Executive Summary
This research project will uncover how artistic artifacts, events, and practices, promote and thwart civic engagement and social cohesion in gentrifying communities. The proposal fits within the CNCS funding priority: determining how civic engagement and social cohesion are defined, measured, developed, or hindered at the community and neighborhood level. Substantial social science research has revealed that (1) civic engagement is more prominent in communities that experience social cohesion and (2) gentrification destabilizes social cohesion. Building off of this research, this study intends to determine the role of art in hindering and encouraging civic engagement and social cohesion in changing urban neighborhoods in Washington DC and Los Angeles, CA--two artistically prolific and diverse cities, experiencing differing degrees of gentrification.
This community-based participatory research (CBPR) project will focus on visual and aural formations of civic agency and inclusive and exclusive expression from the perspectives of local residents experiencing their neighborhoods in flux. The study's significance is demonstrated, not only in its exploration of art as a major factor within the processes of civic engagement, social cohesion and gentrification, but also in its original research design. It will supplement social science research methods with innovative artistic research methods to investigate the complex and contradictory role that art plays in the shifting neighborhoods and the ways it resonates with different inhabitants. These participatory methods include quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews, and artistic-based research photography and documentary filmmaking. In addition to providing an in-depth study of art and civic engagement in gentrifying neighborhoods, this project will also produce best practices for employing art as a mode of civic expression and social inclusion in diverse and fluctuating environments based on the research findings.
Research Objectives, Background, and Conceptual Framework
This study will explore how artistic artifacts, events, and practices encourage and hinder social cohesion and civic engagement in gentrifying communities. The proposal responds to the first CNCS funding priority: determining how civic engagement and social cohesion are defined, measured, developed, or hindered at the community and neighborhood level. Honing in on visual and aural formations of civic agency and inclusive and exclusive expression, this research project will unpack the complex and contradictory roles that art plays in changing urban neighborhoods in Washington, DC and Los Angeles, CA, two artistically rich and diverse cities experiencing varying degrees of gentrification. For example, U Street, in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was coined "Black Broadway" because well-known performers, such as Duke Ellington and Pearl Bailey frequented its clubs and theaters in the early twentieth century. In the 1970s, in conjunction with the Chicano movement in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, mural painting became a popular form of artistic and political expression. As the neighborhoods change over time, their identities and appeal remain deeply tied to their artistic histories.
Main Questions:
* How are communities depicted in the changing neighborhoods by their inhabitants?
* How do these inhabitants perceive of their responsibilities to these communities through civic engagement?
* What is the role of art in defining, developing, and hindering social cohesion and civic engagement in the two gentrifying neighborhoods in DC and LA?
* How can arts be used as an accessible way to explore and develop social cohesion and civic engagement?
This projecting is building off of the substantial social science research that illustrates (1) civic engagement is more prominent in socially cohesive communities and (2) gentrification disrupts social cohesion (Prewitt et al., 2014; Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Putnam, 2000; Lees, 2008; Ruble, 2003; Hudson et al., 2007). Through gentrification, once homogenous ethnic, working-class neighborhoods transform as (typically white) newcomers with higher socioeconomic status infiltrate the area. In this process, competing values, norms, and goals arise as a consequence of the cohabitation of diverse populations and unequal power dynamics within community spaces. Public affairs researchers Stephenson and Tate argue: "Because of their peculiar power, the arts may play profound roles both in revealing the contradictions implicit in extant imaginaries and in assisting citizens in posing orcatalyzing new possibilities" (2015; p.5). Artistic practices, such as artmaking and arts education in photography, murals, and dance as well as events, such as gallery exhibitions, festivals, and theatricalperformances can enable wealthier newcomers and longstanding inhabitants to communicate andshare their ways of life and produce social cohesion through collective production and expression. Thisproduction and expression can impact the political and nonpolitical engagement variables that makeup civic engagement, described by Prewitt et al. in Civic Engagement and Social Cohesion: Measuring
Dimensions of Social Capital to Inform Policy (2014). These variables include joining associations,working for campaigns, volunteering, and staying civically informed (p.36). Art practices can be usedas tools for both peaceful civic engagement, such as installation art, or disruptive dissent, such asgraffiti and vandalism. These practices produce visible evidence of the multiple forms of communityidentification and participation that this research project will capture by combining quantitative andqualitative research methods with arts-based methods in a community-based participatory research(CBPR) study.
Whereas significant quantitative and qualitative research has demonstrated that social cohesionconnects to civic engagement (Prewitt et al., 2014; Forrest and Kearns, 2001; Putnam, 2000) and thatgentrification destabilizes social cohesion (Lees, 2008; Ruble, 2003; Hudson et al., 2007), this projectexplores the role of art in developing and/or hindering civic engagement--and thus social cohesion—inthese shifting environments. Its significance is situated not only in connecting art to civic engagementand gentrification, but also in its original research design. The project will supplement social scienceresearch methods with innovative artistic research methods in order to holistically capture thedynamism of the changing neighborhood and the ways it resonates with different inhabitants. Theseparticipatory methods include quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews and artistic-based researchphotography and documentary filmmaking.
OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this research project are to determine, within shifting neighborhoods,how community members: (1) identify their community and (2) their responsibility to civicallyengage in it; (3) consider art artifacts, practices and events as modes through which they can (orcannot) civically engage and feel socially connected. The objectives also consider how art (4) can beused as an innovative and participatory research method (5) and as a mode through which to betterunderstand and develop social cohesion and civic engagement.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Artists have been considered the first wave of gentrification thatdisplaces working class ethnic families by enhancing the neighborhood's cultural capital and enticinga second wave of commercial capital (Zukin, 1982; 2010; Lloyd, 2010; Deener, 2012; Ley, 2003). InBoyle Heights, a predominantly Latino (94%) neighborhood in East Los Angeles, longtime residentshave organized a resistance movement to combat the surge of a dozen new art galleries recentlyestablished in the neighborhood for fear of gentrification. The resistance has included protest artsignage, mariachis, graphic art, and graffiti (Gonzalez, NPR, 2017; Nazaryan, Newsweek, 2017;Chang, Los Angeles Times, 2017). Within Los Angeles County, the economic and education status ofthis area is low and the proportion of Latino minorities is high. In Boyle Heights, the median income is $33,235; about one third of residents live below the poverty line (Gonzalez, 2017). The area hasbeen the site of a rich history of Chicano culture and activism in Los Angeles, which includes collectiveart practices from printmaking and mural painting to mariachi musical performances (Pardo, 1998).
As of 2000, 5% of resident adults over the age of 25 had received 4-year degrees (Mapping LA:
Eastside Boyle Heights, Los Angeles Times). This research project intends to uncover the complicatedrole art plays in the participation and inclusive and exclusive community-building that occursbetween the longtime predominantly Latino residents and the new swell of artists and gallery owners.
The Shaw/U Street neighborhood in Washington, DC has undergone demographic changes in the lastdecade and is thus further along in the trajectory of diversification. Urban scholar, Derek Hyra arguesthat this neighborhood has undergone atypical gentrification in that Shaw's authentic black culturaland artistic history has played a large role in drawing new inhabitants to the area (2017). Whilelongstanding residents negotiate their place and claim over the neighborhood where they grew up,new commercial and cultural developments integrate the musical and artistic past into the area'spresent, including a new luxury building named Duke Ellington or a popular restaurant namedMarvin (after DC-born Motown artist Marvin Gaye). Whereas in Boyle Heights, art gallery protestersfeel disconnected from the art galleries moving in, Hyra argues that part of the white influx is due tothe cultural appreciation for the neighborhood's rich artistic history. The demographics of Shaw, ahistorically black neighborhood present a diverse mix of residents--50% black, 30% white, 11%Hispanic, and 7% Asian according to the neighborhood's census data (NeighborhoodInfo DC, 2017).
Almost half of the population is between the ages of 22--39 (44.5%). Yet, according to Hyra, a closerlook at the neighborhood reveals socioeconomic and racial segregation, or diversity segregation, inwhich the neighborhood has been divided up by specific groups depending on their racial, ethnic, andsocioeconomic makeup (2017). Uncovering how residents identify their communities, connect to theirneighborhoods, and civically participate via art will illustrate the connections and distinctions betweenthe diverse inhabitants and the power dynamics at play socioeconomically and culturally—thusillustrating the important connection between art and civic agency and participation.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: Communities represent, communicate, and develop identitiesthrough artistic artifacts, such as murals and cultural practices such as printmaking. In Keywords,Raymond Williams explains that the differing meanings in art or culture are "primarily embedded inactual relationships, and that both the meanings and the relationships are typically diverse andvariable, within the structures of particular social orders and the processes of social and historicalchange" (1976, p.21-22). This research project uses Williams's conceptual framework to understandthe multifaceted roles art plays in shaping and reshaping the social relationships, experiences, andmeaning systems embedded within changing urban neighborhoods to better understand how peopleidentify their communities and their responsibility to them.
This project will solicit perspectives from people encountering their environments in flux—thuscreating a research and artistic platform that gives equal voice and agency to those with lesssocioeconomic power in their shifting neighborhoods. This project's conceptual framework combinesWilliams's examination of culture with bell hooks' aesthetic intervention from Art on My Mind. Hooksinvestigates art as an integral part of a community's collective well-being and response, particularlyfor underserved communities and racial and ethnic minorities (1995). She asserts that art creates twodifferent collective responses: "first, recognition of the familiar--that is, we see in art something thatresembles what we know--and, second, that we look with the received understanding that art isnecessarily a terrain of defamiliarization: it may take what we see/know and make us look at it in anew way" (p4). This leads her to claim that art practices and products can be both exclusionary andtransformative for underserved populations, bringing people together and/or segregating them,enabling them to express themselves and/or silencing them (1995). This project intends to uncoverhow people consider art to be a mode of engagement and social cohesion as well as a hindrance. Italso intends to determine and share how it can best be used as an agent of participation and inclusion.
Research Design and Work Plan
RESEARCH DESIGN: This mixed-method CBPR project will explore local residents' perceptions ofcivic engagement, their community's identification, and social cohesion in their gentrifyingneighborhoods via quantitative, qualitative, and arts-based methods in response to CNCS's solicitationfor innovative in-depth studies to complement data collection conducted by the federal statisticalsystem. The CBPR approach has been argued to be an effective approach to engage communitymembers as researchers within a study because it breaks down the limiting constraints and prescribedpower dynamics between the researcher and participants (Hacker, 2013; Beckman and Long, 2016;Paris and Winn, 2014; Aldridge, 2015). This approach includes community partners as coinvestigatorswith skills and expertise that enhance the relevance and applicability of the research.How best to incite civic engagement and social cohesion than through the process of participatoryresearch on civic engagement and social cohesion? Social theorist Arjun Appadurai asserts that theability to gain strategic knowledge through research is fundamental to participation in a democraticsociety (2006). This project relies on its diverse methods, particularly photography and film, asaccessible entry points for community members become involved.
To conduct a CBPR project, the PI will train a group of four undergraduate students and one graduatestudent in CBPR social science and artistic research methods. The group will work with two nonprofitart organizations: RT Arts Conservatory in Los Angeles, CA and YR inWashington, DC. These two organizations educate neighborhood youth through after schoolprograms in art practices and community engagement within the neighborhoods discussed above. TheBP University team will host a series of eight workshops and supplemental meetings for agroup of 10 local high school students to learn how to conduct CBPR in their communities, byemploying surveys, conducting interviews and taking photographs. These young people are agents oftheir longstanding communities and the changing social and cultural capital that comes with artseducation. They will work with the BP team to: (1) help create and implement a survey forneighborhood residents that will be administered at local grocery stores; (2) take pictures of thevarious forms of artistic expression and civic engagement that they witness in their neighborhoods;and (3) help interview community members at the organizations to discuss civic engagement andtheir feeling about being connected or disconnected to the photographs taken by the high schoolstudents in their changing neighborhoods. Simultaneously the PI will also direct two short-form
documentaries on art and civic participation and social cohesion within these gentrifyingneighborhoods to show the public expressions of civic engagement and social cohesion; dynamismand contradictions in the neighborhoods; and the role of art in community identity at the same timethe films will provide intimate points of views from the interview subjects.
Data Collection: Step 1: The surveys will be created with the team of high school and college studentsduring a workshop with structured guidance from the PI. The PI will share the categories andvariables used by Prewitt et al. (2014) to describe civic engagement and social cohesion. The purposeof the surveys will be to find out how residents of Shaw and Boyle Heights (1) identify theircommunities andneighborhood; (2) identify their responsibility to their communities and/or neighborhood; (3) identify who they feel connected to generally; (4) define civic engagement; (5)consider the role of art in their communities; and (6) consider the role of art in their lives.Demographic data will be collected as well. These surveys will consist of mostly closed categoricalrequests with a few open-ended request questions. Already familiar with the neighborhoods, the highschool students will help ensure that the terms and concepts are appropriate and accessible. They willbe created using Qualtrics. During the next two workshops, the whole research team will frequent twogrocery stores in the neighborhood to pass out the surveys in Spanish and English to local residents.The sample size for Boyle Heights and Shaw will consist of the first 100 people who randomly agree totake the survey and live or work in the two neighborhoods. Five-dollar grocery store certificates will beoffered as incentives for participation.
Step 2: The high school students, already photography students from the partnering organizations,will use the workshop and their own time to photograph their neighborhoods documenting instancesof cultural expression, civic engagement, and community identity-formation. Photography engagesyouth in research and builds on their expertise as art students with particular lenses through whichthey see and experience their neighborhoods. (Lodge, 2009; Holm, 2014; Leavy, 2015). They will thenchoose the photographs they would like to use to prompt discussions with interviewees.
Step 3: The interviewees will be randomly selected from the surveys. The surveys will ask therespondents if they would be willing to participate in a filmed interview about art and civicengagement in their neighborhoods. At each site, the research team will conduct 15 semi-structured30 minute interviews that ask the participants to expand on the issues discussed in the surveys.Interviewees will also be given the opportunity to discuss their relationship to 5--10 chosenphotographs of the neighborhood to understand how participants identify and relate to differentaspects and activities in their neighborhoods. The undergraduate students will transcribe theinterviews.
Step 4: The PI will direct two 12-minute films throughout the research process (McNiff, 2008; Baroneand Eisner, 2011; Haberlin, 2017). Prewitt, et al. (2014) have asserted how challenging it is to definesocial cohesion and civic engagement and ascertain information from quantitative measures alone.Filmmaking will capture the affective reactions people have when describing their communityidentities, civic agency, and the inclusion/exclusion they experience in their neighborhoods, thusproviding an intimate and authentic depiction of how they internalize and perceive of theirparticipation in their communities and/or neighborhoods. To offset the personal interview excerpts inthe film, scenes that depict the external and public manifestations of civic engagement and socialcohesion will be interspersed, providing a multifaceted portrayal of how art and civic engagement areinternally and externally experienced processes of identification and socialization.