East Bay Cultural Center
Open to the public, RSVP requested
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The Public Art/Housing Publics: Conversations on Art and Social Justice symposium will explore innovative collaborations across cultural and social justice sectors. How can we sustain affordable housing and healthy neighborhoods in our communities? How can we sustain a thriving artistic life for our citizens? Most importantly, how can we answer both of these questions together? Timed to coincide with the residency of UC-Berkeley Regents Lecturer, Rick Lowe of Project Row Houses, participants will include artists, scholars, civic organizers, and affordable housing developers from around the Bay Area.
Schedule:
1pm: Introduction with Shannon Jackson, ARC Director
1:15-3:15pm: Taking Ownership: Grass-Roots Place-Based Art, Housing,and Community Development
Featuring: Elena Serrano, Executive Director, Eastside Arts Alliance; and Eastside Cultural Center partners; Aubra Levine, Senior Project Manager, Satellite Affordable Housing Associates (SAHA); among others. Rick Lowe will act as respondent.
What does it take for a neighborhood-based arts organization to secure its future? Does owning your own building help? What kind of partnerships and cross-sector communication does non-profit real estate development require? What is the connection between housing and art? What does place-based creativity mean, and how does ownership in the broadest sense relate to authenticity? The partners who created the Eastside Cultural Center will discuss the development of the original center, which includes space for community arts creation and 16 units of affordable housing, and their current plans to build more units as well as expand arts programming.
3:30-5:30pm: Artists Working Across Sectors: New Knowledges and Scales of Practice
Featuring: Walter J. Hood, UC Berkeley Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning and Urban Design, Jordan Simmons, Artistic Director, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts; and Raquel Gutierrez, YBCA In Community Program Manager, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, among others. Rick Lowe will act as respondent.
This session explores the new knowledges, techniques, and vocabularies that social justice artists have acquired to depend and to extend their practice. Panelists discuss the obstacles and opportunities for imagining their work at different scales; considering issues of immigration, gentrification, urban planning, cultural policy, land rights, and environmentalism, they discuss their personal and collective strategies for working across sectors.
5:30pm-6:00pm: Closing Remarks
Note: Symposium participants are welcome to attend the Museum’s L@TE event, though a paid admission is required.
Public Art/Housing Publics: Conversations on Art and Social Justice is co-sponsored by The Arts Research Center, the Global Urban Humanities Initiative, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and UC-Berkeley Regents Lecture series. Special thanks to Amanda Eicher and OPENrestaurant.