The University of California Berkeley’s Center for Community Innovation hosted an interdisciplinary symposium on the arts and community development on Friday January 25. The one-day conference came from a collaboration of Karen Chapple, Director of the Center and Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Shannon Jackson, Chair of UCB’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. A dozen presenters and nearly a hundred attendees explored the role of the arts in urban revitalization and civic engagement on the neighborhood level.

New Village authors Arlene Goldbard and Jan Cohen-Cruz each gave keynote addresses. Arlene eloquently introduced the concept of “cultural citizenship” and Jan, who recently became Director of Imagining America, inspired us with reports of artists rebuilding community in New Orlean’s 7th Ward as well as the idea of the “Creative Campus” instituted at Syracuse University by Chancellor Nancy Cantor.

Author Bill Cleveland offered visual diagrams to help map the field of arts-based community development. His classic report–Mapping the Field: Arts-Based Community Development– can be read in whole on the CAN Reading Room.

Bill presented on a panel with movers and shakers of three San Francisco Bay Area community arts facilities who connect deeply with their local neighborhoods. Kimi Okada, Director of ODC Dance, brought to life for us ODC’s new Dance Commons in San Francisco and their Zip Zip dance program. CK Ladzekpo, a native of Ghana who is also a professor at UC Berkeley, explained his African music and dance work at East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, a cross-cultural performance school in Richmond California that also runs programs in several public schools. Deborah Cullinan, Director of Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco’s oldest alternative arts space, shared moving video clips from their Prison Project.

In the later afternoon we considered arts facilities. Kelly Lindquist dazzled us with the 19 completed live/work properties that have been developed by ArtSpace and another dozen in progress. Elena Serrano related some of the nitty gritty of a decade-long grassroots process she has helped lead in creating the Eastside Cultural Center in the San Antonio district of Oakland, a project of the Eastside Arts Alliance. Susan Medak gave us a bit of history on the Berkeley Repertory Theater — so successful now, locals can barely remember when it was a young and struggling upstart. Josh Simon of the Northern California Community Loan Fund offered basic counseling for developing facilities in low-income neighborhoods.

New Village Press sold books and had a great time meeting old friends and new. We were grateful for the balanced and intelligent framing that Professors Chapple and Jackson gave the entire proceeding and especially thrilled to witness this confluence of the two fields we serve — community arts and grassroots community development.