 a first plenary this morning and then we take a little break and then we have a closing session for us to debrief and wrap up together. I want to start out by thanking Mark Kanate at Borderlands for last night's BS panel and also thanking him for curating this morning's panel which is going to talk let us hear about the process and everything that happened during putting together the original Barrio Stories project earlier this year in Barrio Anita and everything that came out of that and for those of you who maybe have not clued into this Barrio Stories and their collaboration with Spoken Futures with the youth poet some of whom you heard last night was a recipient of a Net10 exchange grant which is part of what made that happen. They also were the recipient of each year we give one continuation grant through the Net10 program which is for folks who have come through a project that was awarded funding through an exchange grant and want to continue working together and so we do one of those a year and this year Borderlands and Spoken Futures are the recipients of that grant as well. Sara Gonzales who you heard on the panel yesterday morning is the co-director of Spoken Futures that organization that is the collaborator and has a little surprise for us that's gonna be at the top of our closing session but so a little teaser. For now I'm happy to introduce the panel for Barrio Stories. So I'm just gonna we're gonna just start out yeah it was really awesome to see everybody last night and share a little piece of this Barrio Stories project. What you guys experienced was maybe like one fifth of like the overall that really spread. If any of you guys made the walk to the bathrooms it was always the glory center it's big big in Latin middle and if you count the architectural tour and the audio tour like it was throughout the entire neighborhood. But we're gonna start off with just some introductions and sort of like how you got involved in the in the project and sort of like what your initial thoughts were. Steve Arnquist and the Tupa staff for City Council woman who represents the West Side of Tucson and Barrio Anita. The process of little bit later there was another person in Arnquist who was who was sort of on the original collaborating team from them so I missed the first couple of meetings I think. But you know our interest was was in sort of highlighting you know the uniqueness of Barrio Anita and yeah and you know I sort of going into it I really was thinking of this very wrongly I think I was thinking of it very much as being sort of a presentation for the community to see to learn about Barrio Anita which that was a piece of it. But I really didn't understand or didn't appreciate how how much of an impact it was going to actually make on the neighborhood itself so that was definitely the coolest thing for music. I want to make sure. Hi I'm Tanya Moreno and I'm a resident in Barrio Anita and so my I guess my interest obviously the project is a personal one however I'm also the grant manager of the Primavera Foundation which is a local community development organization and we have a women shelter in that community and so we we work with communities experiencing homelessness and we address causes of poverty and economic justice issue areas in Tucson. So I have kind of a dual interest or role in that that community represents not only my physical home but also part of where I work. So I think my my original thoughts were being really excited about it as a resident because I'm one of the newer residents there we've lived there about six six years plus seven years so anything obviously that was going to integrate myself and my family more in the community made me really excited and then hearing just briefly about some of the processes that were going to happen through utilizing art as a medium were particularly relevant to me and exciting to me as a community organization it's kind of what my background is so not having a whole lot of knowledge and experience in the art world but seeing how that could be used to kind of integrate and move together other disciplines was was particularly interesting for me so I was really honored to be asked to be a part of it. Thank you and again my name is Mark Binate the Borderlands Theater. I started convened or conceived of the project and also convened the different partners and different individuals that would be part of it artists you know city leaders residents and the university and a bunch of different partners and this was the second Bible Stories project we have done one two years earlier that I'll speak briefly on. We're supposed to have a fourth panelist Adam Cooper-Pheran who was one of the lead artists I'm hoping all souls has not gotten to him completely you know maybe here but if he can't I'll talk on his behalf but and so you know the overall idea of Bible Stories is to celebrate the history and heritage of Mexican-American Mexicans here the community through their historic Bible and there's several throughout Tucson. There's Bible Hollywood, Bible Sentinel, El Oriol, there's a bunch I can't remember them all. And there's all a sense of pride within each all of them and there's definitely a history to all of them. I mean I'll have some really incredible, I mean like any neighborhood you can just party up anywhere in the world you're gonna find because it's human beings that make up those neighborhoods and human beings are incredible resilient you know entities and so the idea also is to was to bring the contributions of the Mexican-American community here in Tucson throughout its entire existence bring to light and bring those stories back into the narrative of Tucson the old Pueblo that you know some of these stories have been erased you know some inadvertently some on purpose in different eras of the evolution of Tucson and Southern Arizona but you know certainly the Mexican-American community is a big part of the character of Tucson and of these neighborhoods and certainly the cuisine the culture everything and so the first project happened in at the convention center and that was about the very first by view there's no longer exists the oldest body that was right in the city center downtown area that was demolished through urban renewal in the 60s as many similar areas of around the country were where people of color were pushed out and so now that the convention center stands so what I did was collected all these stories and presented them on the same grounds where they happen so we try to kind of recreate the vital within the modernist architecture of the convention center grounds now and we had these a lot of actors for that one of the first one we created put up Adobe walls and we told different stories this is a piece called dirt that you later a metal wrote who's in the audience right there and also the giant puppets you saw earlier was another piece that was lost and and we and so it's very site-specific creative place-making project and we're very successful in 2016 and it was very successful we had about close to 4,000 people come out or four days but almost 2,000 TUSD students bused out for it big success and so two years later we ended up looking at baronita like the idea was because of the success the first one is that every few years to try to find a new value and try to focus on it and find the funding of course that's always nothing happens otherwise and the question of what we're gonna do next and why and so baronita why baronita I mean there's a lot of reasons some some of it is was just like the conditions of timing but it is the oldest values you know the closer to the downtown area the older they get and as people you are sort of forced to move out they further out of the circumference and create new values that there was it just it has a really great history there's also been other world history projects done in the early 2000s about that so we had some material to work with already and there's still a little a little corner store it still is in existence and works so that's one of the characteristics that's often lost in a lot of other other values but he used to used to be Chinese grocers that all had like multiple stores and that's that's a whole other story behind that but for these reasons also proximity to to Borderlands that's like a mile from our offices so it's really easy to go back and forth and then Ori Center had which is the Parks and Rec you know neighborhood center is really just was starting to build itself up they got some new staff and we've done like a shadow theater project that you're earlier there and so it was just a lot of factors that kind of led to that but there's I'm going to let Steve talk a little bit more about some of the more sort of demographic or factual information about about the neighborhood the kind of people have to speed and now let as a resident Tanya just talk a little about sort of setting the stage of what water that is yeah by Anita's is I mean it's interesting for 101 reasons but I know one of the things that that made it I think maybe in retrospect maybe it was more part of Mark's plan was because it's really small where Anita has about 200 homes probably puts it at I don't know 500 to 600 residents you know but it's it's it's small enough that you know for example we were able to knock on all the doors at the beginning of the process we were you know able to you know just start start recognizing people you know for myself and makes it a little easier I think to see the result you know some of this stuff could be lost in a neighborhood of 10 15,000 people where it's in a neighborhood of 500 you just see it so I mean you know by any heads of traditionally in Mexican-American neighborhood traditionally had seven Chinese stores now does still have a neighborhood store close oh I guess the other the other thing well I guess I sort of said it but was that not only is it easier to sort of see the results but you know it's just working in a city council office we work with 29 different neighborhoods and then not only covers about how the people that we represent so it's really hard to get really in there and really so to see it so that's been really helpful for for us I don't know if this is unique but I seem to find more historic photos of irony than the other barrios which I think is deep even though it's always been one of the smaller barrios some more kind of records and stuff I mean there's not much more I could say than that in some ways right you know it when you feel it you know when you smell it you know it when you hear it but even if that's a loud you know we're physically bound by the train on one side that runs multiple times and your how shapes and people come over and visit you know how can you live with that train like that they're like I don't even hear it anymore because it's so integrated into my like day-to-day you know the kids went in the ghost of the school you can the back of the school year the kids stop they let the train and then they resume like play or whatever so we're bound by the physical environment is the train on one side a freeway on the other with that huge wall that you all saw the construct with the mural tile the school basically on the side and it's big way one of the major roads in the city on the northern part so within this very loud for Tucson which you know I came from different areas not like an urban urban environment to me but it classified as a metro urban area it's as urban as it can get right probably more urban barrios and everything around this street and loud and all of that that's a physical environment so I would say the the the center of the barrio is families who have been there for generations generations of generations there's probably five families five families that have lived there at minimum four generations probably and have in addition to if they're fortunate they might have a grandma or great grandma they're not on that that's the living there they also have the us and cousins and now you know either at some point in time in and out of that neighborhood and have you know Tucson has a very low low homeowner rate we're slightly less than 30% which is drastically lower than the national average barrio amita is I think it's kind of unique in that a lot of the homes are actually owned by people so we've in some ways that has been a way that we've been able I think to curtail some of the gentrification that has happened in other barrios and you will see when you've gone through there you'll see multiple homes and have signs up that says my home is not for sale because it's not uncommon to have people knocking on your door regularly saying hey I got a deal for you you have a lot of predatory home buyers that try to go on their flip homes we had a story of an elder to have like a $10,000 bill that she needed to basically she would have to pay to fix the electric and other things in her home wasn't able to do that somebody came by bought her home for 25,000 we lived it for over 200,000 and so now her and her whole family are displaced in that community so displacement because of economics is not anything new to barrios displacement because of substance abuse displaces displacement because of having family members incarcerated that's kind of like you know that's the background that's the background and what we've seen in the past few years is a lot of people who are knocked up coming back to neighborhood a lot of people who were addicts have been clean and sober coming back into the neighborhood you know people my age maybe moved out because they were looking for other educational or economic or what have you opportunities kind of coming back which I think is kind of human nature to get to kind of a certain age and there's this nostalgia there's this craving to be back at your roots so I think right now it's an interesting time and body you know it's it's it's kind of this this flowing of energy back into that barrio of people who are from there people who want to be from there and people who want to profit whether it be from the cultural experience of the area the real estate you know from whatever that looks like there's always people want to profit off of off of something so you have a lot of antagonistic energy you know and that gets and that gets played out in multiple ways you know we see that we see that in meetings we saw a little bit and maybe some of the initial resistance to being part of projects you know prior to this there had been an art project that was really detrimental to that community the mural project served as a really divisive project and there's people who still to this day are so angry about it that refuse to take part in any kind of collective community action but you also have people like my neighbor who is 80 some years old and one day I was walking have a bad back and at times I have to use a walker okay and you know I was walking she's calling me from her door and she's like and I'm like and she's like get my soul what happened to your back and you know my back's messed up and the next morning she has a little box that she left of some of medicine you know homemade like medicine that she's made of a mada and she put a little note you know I hope you feel better call me if you need me to massage your back or whatever so you know you have this kind of like continuum of relationships and I think you have what I what I call a level of cultural humility you know it's it's cultural humility you see that has been expressed by people who have been fully integrated into that community and have been welcomed you know discussing with another neighbor who will not neighbor but another person neighborhood who hasn't been as fortunate as I have been in having the doors open to them and being invited to the family dinners and all that you know and I shared with him you know you might want to practice a little bit of that because I think when you I think when you show that level of humility and say I'm not from here my family from Barrio Libre from the body of the mark spoke about that one of the various that got destroyed when the expansion happened downtown so my family was to be displaced and from Barrio Libre they moved to another Barrio La Capia which is a yaki community my family's yaki and I always remembered that my dad would say it was it was a hard transition for us because we were Barrio Libre and when you're from a Barrio you don't go to other Barrios you don't live in other Barrios you don't even drive through other bodies if it can be avoided during that time so I felt like wow I need to go above and beyond to express this level of like outsider-ness but be really humble about like how can I be here to be part of you and I've seen that you know I've seen those families that you know like have nothing and yet show up at your kid's party with like a box of each you know I've seen that kind of like resiliency that I think that that only Barrios know how to do you know so in that way I think Barrio Anita is really special you know we have our problems you know we have a lot of issues still with unfortunately the folks experiencing homelessness who are using and selling drugs in the park that's probably one of the major kind of like things that we're working with and trying to help those folks but at the same time also trying to keep our community and the kids especially you know safe we have issues with as I said before the gentrification happening and we have a huge chunk of the Barrio right now that's been an open space that the city is trying to figure out if they want to sell or not and so trying to preserve that has been a big thing too. Great thank you Rania for that very good primer on where this happened and so moving into the project we so I assembled a team partly also because we were part of something called the Creative Communities Institute so it's a program sponsored by the Arizona Arts and ASU's Herbert Institute and part of that was assembling a team that included city leadership residents and then other partners that would somehow contribute to the goal and for obvious reasons right like having somebody from Ward 1's office to ask questions and to get resources city resources put out there was you know really helpful about the process we started with canvassing the neighborhood this was about six six months or so before the final event we had already been doing archival research with the graduate student we had a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council to work with scholars at the University and through special collections and historical society go back and get a bunch of old photographs and newspaper clipping so to sort of get the deep deep history as when it was an Apache settlement in the mid-1800s is kind of where sort of that story starts but we also went door-to-door to find out really from residents themselves you know what what were their concerns about the neighborhood what are they like best about the neighborhood how many generations have they been living there things you know sort of basic information and what we discovered the number one thing that people talked about was they didn't know their neighbors there is the early stages of gentrification happening there's people moving in renters new homeowners houses being built on vacant lots and this was the biggest loss I would say from especially the families that have been their generations back of the day you know from the pie of the 1930s and 40s all the way through pop pie of the 80s there was make these major families that were intermarried they would you know get there would be a marriage a new house would be built the property of one of their one of the families all cousins and it's just that everybody you know when you know each other and your body like that you feel safe you feel like you belong it's you're just happier right and so this was pretty much gone and so that was like one major task we realized the team of artists there was a several artists involved Adam as a media digital media artist Heather Gray is a videographer Wesley Cree is a visual artist and we got together like so what you know started thinking about like ways that we can sort of create interactions amongst neighbors but also to share this this history with new arrivals so that we all know the history it's another way of sort of that collude that holds people together we of course then did a bunch of oral history this is some pictures of the old neighborhood so we did we did about 20 oral history interviews with residents most of them still that still live there a few that spent their whole lives there and now happen to live out other neighborhoods and those were that's sort of where the oral histories ended up creating the basic meat that everything else was an offshoot from just some of the residents this this this matriarch in the middle Mary Sanchez she interviewed her and then she passed away before the event actually happened that's her great-granddaughter Marta and then her daughter Lupe Martha goes to Davis Elementary it's right there in the neighborhood and so we went to a lot of community meetings at the time they were a neighborhood association meetings because the association had disbanded almost 10 years earlier because of this other art project not just that just different differences amongst residents and so Gracie Salto the owner of the one little store that is still there she started having community meetings and there would be like five six people show up kind of the same people each time to go to those meetings just just try to find out listening as Michael Rowan talks about the civic practice ideas just listening listening listening as much as we could find out what's going on what's needed what would help folks you know build this community and make it more resilient because I think it is resilient already and so we did we were in bed for about a year and and then we figured out what we wanted to do and we created the event so there's a Arizona Illustrated clip that I just want to show that kind of gives you the whole overview we try to find many ways to incorporate the neighborhood to include neighborhood residents in the making of it not just like extracting stories from them in the course of interbeing all these folks we kept hearing about these backyard and celebrations and this is what people did before Internet and finally really before TV took hold and they would talk about outside cooking food and there's live music musicians dancing and we have and many people talked about this big smiles on their faces and says like okay let's let's try to create one of these backyard parties we took all the videos that anybody mentioned a backyard party of all the world history reviews we put all this put together we projected them on the tool shed there so long so as you walk in you start to hear it from the actual people what these part of your life and then you keep going deeper in and get an experience and then you get to hear the elders sing those old swiss to a young person doing a poem spoke a word piece about the body of here and what it means to them as young people then how do I teach your ninos to reach the promised land you teach them that they are already here yes it's given to our school and our well for years and then the final this was the people the audience just talking and joining themselves the other big area focus was the four giant screens in the making a lot so she was into the report those things that we take that was a straight world history just wanting to collect those stories and then once we have them you know how best to remember and then you could gravitate to a sort of screen and really like focus in on the story so the children that didn't get you were sold asleep in Mexico or given to rich families in Tucson to work at Starbucks the mariachi stage was in honor of Davis mariachi which was the very first after-school mariachi program in Tucson in 1903 that program gave birth to all the other ones to place making sure everything is supposed to be even through like my going back and forth really fast I noticed beautiful things here and there like the video playing over the house almost as if they had all come together and posed for this big foil I love seeing the prize it really does create a cool vibe right like that sense of ownership like this is our place like let's take care of it let's be friends let's talk to each other you know let's populate our underutilized space which is our neighborhood if we're proud of where we come from then we're better humans to each other right so the end of day helps for everybody to know their roots and to understand that they have history then they have things to be proud of we're trying to create the most beautiful most aesthetically pleasing most professional high production values as possible but we're working in tandem with community I can't just be an artist for art's sake like there needs to be a real community building component to all of this otherwise it's that's not for me a little bit about some of these components so the video for a sort of sort of artistic product these four giant screens were really incredible to sort of like just walk into it and you could sort of sometimes stand right in the middle of all four and just get this like montage of visuals and sounds but it was you know also really great for residents to see themselves up there and talk to their young ones you know about it this was one of his most genius ideas we did try to throw up folks onto buildings so this is one of the buildings there's a few others like on Davis Elementary that we threw up a bunch of photos of folks and then we also were able to there's a Ori Center and there's a Ori Street it's named after William Ori one of the pioneers of Tucson and the first mayor first a lot of things in Tucson he's also the person that led the massacre mostly women and children Native Americans campground massacre there was about a hundred natives killed there they were they were under a peace agreement with the army that they were going to stay in this army camp they gave away all the weapons they had made this deal and there's a big long story behind that that William Ori organized a group of mostly you know Sam Hughes he didn't actually go in the supply of all the guns a lot of the sort of founding fathers and they enlisted a bunch of the Hono Atom men as well and sort of just just shot everybody so we so some of the residents you know we're like want to see the name of the Ori Center changed at the same time there's a lot of people that grew up to have no idea that who this person has many buildings and things are named after people we really know who they are why their their name is there so there's a lot of people that they give Ori Park and like that's where I grew up that's where I have all these great memories and so we thought well maybe if we educate folks about who this person was and just leave it up to them maybe we'll change the name maybe they won't but we made this little documentary with a student second grade student at Dailess who was the narrator I did a bunch of research we hired two young men from the neighborhood actually what a time his sons was one of them meant to be to teach them computer animation workshops and so they did some animation work at him and then we showed this and so I'm gonna show you just a little trailer is like a minute and a half William Sanders Ori came to Tupac in 1856 at 16 he came to Texas looking for an adventure he was at the Alamo at 23 Billy was still looking for a good fight now the single man of our company was hurt tomorrow full measure of our try it's a hundred and a hyper apathy were murdered just before dawn as they slept many of them were women and children working with the youth really trying to integrate them as in as many ways as we could and really and then we expanded that out and trying to work with different segments of the Tucson community on different parts so the shadow theater component we did a partnership with the Mexican-American Studies program at the University there's a class of I think it was 80 students taking this info next American Studies class and we gave them all jobs to do so 30 of them were assigned to shadow puppetry none of them had ever done it which is one of the great things about shadow puppetry you don't really need any experience masks and you know just have fun and so we took some so I had mentioned there is previous oral history project there was a series of small books that were printed in the early 2000s one of them had a bunch of little cuentos or folktales from the neighborhood and so we turned those into shadow theater and people really liked it so this is rehearsing at the University with students as you saw in the video also mariachi big deal here and Davis has a very first after-school mariachi program in Tucson in the early 80s there they're pretty much almost you know many many of the schools elementary middle and high schools and the high schools have some incredible professional level mariachis but I'll start at Davis I'll start about I think that West and Cree designs mural panels but community members at different events in the community there's like a paint by numbers so they were actually painted by students at the University and kids at the rec center over a period of several months made fresco Diaz gets into Diaz last night Pima Community College these so you met her you know runs board hands with me taught her was teaching a movement class Pima and so her class project was to do a choreograph piece to one of the world histories so that's them doing that and the poets roamed around not just in the garden but throughout the entire event and did their poems and that was also about a three-month project as they developed and researched the neighborhood we had architectural tour we're an architect from a different barrio barrio blue moon Shariah Jimenez she's an architect here in town and she gave a really cool walking tour of the piece and then we also had a part of this right was also to bring the actual residents a little more to know each other so we have a current resident VIP area I'll let time and talk a little bit about what was going on so the VIP area essentially was just you know sectioned off area we had some food we had people be able to sign in we distributed some surveys to get a information about just their level of satisfaction with the event but also their willingness to participate in future events and then we have just kind of some props you know other people walking around encouraging people to talk to each other and share with each other and that was kind of I just want to one thing I saw such a beautiful thing at the VIP tent when I was there I think I'd just stop by for something but it was a you know an older man I think and maybe his granddaughter was there she was maybe eight or ten and it was you know they were they were kind of walked up to the tent and said like oh I guess maybe we're now out in here maybe Tonya was there I forget but you know said like oh well welcome this is just for neighborhood residents and it was the coolest thing to see the little girl you know kind of swell up and me you know get such a cool feeling of pride from living in the in the barrio and that was that was great and that happened a lot that sense of pride or big giant smiles like I mean it would people were happy like you know as an artist when you put your workout you want this is what you want I don't know that's selfish reason that's not the reason I do it but I certainly love it not from my ego but like to make someone like because they're so happy that they're acknowledged there there they are there's their Nana or you know telling the story that they maybe they've heard that especially the youngsters they hear the story from the old-timers you know and but when you see it with production values and all these other strangers have put all this time into it as well then they're like oh wow I guess that's important right you know and and so and people that you don't often see happy big ol smile like a side of them I've never seen brought their their whole thing they're they're not us I mean these are like middle-aged men bringing their nanas as well they become little boys but it was really great and so as far as the impact I just want to you know like the there was elections the week after and the association would be established there's feel like there was about 60 or 70 people it showed up which for like a neighborhood elections of like 200 houses and some of those houses are vacant it's a pretty good turnout people ran for board positions young parents single parent know that in their 20s they've never done anything like this and one and now they're the secretary or you know they're they're taking part of the direction of their neighborhood and out boring pool that was closed been closed for like 10 years or so was reopened or it's gonna be and so maybe you can talk a little bit about that because the word one had a big part in that yeah a few a lot of changes in the kind of way that our council here's one great example you know the neighborhood really kind of came together and you know said we want to pull the row in our pool back sitting just behind chain link for 10 years whatever it was so you know our office have begun some efforts prior to this but really ramp them up in terms of finding the dollars to to reopen the pool which is great you know in terms of other results we're hearing from by any thought way more whether it's you know find the folks calling say come fix my potholes that maybe didn't call before because maybe they thought maybe the potholes are just there because you know it's folks take you know ownership and pride in their neighborhood and say hey we don't deserve a pile of garbage in our part so it's great for us to be hearing from the neighbors like that yeah and I think you know where I think this really becomes central in this you know community what discussion about justification to because you know it was part of that conversation before but I think it's a lot more prominent part of that conversation now and you know really just awakening a civic pride that's really cool to see and tiny can you just talk a little bit about sort of the aftermath of the bed just living there and interactions you know I think that it's hard to it's hard to express because when you live in when you live in a barrio and you see kind of your your outward world reflective of internally sometimes how you feel with a lot of people are living in crisis especially economic crisis you know all these other all these other things that impact communities negatively there's kind of like this this lull that gets created right there's kind of this this almost like well this is just what it is and what I really saw happen was that that event served as this this catalyst this kind of like reinvigoration reawakening whatever kind of charm you want to use that all of a sudden the kind of like the sleeping giant awoke right and so it can't be underestimated how important physical environment is right and when you have that the beautification even if it's just temporarily right even if it's just in that moment where you're allowed kind of that glimpse into what that looks like and another possibility that grounded with people who get a reestablished sense of pride in place then yeah I mean it's like the possibilities become endless because then not only do people start saying oh wait a minute maybe we can do this then you kind of wrap up to the next level of like oh how do we need to have this in our neighborhood like why is our pool infested by mosquitoes and it looks disgusting and that's just another in-your-face moment every time you gotta drive by that pool that's torn down and disgusting that you're like what we don't deserve to live in a space that's equally as beautiful as somebody who lives in the richer area of town so I think that that level of consciousness that you can't in any way quantify or you can just fully describe that is what I saw happen because I think even neighbors who are residents who aren't even physically living in the neighborhood but maybe lived before but they saw their family there they became interested in participating and all of a sudden you see people on the street more you know you see people engaging you see people more people at neighborhood association meetings and you see I think just people in general kind of having a sense of like wow I can walk to my neighbor and be like yo do you need help or like you know pick up the trash in my front yard or you know there's just this this reestablished kind of energy that's been created in the community that I think that you know inevitably would have happened because you know I don't want to dismiss or take away from the the kind of resiliency and the strength of the community members themselves but I think that this event is what and just the work that's been done there is was the difference between this being a 510 year process of people kind of talking and you know how you know there's kind of there's plateaus and there's lows the difference between that and it being this jet kind of takeoff you know accelerated process I think was yeah and and by no means it was like let's start we got a year two just finished writing a set of grants for starting 2019 want to continue working with the neighborhood because really it's like now we have everybody's attention but now we have to actually start working together and that's and that's a process it's not like just gonna magically all get fixed right so so that's it we're just we're still in the starting of it all this preparation was just really to get everyone's attention and get people excited which I think we did but now the real work coming moving forward you know dealing with this homelessness issue the park just consensus building amongst the neighbors right like any group of people we're all coming with different experiences and our own set of baggage and all this and you know it's like a family and you always get along so finding those ways to do that so that those are our projects coming after the coming year overall I think everyone involved learned a ton about this kind of work the partnership for the net grant that we got between the university and also spoke in futures there was a lot of exchange between the three borderlands spoken features in the university as far as you know students universities students and faculty like hands-on really digging and creating as part of their curriculum this kind of work it was a fifth of their grade for these 80 students 20% of the grade and spoken futures just kind of stepping up their their production values and they're more theatrical side of the work they do us working with youth poets and also working with the university institution and how do you think these things gradeable and how do you make them lesson plans that are used in the classroom so and then mostly though working with with communities working with people on the ground you know we present to you like this nice clean polished thing but there was many many meetings and nobody showed up you know no residents came and tried bribing them with gift cards there's all kinds of tactics came and went trial and error until we finally figured out how to get people to like pay attention in the development and there was certainly like sadness and rejection apart you know we're sensitive the artists like no one would show up get really sad so like all of that was part of it too but overall you know really proud and very excited to continue the work with my very done so I think there's probably about 20 minutes or so of our time if anyone has any questions happy to ask yes the work is so powerful thank you thank you thank you but when stuff's powerful it's powerful to do good and it can be powerful to not do good to cause harm and you mentioned a mural project that caused harm and distrust in the community and I don't want to live there but I'd love to hear what screwed up there why what was just from you I know it's just your opinions but what what didn't work that caused harm from artists working in and or with community answer the question in your question the artist did not work with community so there was outside artists there was limited interaction with communities there was little respect paid to the also the existence of artists that resided literally within that community that were masters of that same discipline content all of that was was not something that was decided by the community and you know I believe I believe in a lot of the things outside that we don't see all the time so in my mind now the tile is falling apart the structure itself is literally coming undone I think there's something more to that than than just shoddy work and so I I envisioned some day and we've had people who looked at it who have said probably someday that they will have to be completely taken down because it'll serve it's it's becoming dangerous right like the structure itself might eventually fall down so I'll leave it with that oh then there are grant applications they said that we're working with you yeah yeah and teacup that was a big part of it but it was like 500-400,000 years it was a giant oh no that it was this mural and the Tucson Pima Arts Council which has an unique now and they were one of the big funders and the association was a partner but it was like a $400,000 project when they flew artists from another state and it was you know one of those kind of things any other questions that's why they wanted to be the last question yes more of a comment but I think that this juxtaposition is a critical conversation in the sense that as artists were often pushed to have some other reason to do our projects or our work because doing it to engage conversation or to just do it isn't enough it's not good enough to be an artist you have to be an artist who does social worker community worker one thing or another if you want funding and so I think a lot of artists do an add-on or they think of this idea without having any idea or any sensitivity to what they're actually doing to people and that when government money or money comes in and is offered requiring that you do this it doesn't say it has to come from inside and you have no training or thought about that juxtaposed to that is this remarkable project that started from inside and grew up and that model of that not only with the passion that you have for that but the way in which it blossomed and the seeds grew and the way that it actually became something that's owned by the community that's media is going to shape and reshape over and over again as it claims its own artfulness is delightful you know it's just an incredible model juxtaposed to the other which was top-down rather than ground up I think what just made me think of it when you said this but one of the things we did during the actual event was inside the word center it was a map you know like that parcel map that we saw there people were filling in there where they lived and stuff and it was just made me think of that and it mostly got built up right yeah yeah and it was you know like I mean there's so much I couldn't cover it all but like there was that Mike I said many generations isn't about a central now but like certainly grew up there and his ancestors he and his family put together this entire historical display going back to the 1880s with photographs and his pan I mean like professionally like he had a mount phone mounted and everything and and it really made it this mute like Ori said on the inside was like museum really with and they had Ori center brought out all the trophies of the softball teams from going back to 1950s and it was this whole other thing that I had nothing to do to curate and it was a fully curated museum thing that happened in there they're just these old residents older residents from a long time put together all on their own and then my barbecued carousel and collected you know donations and made like $400 and donated to Borderlands like it's whole family barbecued all night long when you're doing community building or you're doing movement building there's different energies that you can use right like it sometimes it comes from this really raw like angry place sometimes it comes from this you know almost like nostalgic kind of place and I think the art is knowing what to use in kind of what combination and what I thought was really the genius of what Mark and his team did is that especially taking in consideration so many elders were in the community was that this was the opportunity to use some of that the beauty of remember you know and that nostalgic feeling and and my my skepticism kind of at first because I tend to to organize maybe from a different place so that in my experience was seeing how how powerful that could be that it that from this place of just just love and kindness and and family and unity and all of those things that I was like okay yeah you say it's gonna work okay I believe you but really that that was what motivated those people that you know that she's the nanas and I'm thinking of the Nana that shared the story of what she organized in the school and then she goes back into the community and you know nostalgia and and remembering and memory of place and time those are really strong emotions going to recreate that in the now I think is this kind of it's it's yeah it's unique kind of all the way in the back or disagreement or you all have to change course and tactic I would love to hear a little bit more about like what like frameworks or value use to guide this conversation to make sure that you are simply in their ways is in your work well the sort of redirecting had more to do with artists finding ways to get the interests of residents you know to participate and certainly so you know we try to have like community art workshops with something you tried early on and you know there's like like four or five people came we try to have other kinds of like like we had uncovered quite a bit of historical and archival we try to have some some evenings at the at the center where we would like share some of that history with people in these different ways and then as we like I said like we tried to like I had gift cards and so the initially was just trying to get that engagement and we did that you know like going door-to-door was one way and that was pretty successful but as we found that like people wouldn't show up to something and we're quite getting the number of who wanted to the level of connection that's what we sort of go back to our production meetings and for us I don't know if there's a certain kind of theoretical framework or anything we just kept like trying to think of new ways to get to entice residents to show up and if we thought we could just get you know like it's hard to explain even to like another artist like all the love like what we're trying to do and you know my sister just your sort of average civilian you know resident you know neighbor and so like it was like how do we like give them a taste so finally when we had videos we had a world history video at a certain point and we told everybody that we've been about then we didn't do about 12 people were like hey we're gonna show a clip of your video and the main reason was very practical like want to make sure you're cool with it before we put this on blast and when I get your feedback this is the time this is one of many times throughout we had to go back and check it with residents and make sure they were cool with everything and so when when someone's like oh you're gonna show my video my face oh yeah I want you know I want to come in either because it'll be fun to watch myself or because yeah I want to quality control it and so they would bring their whole families and and so we finally had this event where we showed little clips and we had like 40 40 people come and once they saw what it was and got a better sense there was little editing a little music clip behind it then they were like oh this is what you're trying to do and from there on people were showing up to different things and we had to buy and I got point and so I think that's I think also Marcus he's really persisted in a good way you know like he it was kind of like oh this guy he's really putting he's really doing what he says he's gonna do and we get meetings I'm like what works here every neighborhood meeting you know any kind of meeting to be there and I think that that spoke I think to residents about this isn't just like in the past where somebody came and they wanted to take something from us but this is really somebody who's committed and they're here and they're participating and they want to really like they open he really really does want to hear what we have to say that persistence you know in that commitment like no you can't you can't understand us to meet that yes is there she was she was our our body representative yes there's anybody from the neighborhood on the leadership team and then there was one of the teachers from the student school was yeah yeah we have a cello works yeah there's a bit you know that you know like Julian was instrumental so he's the one that making that toilet last night but he's been teaching in that neighborhood for I think 11 years and he knows all the all the grandmas that have their kids that come and other parents really well and so he was instrumental in like getting people to agree to have let us interview them on histories because he wouldn't make the ask and they trust him and so he came to pretty much all the interviews as well I mean I talked to a couple of them and maybe time can talk as far as like the association meetings that they've shown up at at the event you know that I think what I felt was that they were I mean this is not like a scientific study but for the anecdotal sort of evidence that I gathered with a lot of appreciation and like oh I didn't know and like the sense of like oh this is really cool that I live in this kind of history and so but you know they came with the elections and they came with the meetings I don't know they're you know I think you know I think there's like in any neighborhood there's people who move in and they're like yeah I'm going with the neighborhood is living here and then there's the people who have a genuine interest in being part of that community and so I think that for people who are newer in the community I see a lot of them you know that are coming to the neighborhood association means or they can't come to the association meetings yes in my neighborhood cleanups are seen them you know I think I think it's like in any place when you're kind of a newer person you're a little apprehensive like where do I fit in but what I see I think that's equally important is space being made for those people when kind of like they think they show up about right the whole thing with the persistence like they've shown up for a while and then you start seeing some of the older neighbors kind of being like oh hi you know how are you and at first maybe not so much because it's like what are you know you're new here we don't a friend or a foe right and then after a while it's I've seen you around now you've come to this and this and this and then you know you start seeing those relationships yeah it's it's it's slow you know that's why we're just coming here we continue having said I mean one giant right a bunch of little events about the year just to provide more opportunities for these these two sides of the neighborhood right the newer revivals versus the long multi-generational resident because they're they're they're in it together would like it or not I mean they're all living down and so you know my hope is that the trust can build and that as the new arrivals learn what is to be what needs to be not not lost you know we want to make sure we don't lose the character the very thing that makes the neighborhood what it is you know hopefully that will sort of jump in on that well and just also just to chime in you know certainly this is all out of the conflict and which is you know maybe uncomfortable for some folks but nobody's moving forward in this the discussions happen between those groups you know we saw a little mini version of it and I think the art provides I was just reflect on this because I don't want to give you the impression but when in the neighborhood association meetings you know there's some knock down drag out by the track because now we're not talking about the kind of like nice out there now we're talking about well you know what you're parking in front of my driveway or you're supposed to clean up your yard and in those meetings we've seen more of some of the people coming ahead and a little bit of the rift along the you know what you're not going to come in here and tell me after I've lived here for 10 to me in my family 10 generations and you're trying to recreate me where you came this is you know like a statement was made in the last day of the association meeting this is a lot and you knew you were moving into a lot of when you here so get with the program right you versus us kind of thing and my thing has been no instead of like that let's not make this a you versus us like you you're from here we're not let's really just like wholeheartedly embrace that and say that's real and those are realities of you are from here I can tomorrow I don't know my home I read I can tomorrow I could in theory pick up my kids get in my car drive over to to capia where the rest of my family lives right and move in there these people some of these people they're not going anywhere they own their homes their grandma's live there the grandpa's live there they died in their backyard there you know they had their first kiss they had their first car accident their first bite that's you know that's that's real and so I think that right now in the shaping of community it's not about let's try to like build bridges between the two it's kind of like let's respect the distinct camps for a minute and then see where the opportunities to coexist right like none of us want to live in a trashed out neighborhood none of us want to live in a neighborhood where our kids aren't safe none of us want to live in a neighborhood we kind of work to live like let's pick these points that we can collectively agree upon and then kind of try to build off of that working this way you know what really gets me going is because what I noticed right with this event other things I've done is when you put the art in it's like this this other space it's not the sort of space of conflict that people are more familiar with like what she's saying you're parking my driveway it's this it's how kind of like a foreign space that people aren't as used to being in it's also a very beautiful space and it provides these moments these breaks from the sort of day-to-day conflict or struggles and it opens it up and changes perspective and it affects the heart and so it's a nice sort of like these it's a break from like to how things are usually happening in and out and in that space it really allows people to see things a little different or give someone a chance to be heard in a way maybe they haven't been heard or see someone in a way they hadn't seen them and that's really you know that's something that I'm trying to continue to sort of perfect or or just develop like how art can be infused into conflict situations in neighborhoods that lead to community development and you know like I'm working now researching in the wildest we're trying to do by the stories down there on both sides of the border we wrote a grant to do it by the stories in South Tucson with the foundation the time it works for it's doing a lot of work there and so you know our goal is to and you know I think this is one of the futures of American theaters not the only future but you know it still gives as artists us the opportunity to work and make the most beautiful things we can make but also in collaboration with with not artists right and a whole range of kind of not just the community members but there's all kinds of other partners to be brought into it and it's it's very exciting because there's so much that I'm being treated by with this way I live in Houston inside and that had on the airport and so much promise that was undermined like you said like normally radios and hoods would have you and and the choice to live in a community with people who look like you and the sacrifice that takes with that because I have two daughters and not has been the same nobody we want to literally I want to live in third board which has become really justified as we there in 83 moved into the housing everything's gonna shift and gonna get expensive one day and not be lived there be priced out of a community then have to live in a community with your people when you see dumping everywhere garbage everywhere working with my family and then having tried my children around for these four other things and then to see another neighborhood of one way my neighborhood with another way it's very painful the camp so then here with that story we have camp Logan in Houston and the same story that same exact story camp the child happens in Europe with Africans who work to fight the French and the same thing happened to them they would not promise things and they were sleeping and they came and killed them in the same stories and over and over the train station I mean the railroad and how that course things in the the the highways coming in destroying communities and families that live there when I first moved to Houston I didn't know that 288 which was a highway that they built and destroyed neighbors and my friend's mother had to move I grew up in the Bronx I didn't know that cross box expressway which was a part of Trump's father and how that destroyed him the same thing over and over and over again everywhere but the promise was this because I decided to do a story around elders in the community and extraordinary elders film projects similar to what you're doing right there and working to work towards this we matter stop good project as well to address some of the same issues that you're doing so I just want to thank you so much for the work that you've done and so I think we reached our time so I just want to close by just again thanking net for being one of the prime funders of this project and also for you know allowing us to to talk a bit about it during this conference and also you know there's about 200 people involved in this project you see like a very small representation of all the interns and community partners and young people so yeah thank you all very much