for healing.”

BCA in Humboldt Park
BCA has established similar momentum in the two other communities where the Joyce Foundation funded planning efforts and projects: Humboldt Park, led by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center; and South Chicago, led during the planning process by the Southeast Chicago Development Commission and during more recent project implementation by Claretian Associates.