Comment: Disruptions of White Space in Art and Youth Education

Centering Black Art—Roger Cummings

JXTA founder’s are DeAnna Dodds [Cummings], Peyton Russell, and myself, Roger Cummings. We all knew each other from childhood and we were graffiti artists, taggers, creators interested in hip-hop and the artistic expressions that originated in Black communities. For 2 years, I was mentored and studied under John Biggers and Seitu Jones on a project called “The Celebration of Life Mural.” It was an all Black group of 24 intergenerational artists/designers. From elder master artist (John) to Master artists (Seitu and Tacoumba) to emerging artists like myself and eight youth artists. This experience became the connection that we needed to form our mentoring apprentice approach at JXTA. We knew that there were not spaces for young Black people to engage in artistic expression and so we wanted to build a place to teach our community about Art and cultural production. We wanted to engage young Black artists and creators, working together with young people to teach and train them to sharpen their craft and recognize the inherent value in Black artistic expression. To do this, we wanted to begin a program of youth education that would train young artists, amplify their voices, and present and sell their physical and intellectual work. We selected North Minneapolis as the location for this project not only because we have roots in that community but also because North Minneapolis has the most young people, and is geographically one of the most segregated Black neighborhood in the tri-state area. North Minneapolis is also the most under resourced, has the largest health and disparities, is the least invested in and most neglected area in Minneapolis—infrastructurally, economically, educationally, and environmentally.

JXTA and White Space

Throughout our over two decades journey in bringing youth art and entrepreneurship education to North Minneapolis, JXTA has had to navigate White Space in three areas of resistance and battle:

Whiteness and the Paternalistic Funding for the Arts

Just 2% of all cultural institutions receive nearly 60% of all grants and donation’s from individuals. The 2% cohort is made up of 925 cultural groups that have annual budgets of more than $5 million national center for caritable statistics (NCCS). These organizations are symphonies, opera companies, regional theaters, art museums, ballet companies, and other large institutions—the majority of which focus primarily on Western European fine arts traditions. Their audiences [are] predominantly White and upper income (NEA Research Report #57). ¹

In 2014, JXTA was hired by the Minneapolis downtown council (a group composed of the owners of large business interests in the downtown core, like Target, Wells Fargo, Macys, Nieman Marcus, First Ave, the theaters, police, etc.), to respond to the question “ why are so many people fighting, robbing, selling drugs on and along Nicollet mall?” Nicollet mall is a 12-block shopping and dining district of Nicollet Avenue in downtown Minneapolis open to pedestrians, designed for the purposes of creating a connection between community and the businesses in that area. As a result of the severe socioeconomic inequalities in Minneapolis, the area had become a site of conflict between those coming into the city as consumers, and those who lived in the city but did not have the resources to shop, dine, and attend theaters on the mall. In response to the question from the Minneapolis downtown council, we created a fleet of mobile engagement/charreting units as part of a tactical urbanism project. These units were a combination of custom low rider bike/scraper bikes form Oakland like an ice cream vendors’ bike, but were equipped with Illuminated frames and wheels, sound systems to play music, front facing bubble machines, and a flat area to play games like dominoes and cards. We sought to engage people who were catching the bus, getting out of or going to work, transferring from school, as well as homeless people in the area. We knew that the police would respond to our presence and our engagement of these nonconsumers by telling us to move along, so we designed the units so that the JXTA youth staff who were manning the units could just pedal to another location leaving a trail of music and bubbles as we relocated (Figure 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

JXTA tactical Urbanisim Mobile Charetting units.

In 2011-2012, as we were beginning the design of these mobile engagement bies, two program officers and potential funders from a local corporate family foundation came for a site visit. The White and White presenting Latina women had funded JXTA in the past with small grants of $2,000-$5,000. During this visit, youth on the Tactical Team were repairing one of our bike units as we toured. When Karen and Karena saw our light up and music playing fly bikes they asked if we would consider merging our engagement bike project with a concept that they were trying to get off the ground in another neighborhood focused on a bike repair shop model—which at the time were the rage among philanthropy grantors across the country. We informed the Karens that bike repair was not what we do at JXTA and it was off mission for our organization, so we were not interested. The Karens nodded and waited until the tour was over, and then they circled back to talk with one of the JXTA leaders in our bike fabrication area.

Shortly after that visit, Karen and Karena came back to JXTA to tell us we lacked capacity and were stretched beyond our talents. They then physically showed us a million dollar check (the first time we had ever seen a check that big) and said “we’re giving this to your neighbors (a religious based, White-led but Black serving organization that moved into the neighborhood in 2009 to redevelop homes).” They then informed us that unless we allowed a consultant of their choosing to come on and review our books and business model they would no longer fund us. Mind you, their grants to us had only been approximately $5,000 and our budget at the time was around $500,000. We stood up in the middle of the meeting, thanked them for their past support and told them we would not be taking any money from them in the future, and that they should leave and never cross our door step again.

White Political Control of the Black Community

JXTA has grown into an incredibly successful resource for North Minneapolis. Groups come from around the globe, sponsored by the Department of State to look at our program as a model and in hopes for replication in their countries. In the city of Minneapolis and the Midwestern region, JXTA is the model for creative placemaking, creative economy workforce development, Black-led, Black cultural space and community development. We show really well. We have built and organized an army of young Black creatives.

In spite the glamor, we provide to the city as a successful nonprofit serving and underresourced African American community, every intervention we want to do to our campus, from putting up a light pole to increase the lighting outside the building, to bringing in street furniture so community members can sit and enjoy the campus, we are required to get approval from city administration such as the Office of Public Works, the Office of Cultural Affairs, or City Planning and Economic Development. For example, the street on which our campus is located had not had street banners in decades, and so we held a public workshop to design and paint banners for a six-block area in a Black community to bring beauty and integrate Black public art into the community. Before we could put these banners up, we had to go in front of the “Arts Commission” in Minneapolis to get feedback and have the banners validated for “artistic merit.” Urban Youth artistic cultural expression/production has always been overlooked, scrutinized, and weaponized. Dominant (White) discourses say hip-hop has no artistic merit, Breaking is not really dance, graffiti is not art, emceeing/Djing/rap is not music. At JXTA, we understand that urban Black art is a global catalyst, in spite of that relationship with the (White) status quo. We know that the process of having their art examined and picked apart by city administrators can be damaging for our youth artists (see Brunsma et al., this issue). The surveillance and aversion to Black people claiming space, even in their own neighborhoods, is very real and can be very damaging.

Challenging/Disrupting the Status Quo

In prefigurative politics, there are the modes of organization and social relationships that strive to reflect the future society being sought by the group. As defined by Carl Boggs, ² youth naturally strive for self-actualization and self-determination/autonomy. In creating and maintaining Black physical, cultural, educational, and aesthetic spaces, JXTA has taken the position that “it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission” in order to protect Black youth artists from the damaging gaze of the White art contingency. For example, JXTA’s campus is at a high traffic intersection with two intersecting high ridership bus lines. Staff and youth team members look out our windows at the bus stop all the time. We noticed that there are no benches for elderly people or people with disabilities or people with kids to sit and rest while they wait for the bus. Rather than wait for a city response, we held classes with local POC design professionals and local youth and created benches and seating; we then guerilla instaledl them at nearby bus stops that were missing infrastructure.

JXTA’s Environmental Design and Tactical Labs are led by Black women and POC architects, landscape architects, urban designers, planners, and organizers. They teach youth to analyze their own neighborhoods through their expertise, identify issues and opportunities, and create and deploy short-term solutions to make places more safe and vibrant. Today in neighborhoods like North Minneapolis, settler colonialism looks somewhat different but in other ways the same as 100 years ago. Today the colonizers look like White faith-based nonprofits, White city administration, and White hip-hop themed congregations. Our young art/design revolutionaries also look different, but their core principals and modus operandi are the same. Challenge the status quo: disrupt, beautify, destroy physical objects and systems of micro oppressions, own and create unapologetic Black aesthetic spaces, physical places, and nontraditional radical educational spaces.