Research Questions
Goals
Process
Findings
How can a community arts organization support anti-displacement efforts?
How can it build trust among long-term and generational residents in a neighborhood experiencing rapid displacement?
To identify opportunities for The Laundromat Project navigate its role as a community-based organization in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood without straying from its arts-centered purpose and mission.
The Laundromat Project (LP) had just signed a 10-year lease in a new neighborhood, where it would move its programming and operations. As part of the Community Engagement team at The LP, I engaged in conversations with over 80 community members, including community leaders, artists and cultural workers, business owners, organizers, and nonprofit leaders to learn more about the neighborhood. In almost all of those conversations, we heard from residents that gentrification was among their primary concerns
I designed and led a research project to explore how a community arts organization might navigate its role in addressing anti-displacement. I conducted online background research and interviewed three leaders from other community-based arts organizations and a cultural organizing collective in different cities who have navigated similar questions in their communities: Self Help Graphics & Art, Springboard for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Community Power Collective.
A community-based arts organization has the unique opportunity to address cultural displacement and supporting local cultural practices and traditions that are upheld by longterm and generational residents.
Through my research, I found that there are two types of displacement—physical and cultural. Cultural displacement is when longterm or generational residents no longer feel comfortable, welcomed in, or reflected in their neighborhood. For a community-based arts organization, supporting the cultural fabric and practices of a community is an entry point to supporting anti-displacement.
In the interviews with peer organizations, we discussed successful examples of programming and initiatives that cultivated relationships, trust, and community power like a community-wide cultural asset mapping projects, community advisory councils, engaging families, and awarding micro-grants for small community-based projects—a project I went on to develop and launch. In a report, I compiled the resources, ideas, and opportunities and connected them to The LP's mission and values.