South Shore Journal - The South Shore Journal - An electronic publication ISSN 1933-8163

Back to the Drawing Board: A Community Focus on Urban Renewal through Arts and Culture

The South Shore Journal, Vol. 2, 2007, pp.i-viii.

Editor’s Introduction

Back to the Drawing Board: A Community Focus on Urban Renewal through
Arts and Culture

Drs. Eva Mendieta and Robin Hass Birky

Indiana University Northwest

On November 2-4, 2006, international experts from Spain, England, and the United States joined local cultural and community leaders, artists, city planners, legislators, business groups, and theoreticians to explore the role arts and culture play in urban renewal.  During this three-day dialogue at Indiana University Northwest entitled Drawing the Lines:  International Perspectives on Urban Renewal through the Arts(www.iun.edu/~dtlines), these individuals examined various approaches and their debatable effects on the quality of life in the communities that arts and culture influence.  This conference was particularly timely because Northwest Indiana has just begun a process of transformation and could benefit greatly from lessons gleaned from cities around the world that are at the other end of the transformation; these cities have already experienced urban renewal using a variety of different models, and Northwest Indiana can learn from their success as well as the challenges and roadblocks they faced.  As one way to continue this conversation, the editorial board of the South Shore Journal chose “urban renewal through the arts and culture” as the theme for its 2007-2008 issue.  Keeping the global perspectives of Drawing the Lines in mind and examining the local and regional approaches to and implications of urban renewal via arts and culture, this issue of the South Shore Journal brings us “back to the drawing board” albeit with a local rather than an international focus.

To understand the various approaches to renewal, one must first grasp the economic degradation a place experiences as it “de-industrializes” and the need to reinvent its identity and destiny.  Factory and mill closures lead to high unemployment rates, civil unrest, and poverty, and the community must deal with the effects of environmental pollution related to long-term industrial activity.¹  As one such industrialized region, Northwest Indiana’s history is closely linked to the steel industry and its expansion from Chicago along the shore of Lake Michigan.  With the construction of the Inland Steel plant, Northwest Indiana became home to thousands of steel workers from across the United States and various parts of the world.  As the steel industry grew in the region, it attracted other industries, which either serviced the mills themselves or processed the raw material coming from the mills.  During the 1960s, the region’s economic prosperity was impaired by the dismantling of a considerable part of its industrial operations due to its inability to compete in the international steel market.  Like other “steel cities” throughout the world, the “Region” must transform and re-invent itself in order to survive and thrive in these new socio-economic conditions.

In recent decades, urban areas, particularly industrialized regions, have approached their reorganization and transformation with disparate techniques ranging from large-scale capital projects (such as museums or sports arenas) to public art initiatives and less expensive cultural programs.²  Perhaps, the most famous contemporary example remains the transformation of the Spanish city of Bilbao from a steel city in crisis into an international icon for arts and culture; as such, this city represents one paradigm for urban renaissance that has inspired much interest and study as a model across the globe.³  Similar to Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, other cities now sport their own opera houses or athletic stadiums, providing the flagship project approach to urban renewal.

Research suggests that a focus on arts and culture can lead to significant economic renewal for a community.  Time and again, the development or recovery of cultural districts has clearly shown positive economic impact; such districts attract artists, residents, and tourists who patronize local businesses thereby bringing money into the local economy.⁴  As this cycle continues, the image enhancement of the location brings additional economic and human resources, and the resulting increase in property values adds to the tax base and, in turn, leads to prospective development.  At the same time, such development can often veer toward a process of gentrification and displacement of residents in lower socio-economic brackets.⁵  Nevertheless, the capital projects and cultural programs that comprise many of the urban renewal initiatives have led to major economic growth, attracting small businesses and larger corporations alongside painters, writers, and musicians.⁶

In addition to the obvious economic effects, urban renewal through arts and culture frequently leads to the reduction of offending behavior, especially youth crime rates.  Dramatic, musical, and artistic performances and education provide positive activities in which youth can engage, diverting them from the more dangerous acts associated with poverty-stricken communities and the life expectations of the underprivileged.⁷  Renewal does not have to be an imported structure; instead, it should flow from the very traditions of the place and its people.  For instance, Mark Spencer’s Gary-based West Side Theatre Guild [http://www.wstg.org/ ] has not only created award winning cinematic productions but has also included local youths in those performances.    Such initiatives also develop community members’ self-confidence and affirm local community identity, focusing on youths as the foundation of the area’s future.

Emphasizing authentic renewal, that is renewal based on the historical and cultural identity of the place and the people who inhabit it, urban renewal through the arts and culture can have a profound impact on the social fabric of the community, enhancing image reconstruction, identity reaffirmation and formation, and social cohesion.⁸  For example, the Gary Historic Midtown-Central District Project has involved mapping key locations with significance to the history of Gary as well as archiving the “Gary Sound,” the rich musical heritage of the city.  In addition, the youth in Cherise Glenn’s NAACP Reginald F. Lewis Youth Entrepreneurial Institute have acquired the skills and knowledge necessary to creating their own local enterprises as well as using those skills to create a historical documentary of Gary, thereby empowering these young people to feel pride in their environment and to rebuild the community for themselves. Clearly, such projects reaffirm the rich history of this area and awaken a hunger in the next generation to reclaim its value and redefine their own identity in relation to it.  This positive definition of self is especially important as a counter to external perceptions that would devalue this same area and its people.

In addition to these Gary-based initiatives, the entire region of Northwest Indiana is benefiting from various arts, culture, and economic initiatives.  Having viable and effective arts and culture outlets is an important component of this renewal.   The influence of such groups as the South Shore Arts and the Quality of Life Council have provided funding, planning, and opportunity for other groups and individuals to enhance the image of the region, thereby improving the quality of life.  One vehicle for image reconstruction and identity formation has been re-launching the series of South Shore posters and creating a new series that captured the flavor and artistic style of the original posters while adding images of landmarks of Northwest Indiana that did not exist at the beginning of the twentieth century when the first series was created.  The Northwest Indiana Forum website devoted to this initiative links art to the image formation related to place, stating “Great Art-Great Area” and “South Shore Line poster series promotion brings Northwest Indiana to life” (http://www.southshoreart.com/index.html and http://www.southshoreart.com/poster/southshorearticle.htm ).

Not only do these types of cultural and artistic initiatives renew a sense of place, but they also produce interest in the local environment.  In other words, cultural and artistic initiatives grow alongside those devoted to preserving the natural spaces and the architectural landscape that comprise the region.  For instance, under the auspices of Congressman Pete Visclosky, the Marquette Plan has been designed to recuperate land no longer needed by industry in Gary and the surrounding communities along Lake Michigan and to use the space for cultural, artistic, and recreational purposes and green space.  Elements of that plan include the creation of a lakefront park with public facilities and vehicular access and the development of a river walk. 

Extending the conversation beyond the research and actual local initiatives, the articles in this issue span the “Region,” providing theoretical and practical analyses of existing spaces and places from Munster to Valparaiso across the southern edge of Lake Michigan.  In “The Cultural Impact of a Museum in a Small Community:  the Hour Glass in Ogden Dunes,” Stephanie Smith and Steve Mark describe the manner in which this museum has brought cohesion to this lakeside community, while Connie Sowa-Wachala provides commentary on the general effects of music on a community, arguing for support of the arts in “Music: Instrument for Social Renewal.”  In “Reconstructing the Vale of Paradise:  A Return to the City Beautiful Movement,” Alan Bloom and James Paul Old examine current renewal efforts in Valparaiso, linking those endeavors to the theoretical framework of the City Beautiful movement and providing an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.  Drs. Anja Matwijkiw and Bronik Matwijkiw explain “The Way Forward in Northwest Indiana:  Ethics as a Vehicle for Urban Renewal,” addressing the recent construction of codes of ethics within the Northwest Indiana region and suggesting that an ethical government is foundational to any productive regeneration.  John W. Gunn, Jr. argues the advantages and disadvantages of urban redesign through the arts, promoting community perspectives on renewal in “Art:  Urban Renewal/Redesign, A Community Perspective.”  Finally, Deborah Landry discusses examples of various types of public art and connects them to opportunities within the region in “Asking ‘What about art’ and the Possibilities for Art,”

Not only does this issue include practical applications of and theoretical frameworks for models of urban renewal as appropriate to places within the region of Northwest Indiana, but it also contains artistic pieces inspired by the local urban landscape.  Beverly Lewis Burton creates an evocative sense of Gary as her home city in “The Heart of My Home,” while Naomi Palagi’s “Interstate 80/94 in Progress:  Half a Year after 2005” paints a vivid picture of highway construction in this urban corridor. William K Buckley’s poetic quartet evokes other aspects of this urban region with his references to “steel town,” “Bethlehem Steel,” and the “Dunes” in “Edge sideways Athena, because;” his evocation of facets of this area south of Lake Michigan in “red angels;” his work on the Gas Works in Whiting in “Real waters;” and his treatment of an “Exhibit in Steeltown” at Indiana University Northwest.

As you read the articles, essays, and poems in this issue of the South Shore Journal, we invite you to enter the conversation on urban renewal in Northwest Indiana.  We leave you with the following questions as seeds for future reflection as we continue to imagine a brighter future for this rich region of Indiana:  How do creativity and culture influence community change? What role do the arts and culture play in urban renewal?How can communities revitalize themselves through arts and culture? What models exist for community renewal through arts and culture? Who needs to be “at the table” to develop effective urban renewal policies and practices? What are the positive and negative results of certain approaches to urban renewal? Why and how do art and culture act as catalysts to urban renewal? What local factors need to be taken into consideration when advancing urban renewal initiatives? How have approaches to urban renewal changed over time and across geographical space?  Pondering the cultural, economic, and social well-being of Northwest Indiana, we become the architects, working together to design the region’s future.  So it’s back to the drawing board for us all!

¹According to John Kromer in Neighborhood Recovery: Reinvestment Policy for the New Hometown(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), “Blighted urban neighborhoods, particularly the older communities left behind in the wreckage of the American industrial age, are today’s biggest threats to the economic well-being of the cities and metropolitan regions where they are located” (8). Hereafter cited in the text and footnotes as Kromer.  Pasted from <http://southshorejournal.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&layout=edit>

²In “Lessons from America in the 1990s” (Urban Regeneration: A Handbook; eds. Peter Roberts and Hugh Sykes; London: SAGE Publications, 2000), John Shutt argues, “At neighborhood level community development in the United States is spearheading the drive to decentralization and the nation excels in this community-building capacity and its tradition of community organizing” (259). For an extended analysis of the use of sports arenas in urban renewal, see Timothy Jon Curry, Kent Schwirian, and Rachael A. Woldoff’s High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Down Redevelopment (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2004). Hereafter cited in the text and footnotes as Curry et al. In Art, Space and the City: Public art and urban futures (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), Malcolm Miles specifically discusses “Art in Urban Development,” contrasting projects rooted in the locality with others located on an international “culture map” (104-131). In a similar fashion, Tim Hall points to the “broad distinction between flagship or spectacular regeneration projects, which often contain prominent works of public art by internationally famous artists, and neighborhood or community arts and regeneration projects, typically, but not exclusively, publicly funded, often away from central city locations and with a greater emphasis on community development and participatory arts” (111) in “Opening up Public Art’s Spaces: Art, Regeneration, and Audience,” The City Cultures Reader, eds. Malcolm Miles and Tim Hall, with Iain Borden, 2nded (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 110-117.

³For an analysis of gentrification in a post-Guggenheim Bilbao, see Lorenzo Vicario and P. Manuel Martínez Monje’s “Another ‘Guggenheim effect’?: Central city projects and gentrification in Bilbao” (Gentrification in a Global Context; eds. Rowland Atkinson and Gary Bridge; London and New York: Routledge, 2005 ), 151-167.l  Pasted from <http://southshorejournal.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&layout=edit>  

⁴In The Art of Revitalization: Improving Conditions in Distressed Inner-City Neighborhoods (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2000), Sean Zielenbach addresses how the process of attracting residents in turn leads to further economic effects: middle-class individuals have purchased housing in depressed areas, refurbishing the homes and “gradually restored the housing stock and encouraged the establishment of restaurants and businesses that cater to their tastes and needs. As the neighborhoods improved and their appeal increased, property values rose. More members of the middle class moved in, which created more economic activity and increased attention to local social issues. Taken together the changes helped reduce urban blight and expanded the cities’ tax base” (27). Hereafter cited in the footnotes and text as Zielenbach. Curry et al state, “As their landlords make their rentals available for purchased by the gentrifiers or convert rentals into condominiums, thus pricing them out of the reach of their former, poorer tenants, these people become the displaced” (41). Curry et al further discuss the effect of gentrification on the disadvantaged (40-42).

⁵For a discussion of the ethical and economic aspects of attending to the housing needs of the poor and homeless, see Kromer, 188-191.

⁶For a model of urban development solutions proposed by actual residents in Harlem, NYC, see David J. Maurrasse’s “Making urban development work” (Listening to Harlem: Gentrification, Community, and Business; London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 141-67.

⁷For the role of education, public safety programs, and social organizations, see Zielenbach, 96-101.  Pasted from <http://southshorejournal.org/administrator/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&layout=edit>  

⁸Zielenbach addresses the role of local institutions, community organizations, social capital, and local leadership in the “art of revitalization” (15-18 and 199-211). In “European Experiences” (Urban Regeneration: A Handbook; eds. Peter Roberts and Hugh Sykes; London: SAGE Publications, 2000), Paul Drewe points to best practices in urban regeneration that are applicable not matter the global location: 1.) “horizontal co-operation,” which is the cooperation of “local authorities, government departments, local agencies, research institutes, professional bodies, and various interest groups,” 2.) “vertical co-operation,” which is cooperation between central, regional, and local authorities, 3.) the involvement of the private sector, and 4.) the involvement of local residents and volunteer groups (289). Drewe further lists good practices of “economic development in areas with social problems,” “environmental action linked to economic goals,” and “revitalization of historic centres” (291). Hereafter cited in the text and footnotes as Drewe.

Art: Urban Renewal/Redesign a Community Perspective

The South Shore Journal, Vol. 2, 2007, pp.2-4.

Art: Urban Renewal/Redesign a Community Perspective

John W. Gunn, Jr.

Urban renewal is the state-sponsored destruction of slum neighborhoods with a view to the construction of new housing. Art is the human effort to maintain, supplement, alter or counteract the work of nature. In today’s climate the combination of these definitions seems to fit a much broader reality –the demolishment and rebuilding of rundown sections of a city with an artistic flair. This idea supports to a certain degree that urban renewal is a specific kind of art. However, the artistic nature of urban renewal is usually exclusionary when community perspective is considered. This approach is unacceptable. A new paradigm that benefits, protects and enhances the quality of life for all residents through community participation is essential for the social health of our communities.

The reasons that foster exclusionary practices in urban renewal can take several forms. The most obvious appear to be, at least to community members who have had their lives altered by urban renewal, economic, political, or social. Generally, economic strength has been the decisive factor in determining what the artistic nature, value and focus of urban redesign will entail. This is often done with little regard for input from economically weak urban communities. Political strength is usually wielded by a small number of individuals. Therefore, unless local political leaders are truly in tune to the needs and desires of communities under their jurisdiction urban renewal becomes a political choice devoid of any significant community input. Social status in communities targeted for urban renewal is often weak. These communities historically house poor and disadvantaged individuals. Society generally assigns less concern to communities that are seen as not pulling there own weight; therefore, input is limited. Additionally, urban renewal/redesign projects placed a premium on cost vs. environmental considerations. Thus, urban communities often find themselves in conflict with views very different from their own. Unfortunately, their voices are often drowned by the economic, political, and social strength of their opponents.

Modern construction in urban spaces signifies an effort to improve functionally and visually any streetscape or public or private building. As such, these motivations set the stage for two incipient perspectives that often clash –destruction and construction. In both, urban communities feel the immediate pressure of redesign. The economic, political and social value of urban renewal depends largely on whether an individual resides inside or outside the targeted community. Artistic expressions, cultural aesthetics or regional characteristics, as a means of communal expression have consistently been relegated to the periphery of urban renewal design processes. Art as a primary feature of urban renewal is generally precipitated after functional features that accommodate human activities have been decided upon. Thus, urban renewal can be viewed as an attempt render art in its highest functional manifestation; thereby, allowing design to follow function. More importantly, perspective plays an essential role in determining the success or failure of urban redesign outcomes. Humanistic issues often collide in the arena of personal vs. utilitarian dominance.

However, as mentioned earlier economic drivers as the sole motive of urban renewal are exclusionary. Self-regulated political and business activities do not achieve equitable results in terms of capital outlay, responsibility and benefit returned. Considering the myriad of factors that influence urban renewal decisions it is unreasonable to believe that business or the polity will, whenever it can, choose to opt for a holistic approach to urban design. This is particularly true when examining the outcomes of past projects for receptiveness to community input and context sensitive design processes.

The idea that cities seek to renew or revitalize urban communities speaks to maintaining and to developing a sense of pride that improves the functionality these communities within the constraints of public policy. Artistic expression in urban design is often at odds with many current traditions in business, industry and even human freedoms. These conflicts emerge from societies immersed in the trappings of traditional design models that focus on economic expansion as a benchmark of success. Little regard is afforded human needs and environmental integrity.

Many people feel it is better to address such problems through a more collaborative and holistic systems approach because such problems are diffuse, multidisciplinary, multiagency, multistakeholder, and multisector in nature.
Lachman, Beth E., Critical Technologies Institute, “Linking Sustainable Community Activities to Pollution Prevention: A Source book,” April 1997.

In recent years there has emerged a growing trend toward incorporating dynamic cultural or natural artistic features as significant components of urban design. This inchoate inclusion is driven by an effort to stem the tide of environmental degradation caused by human activity anywhere urban renewal is proposed. It is also seen as a means to appear sensitive to community concerns. Area residents perceive urban renewal as a threat and as a blessing. Why, because it engenders a psychological as well as a physical footprint. It encompasses functional characteristics, artistic innovation, sustainable environmental considerations, and social equity. Each of these components contains within its scope a plethora of personal meaning for a city’s residents that may be viewed as advantageous or disadvantageous in anchoring future generations. Thus the reclamation and beautification of urban areas is becoming the art of improving visually the community landscape while incorporating either cultural, historic, ethnic or natural accents, within the preview of the limitations of public constraint. And it is expected to enhance the economic productiveness of the community –a tenuous relationship at best.

Art as a design tool for urban renewal serves several beneficial purposes. Psychologically art can help to establish a connection to a physical location. Art can soothe through familiarity, invoke curiosity, and inspire creativity. Art contributes to the diversity of community and directs communities and visitors toward ideas that create a sense of place. Art inspires the growth of new ideas and opens the door for imagination, innovation, and creativity. Art can be an expression of the old and the new intertwined in design that blends ideas across time. Art has the capacity necessary for the inclusion of environmental sustainability, smart growth, environmental justice, and equitable development as full partners in the design process.

Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development.

A utilitarian view of urban design would advocate the greatest good or least harm for the greatest number of individuals. Thus, we must envision the worth of artistic expression rooted in urban renewal as a means that leads to community cohesiveness. Because of the symbiotic nature of business and society we have a duty to engage in urban design practices that support future generations. While we all have a responsibility to their community that responsibility is not now, nor has it been in the past, equally shared. This historical inequity creates the necessity for statues and the enforcement of those statues to ensure the minimum level of compliance.

Growth is smart when it gives us great communities, with more choices and personal freedom, good return on public investment, greater opportunity across the community, a thriving natural environment, and a legacy we can be proud to leave our children and grandchildren. 
This is Smart Growth, Smart Growth Network and International City/County Management Association, 2006.

A methodology in the development phase should be based on planning that will create tools of empowerment for urban communities and environments. The use of art, equity and sustainable approaches as the framework for creating redesigned communities whendeveloping new housing and businesses to strengthen and fortify the economic environment is paramount. A paradigm based on a strategy of commitment to the concept of community input, artistic vision, sustainable and equitable development in urban renewal/redesign should enable inclusion.

The Heart of My Home

The South Shore Journal, Vol. 2, 2007, p.1.

The Heart of My Home

We move.
We build.
We are.

The shores of Lake Michigan
Speak loudly, roaring resistant
Against the steel town’s celebration
Of a magnificent past.

Outsiders mourn our future,
Relegated to the parameters
Of doomed prophecy
For my home- Gary, Indiana.

Struggle suggests a bright future;
Beyond local political landscapes,
Horizons of rebirth,
Merge the city’s soul.

I walk amid rays of optimism
Bringing familiar laughter,
Neighbors’ smiles greeting
Seasons of instability and change.

A framework at risk
Flows with metric precision,
Creates optimism
The greater reality of wealth.

My community bears scars
From a painful history,
Forgotten by those of us who fled
Remembered by those who remain.

I hold unearthed dreams,
Energy tabled by ravages
Of transition, incomplete
The recess of my childhood fantasy.

Time stands guard.
Generations build legacies,
Tenacious monuments of faith,
A symbol of strength and survival.

- Gary, Indiana –

-Beverly Lewis-Burton

Music: An Instrument for Social Renewal

The South Shore Journal, Vol. 2, 2007, p.5-13.

Music: An Instrument for Social Renewal

Connie Sowa Wachala

A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Philosopher John Dewey, in his book Art as Experience, writes of the intimate connection art once had to everyday living in the religious and civic rituals of song, drama, and dance; in the everyday use of beautiful objects made by skilled craftsmen; and in the connection and pride citizens took in their public buildings. He mourns the modern movement of art into galleries, museums, and concert halls. Dewey thought that art could provoke society to make fundamental changes (Dewey, 1934). If we are to believe Dewey in his view of the potential art holds, a focus on urban renewal, then, does not go far enough. Let us make a call for social renewal, which would also include urban renewal in its usual, economic development sense but would include other aspects of renewal as well: a commitment to civic engagement, a thoughtful critical approach to art and to the world, and an effort toward the true spirit of community.

In my own family, music has radically altered our lives in just such a Deweyan way. It gives our lives focus, pleasure, and provides a way of life that is, if not exactly secure, certainly not impossible. My husband, a classical flutist, leads the Calumet Chamber Musicians, which offers quarterly concerts in Northwest Indiana and the South Suburbs. Our sons are musicians as well. Our older son lives in Los Angeles and makes his living working in film music. Our younger son is a jazz drummer who lived and performed in New York City and now is studying for his Master’s in music education at Indiana University, Bloomington. Because of the importance music plays in our lives, we think and talk about music and its role in society often. Can music be used by a community to not only renew itself economically, but intellectually, socially and spiritually as well? I would like to think that it can.

Scattered programs are showing how this might happen. The New Yorker’s music critic, Alex Ross, describes a music education program in Rhode Island developed by a small group of chamber musicians called the Providence String Quartet. Led by violist Sebastian Ruth, who studied the philosophy of music education at Brown University, the group has set up shop in a low-income neighborhood storefront. They give lessons to children in the community under the auspices of a non-profit music school called Community MusicWorks. Ruth rejects the idea of “outreach.”  “We’re not searching for genius, for ‘diamonds in the rough,’” he says in the article. “We’re relating music-making to the community”(Ross, 2006, p. 86). To that end, they and their students play Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms not only at colleges and museums, but at the community center, the soup kitchen, an assisted-living center, an indie-rock club, and city hall. They perform alone and with their students, and take them with their parents—many of them immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Liberia, Cambodia, among other places--on outings to concerts of touring orchestras. The program is so successful, over 130 students are on a waiting list to take music lessons at the school.

In his classes at Brown, Ruth studied the idea, put forth by philosophers and educators such as Dewey, Paul Woodford, and Maxine Greene, that art has the potential to change society and thus strengthen democracy. In the New Yorker article, Ruthexplains: “Maxine Greene talks about the arts creating openings, this mysterious clearing in people’s lives, so they walk out of the forest and can breathe. Maybe, at that moment, music becomes a huge part of their lives. Or maybe they use the clearing to see themselves in a new light, and go on to do something different. It could be any kind of music, could be any other art form” (Ross, 2006, p. 88).

Harvard scholar Howard Gardner also believes music education can enrich our lives. In a keynote address to a conference of music educators held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Gardner, author of the books The Unschooled Mind and The Disciplined Mind, commented that it is not difficult to get children to memorize facts, which is what most state-mandated tests require of them. The difficulty is in getting them to understand, to analyze, and to apply the principles they have learned—in other words, to become disciplined thinkers. We can gain this understanding through the disciplines of science, mathematics, history, ethics, and the arts (Gardner, 1999).

Gardner refers to the disciplines as our “mental furniture.” They are “the ways in which we think about questions and issues that are important to human beings” (Gardner, 1999, p. 10). To acquire them takes time, thought, and immersion in a subject. Since music is one way that can help students discipline their thinking, the fact that it is vanishing from our schools comes at a great cost.¹

Another person who assesses the current educational climate in like manner is Daniel Barenboim, music director of the Berlin State Opera and outgoing director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “We don’t really give our children real education, but at best information, and that is why words have lost their meaning and words that are full of content have become pejorative,” says Barenboim, who was selected to give the 2006British Broadcasting Corporation’s Reith lectures, the first conductor in the lecture series’58-year history. In lecture one, delivered in London, Barenboim discusses the benefit of music education for everyone, not just those who wish to get professional training in order to become performers. Music can be a pleasant source of entertainment, but that is a small role it plays.  “My contention is,” he says, “that music has another weapon that it delivers to us, if we want to take it, and that is one through which we can learn a lot about ourselves, about our society, about the human being, about politics, about society, about anything that you choose to do. I can only speak from that point of view in a very personal way, because I learn more about living from music than about how to make a living out of music” (Barenboim, 2006, Lecture 1).

In lecture two, at Chicago’s Symphony Center, Barenboim mourns the way that,even from birth, we neglect our aural abilities in favor of the visual. Making matters worse, commerce uses music for non-musical purposes such as advertisements, which leads to an increasing ability to tune out altogether. In one example Barenboim cites, a section of Mozart’s Requiem (Mass for the Dead) was used by a plumbing manufacturer for a commercial to sell toilets until it was withdrawn following complaints from viewers. Music is piped into supermarkets, hotels, or clothing stores to create a mood, to make customers relax. The ubiquity of it makes us insensitive and, indeed, senseless to it. His point is that classical music becomes accessible, not through having it available through a sound system as we shop or do our daily chores, but through being interested enough to acquire more knowledge about it (Barenboim, 2006, lecture 2).

This power of music is evident in his project called the West Eastern Divan, named after a set of poems by Goethe that was inspired when the great poet became interested in Arabic culture. Barenboim, who is Jewish and spent part of his childhood in Israel, and the Palestinian scholar Edward Said in 2000 started an orchestra comprised of Jewish and Arab students from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Orchestral and chamber music, Barenboim says, are inherently collaborative efforts. Musicians must do two things at once to be effective: they must express themselves and they must listen to what the others are playing. The implications for communicating and negotiating are obvious.

The orchestra’s goal, he says, is to bring people who are normally separated together to make music: “In this workshop, we were trying to start a dialogue, to take a single step forward, and to find common ground” (Barenboim, 2006, lecture 3). Against all arguments that the project is overly simplistic and idealistic--that such an orchestra cannot do much in the face of guns and bombings--Barenboim keeps it going. Speaking at his fourth lecture in the series, which took place before a mainly Palestinian audience in Jerusalem, he explains that Palestinians who do not have equality with Israelis in the political sphere meet in the orchestra as equals. Practicing and performing with eachother gives both sides an opportunity to show the other that they can converse on an equal footing with the hope that that ability will carry over outside of music. Barenboim notes: “Music in this case is not an expression of what life is, but an expression of what life could be, or what it could become” (Barenboim, 2006, lecture 5).  What the Israeli/Palestinian conflict desperately needs are people from both sides who will talk to each other, who know how to listen. Perhaps one day leaders will emerge who have had the experience of performing a Beethoven symphony together and, having that necessary scaffolding in place—those skills of conversing and listening--will be able to start negotiations in good faith.

Besides education, music performance itself has the potential to inform and broaden the way we think. Traditionally in the U.S., the arts have been trumpeted as the means to “sell” a city or a region: “[C]ulture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city today as pavements or bank-clearances. It’s Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year…”(Horowitz, 2005, p. 398). The speaker is Chum Frink, a fictional businessman in Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, attempting to drum up support for his idea of establishing an orchestra in the fictional town of Zenith. Lewis is lampooning this boosterism of art for commercial purposes. Frink continues: “Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study ‘em, but they don’t shoot out on the road and holler ‘this is what littleold Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.’ That’s precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do” (Horowitz, 2005, p. 398). The passage is quoted by Joseph Horowitzin his book, Classical Music in America. Regional boosterism aside, there are other reasons for supporting performances of an orchestra or chamber music group. One of the most profound is to allow people a chance to engage with serious music, to keep it, as Gardner says, “in the lives of human beings” (Gardner, 1999, p. 20).

To keep music vital, it is as important for orchestras and chamber music groups to perform works of living composers as it is to repeat the beloved masters. Doing so is risky, since newly-composed music does not have the benefit of having withstood the test of time. It is necessary, however, that conductors and music directors undertake this risk. One such person who did and succeeded was Harvey Lichstenstein of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In 1960s New York, Lichtenstein became executive director of the BAM and transformed it from a lackluster venue to a vibrant neighborhood arts center that provided a performance space for the works of living composers such as Philip Glass, John Adams, and Steve Reich. This tactic was risky and depended on an audience who was willing to attend and support new and challenging programming. Lichtenstein was able to develop such an audience, and because he offered programming that was being done nowhere else in New York City, he was able to attract concertgoers from Manhattan as well. According to Horowitz, “[Lichtenstein] proved that one man can make a difference in determining what opportunities are offered gifted performing artists and their actual and potential audiences” (Horowitz, 2005, p. 528).

Northwest Indiana carries on with its own attempts to make a difference in people’s lives. The Calumet Chamber Musicians have collaborated the past three years with South Shore Arts to present concerts in the Munster gallery. In January, 2005, it presented a concert related to the exhibit Valor: The Warsaw Uprising of 1944.  “Heritage, Refuge and Music,” a program of works by musicians who suffered the ravages of war-torn Europe or who found refuge from it by escaping to the United States, combined the utter devastation of photographs of the uprising with haunting music of physical loss, spiritual disintegration, and, ultimately, hope and redemption, leading to a stirring emotional event many times more intense than if either art form had been experienced alone.

Another Northwest Indiana organization attempting to offer opportunities for social renewal through the arts is Michelle Golden’s Books, Brushes & Bands for Education. Over several years Golden, a region artist and arts administrator whose enthusiasm for the possibilities of language, music, and visual art energizes anyone in her orbit, has given area students a chance to write and design books, perform in choirsand after-school band programs, and participate in poetry workshops and a contest culminating in Poeticize (in collaboration with Dr. William Buckley, IU Northwest English Department), a beautifully bound book of the best entries. Finally, Emerson School for Visual and Performing Arts, in Gary, gives students in that city a chance to immerse themselves and excel in music, dance, theater, and the visual arts.

Dewey makes a case for art with an analogy to a garden. Flowers can be enjoyed,he says, without knowing anything about soil conditions, moisture, and seeds. However, it takes knowing about those things to understand flowers (Dewey, 1934, p. 12).Understanding music, then, is to learn about it. We can help that happen through educating ourselves and our children, and attending performances--those that speak not only to the pleasure of listening once more to a piece well-loved, but those that open us to experience new music, music that pushes us to the limits of our understanding.

After all, art teaches us by adjusting our relationship to the outside world. Art cannot teach overtly; to try to do so is to turn it into propaganda. When art becomes didactic, it loses its effectiveness. When art works best, it gets dispersed into the culture like a therapeutic mist that infuses our imagination with possibility and lets us breathe more deeply. Art teaches by putting us in touch with our imagination and with our deepest desires and emotions. We can support it and enhance it so that it leads us out of the urban/industrial forest and into a garden of beauty and delight. If the moral function of art, as Dewey says, is “to remove prejudice, do away with the scales that keep the eye from seeing, tear away the veils due to wont and custom, perfect the power to perceive”(Dewey, 1934, p. 325), then let us promote art not just for urban renewal, but for much more—for the renewal of society and our individuality, if only we are curious and courageous enough to risk it.

References

Barenboim, Daniel. (2006). BBC Radio Reith Lectures. Five lectures.  <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2006/lecturer/shtml> [1 June 2007]

Dewey, John. (1934). Art as experience. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Gardner, Howard. (1999, Fall) Keynote address. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. 9-21.

Horowitz, Joseph. (2005) Classical music in America. New York: W. W. Norton   & Company.

Hurley, Ryan. (2004, June 25). Cuts in arts programs leave sour notes in schools.Wisconsin Education Association Council. <http://www.weac.org> [28 November 2007].

Ross, Alex. (2006, September 4).  Learning the score. The New Yorker. 82-88.The sound of silence—the unprecedented decline of music education in Californiapublic schools. (2004, September) Music For All Foundation<http://music-for-all.org> [28 November 2007]

Woodford, Paul G. (2005) Democracy and music education: liberalism, ethics,and the politics of practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

¹ The fact that music programs, along with other arts, are being cut from school curriculums can be found in numerous studies, among them The Sound of silence--the unprecedented decline of music education in California public schools: a statistical review, which found that, between 1999 and 2004, the percentage of California public school students involved in music education courses declined by 50%, the largest decline of any subject. The Wisconsin Education Association Council notes reduced hours for arts programs, along with teacher reductions and program cuts, in the Milwaukee and Madison public schools, among other communities. In Northwest Indiana, non-school arts organizations are supplementing programs in the Hammond and East Chicago public schools.