Honing in on Corona, QMA hires a community organizer! / Afilando en Corona, QMA contrata a organizador comunitario!

Transitioning from Leadership Through the Arts to the “Heart of Corona” Initiative in 2007. / Transicionando de Liderazgo a Travéz del Arte a la Iniciativa del Corazón de Corona 2007 /

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By working with Leadership Through the Arts Program youth and their families for almost three years, QMA identified tension points in their communities as well as learned firsthand from organizers and philanthropists how people were practically addressing these problems. The tension points they identified included criminalization/demonization of youth due to lack of after school opportunities, lack of trust between old and new residents exacerbated by class differences and language access issues, as well exploitation of and discrimination against undocumented immigrants.

LTAP participants Yessica Abrajans and Dahana O'Louis at QMA table at Corona Street Festival

While there were many individual success stories in terms of youth development objectives and the museum’s ability to connect to families and neighborhoods, we realized it was difficult to really manifest community development goals with this youth program model. Since the program did not target youth from any one neighborhood, it was difficult to focus on local situations that could be tackled over the long-term – the geographic scope was too large to make a dent. The neighborhood of Corona itself had 90,000 residents, and youth from Jamaica had different issues in their neighborhoods than those in Corona.

We realized that we needed to re-strategize to maximize our impact, and hone in on Corona, a single neighborhood adjacent to the museum, and equally as important, hire a community organizer to develop solid partnerships that would move our action goals forward. While we decided to end our formal LTAP program, several alumni continued to work supporting public events activities both in the museum and in Corona, as well work on future projects with artists and CBO’s they were introduced to during the program. Furthermore, given that a major highway physically separated Corona and Flushing Meadows Park where the QMA was located, we felt it was really important for a dedicated staffperson to spend considerable amount of time “pounding the pavement” in Corona. In the November of 2006 we hired Naila Rosario to play this important role. Her familiarity with elected officials and community groups in the area, long history of immigrant rights advocacy, and ability to speak Spanish (70% of Corona residents speak Spanish as their primary language) were all key in deepening the level of communication and trust between community members and the museum.

Assemblyman Peralta meets with Corona residents during the 1st Corona Cleanup & Beautification Day in April 07

The transformation of our project was quite dramatic, helping us get on track with really listening to community voices and developing projects that connect to our core competencies as an institution yet still had clear development goals in mind. These included: improving cardiovascular health outcomes and healthcare access; cleaning up, beautifying, and programming its public spaces; marketing the businesses in the area, particularly the numerous ethnic eateries in the neighborhood, and generally bringing disparate segments of the community together to develop and achieve their goals. We put all these elements together under the rubric of the “Heart of Corona,” as it signifies the transformation of Corona Plaza from the simply a circulatory and commerical center into a site for neighborhood pride, cultural activity, and a space to access health and social services.

Youth Work with Artists on Reframing Discourse on Immigrants / Jóvenes y artistas replantean el diálogo acerca de los inmigrantes

Collaborative public art pieces challenge negative perceptions of immigrants in New York and explore the immigrant experience. / Piezas de Arte Colaborativas en Espacios Públicos cuestionan las percepciones negativas de los inmigrantes en NYC y explora las experiecnias de inmigrantes

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One direct effect of working with Leadership through the Arts students was that the museum took more seriously its mission to challenge negative stereotypes of new immigrants. While it’s true that language and cultural barriers strain the ability of schools, public offices, and hospitals to communicate with their clients and provide effective services, this has always been true with previous waves of immigrants. New immigrants, who tend to be less educated or integrated within the power structure, are often scapegoats for community problems such as crime, vandalism, graffiti, and poverty. They are also branded with cultural stereotypes including laziness, a lack of morals or family values, and even uncleanliness. Moreover, Old Queens groups also view newer immigrants as having little interest in and respect for the complex and culturally rich history of the area.

QMA decided to partner Leadership through the Arts students with socially collaborative public artists to tackle this issue and give everyone a more full picture of the vital role that new immigrants play in the social and economic life of the city, the complicated “push factors” that compelled folks to make the risky journey to live in a new country, as well as the many sacrifices they make for their families both living with them and in their home countries. On the other hand, we also saw the need for recent immigrants to get a better sense of the history of the neighborhoods they have moved into and the struggles and contributions of previous generations of immigrants to the neighborhood. Here are some of the projects in which our LTAP youth worked with commissioned artists to execute, document and interpret their projects.

Crossing the BLVD Mobile Story Booth Tour

The Mobile Story Booth project, by Judith Sloan and Warren Lehrer with dotsperinch, related to their award-winning photo, sound, and book project, Crossing the BLVD, made stops throughout the borough (Main Branch of the Queens Borough Public Library, Jamaica, LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, and St. John’s University, Jamaica). At each stop youth participants facilitated access to archived immigration stories and input their own (or parents’ or grandparents’) stories.

Suitcases on Tour

Within the artist Chanika Svetvilas‘s performance/installation Suitcases on Tour, red, orange, and yellow plexiglass suitcases, echoing the high security alert levels that have become a part of daily life in New York, were be carried from neighboring Corona, through the park, and into the Queens Museum by Leadership Through the Arts Youth Program, followed by a presentation by Mabel Tso, Community Organizer, AALDEF, and documentation of the journey. The suitcases echo the paranoia and suspicion associated with unattended luggage during a time of heightened security. The images cut onto the surfaces of the suitcases reflected the recent proposed U.S. legislation to increase monitoring of immigrants, but also the impact on families and the relativity of borders and national identity. Challenging the notion of border control, a mobile immigration booth, co-designed by Miguel Baltiera, located right outside the museum and manned by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, will provide resources and answers to questions by the public.

The event dovetailed with Fatal Love ’06, organized by artist and cultural producer Jaishri Abichandani, an event based around the principles of independence, tolerance and freedom of South Asian nations. Designed to raise discussion and examine current global struggles for resistance, Fatal Love 06 included political and radical readings, discussions and performances by Kiran Desai, Chanika Svetvilas and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Naeem Mohaeimen, Emergency Broadcast Artists and the release of Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality. Editor of the anthology Sara Husain was accompanied by contributors Sham e ali al Jamil, Chaumtoli Huq and Zohra Saed.

Open Routines & Sonidero Project

Poster for the Grand Baile Sonidero at Queens Museum of Art

As part of Open Routines, his solo exhibition at QMA, LTAP youth collaborated with Mexican American artist Pedro Lasch on his “Sonido Tianguis Transnacional” projects. “Sonidero” parties bring all generations of the Mexican community together and, by sending CD’s of the event home, link the Queens community with their friends and family in the home country, which they saw as a wonderful tool for communication across transnational lines. Using their newly acquired video skills LTAP youth documented Sonidero forums with DJs, promoters, and visitors at the Museum. From Lasch they are also learned about organizing and promoting events, producing cross- cultural experiences, bringing international music to their events, and both writing and translating poetry. The forums culminated in a grand baile sonidero party featuring over a dozen soundsystems at the museum, that benefited a local organization Mexicanos Unidos de Queens.

Click this link for images of the museum installation, forum, and party as well as the other iterations of the project in Mexico DF and North Carolina.

Mudanzas

Mudanzas, Moving Services in Spanish, is a public video installation by Quito-based artists Maria Teresa Ponce that explores the issue of displacement in the construction of a visual journey. This journey reflects the collective memory of immigrants through video images of longed-for landscapes and people from home that Ecuadorian immigrants living in Queens have asked the artist to film. Today the third largest “city” of Ecuador is in Queens, New York where over half a million Ecuadorians have created a community that struggles to maintain an identity and prosper economically.

Ponce befriended the Ecuadorian driver of one of the many mudanzas vans that wait in Corona Plaza to get hired, and that relationship inspired the project. On the night of the Ecuadorian festival in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, she projected the videos of Ecuadorean landscapes overlaid with a sountrack of one women’s arduous journey with a “coyote” to cross the border. Inside the truck were video letters of the mudanza driver’s family and friends. Numerous passerbys were leaving the park festivities and came upon the projection and were moved to tears by the experience. LTAP students participated in setting up the projection, engaged viewers in conversation, and documented their reactions on video. The experience made QMA staff and LTAP youth see the potential of Corona Plaza as a site for future public art projects and cultural celebrations.

How did this journey begin? With the Leadership Through the Arts Program 2004-7/ ¿Cómo comenzó la travesía? con el programa “Liderazgo a Travéz de las Artes”

QMA develops a program to empower immigrant teens and young adults through education, artmaking and civic action. / El Museo de Arte de Queens desarrolla un programa para empoderar a los adolecentes inmigrantes y jovesnes a travéz de la educación, talleres de arte, y activismo cívico.

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The famous Lemon Ice King is a reminder of Corona's Italian heritage.

The Corona community is divided among the paradigm of Old and New Queens. Old Queens was an Italian immigrant stronghold with a long-standing and thriving business district in “Corona Heights”, complete with a bocce court, and numerous Salumerias and Italian Ice stores. Beginning in the 1940s, Corona was also a haven for middle- and upper-middle class African Americans who were shut out of the housing market in Manhattan, including such notable figures as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Malcolm X.

In the last twenty years Corona has become home to the fastest-growing Latino community in New York City. According to most recent Census data, 70% of Corona’s population is Latino (the main groups being Dominican, Colombian, Mexican, and Ecuadorian) with an additional 10% being Asian immigrants from countries such as India, Pakistan, Korea, and China. Together, these groups make up the face of New Queens, with 70% of the population born in another country, and up to one third without English fluency. It is difficult to assess the number of undocumented residents in Corona, but by some estimates up to one quarter of the population does not reside in the US legally. Approximately 7% of the households take home $100,000 or more (mainly Old Queens, with “middle class” values and identity) while 21% live below the poverty level (mainly New Queens). Only 56% of Corona’s adult residents have completed a high school degree, in comparison with 72% of all city residents, and only 8% have achieved a BA or greater.

See the NY Times Real Estate profile for Corona

LTAP participants editing their work in Sound & Synergy audio production class taught by Carlos Tejada

QMA first sought to bridge gaps between old and new Queens by initiating a Leadership Through the Arts program specifically targeted to young folks 16-23 that met every Saturday for a year . The reason we reached out to this demographic was that two fold. We knew new immigrant adults were working long hours and didn’t always have time to be involved in a year-long intensive program, and that we would be able to access adults if we provided a service for their children. We also knew that a lot of undocumented youth aged out of programs once they graduated high school and could not pursue higher education as they could not get financial aid.

Project Design

Using the arts as a uniquely powerful communication device, the youth were equipped with the skills and tools needed to navigate American civic and educational power structures. The program combined anti-oppression and political education curriculum implemented by local activist groups with artmaking workshops led by established artist educators to develop critical thinking skills alongside opportunities to coordinate concerts, performances, lectures and workshops to be held at the Museum and at sites throughout the community.

Each cohort of 25 young adults, who were paid a stipend to participate, addressed the tension points in their communities and interacted with community and political leaders, seniors, local businesses and entrepreneurs, and faith communities through exhibition and presenting theater, photography, film and art projects. Finally they had funds which which to administer grants to community based organizations, through a rigorous process guided by the North Start Fund. In the short term, the initiative sough to promote social integration through cross-cultural interaction amongst the participants. In the long term, it sought to create upwardly mobile engaged citizens of tomorrow trained to effect positive social change in Queens neighborhoods.

LTAP produced video on Corona in 2006

Outcomes

The LTAP participants (assisted and steered by the professional expertise of the partnering organization staff members and a team of instructors) were charged with following tasks:

• Discover how arts and culture has historically (and can still) responded to community tension points and ultimately effected positive social change.

• Articulate those issues in the local media (Queens Courier) and at meetings with elected officials from the New York City Council and New York State Assembly and Senate.
• Address those issues with the community at large through interactive educational and cultural programming, workshops, and events that will take place at local businesses, senior centers, places of worship, and the Museum.
• Create action networks at the events to encourage community volunteerism and advance the cause of social justice.
• Produce an RFP and administer grants of $5,000 to community-based organizations addressing the tension points identified.
• Take action themselves to advance these social justice issues through skill building internships with partnering community based organizations.

In addition to profiting the members of the Corps, this program extended its reach into the community by providing these benefits:

• Allow 500+ community members to give voice to local tensions points.

• Provide enriching and educational cultural experiences for a socially integrated audience of 10,000 attending 15 events and workshops centered on these issues at local businesses, places of worship, and at partner venues that include the Museum itself.
• Introduce elected officials and community leaders to young advocates, the critical issues in their communities, and new ideas and prospective reforms in public policy.
• Provide 20 community based organizations with new volunteers ready to advance the cause of social justice.
• Measure and monitor the changing perceptions of the community improvement and social empowerment within the tri-neighborhood region and the extent to which culture plays a positive role in improving those perceptions.

In the coming weeks, you’ll get to see some blogposts by participants in the program (check out the People Profiles Tab), as well as check out audio and video production produced during the projects, as well as blogposts by some of our participants. The experiences we had through running this program were crucial in helping us identify community needs, as well as provided us with the feedback we needed to launch even more targeted community-based programs in the future.