The Power of Art in the City

In the video below, a group of students work to beautify their neighborhood in Louisville, KY by transforming an ugly chain-linked fence into an urban tapestry.

A couple things stood out to me:

• The project emerges from the grassroots. It started when the people of the Park Hill community said they would like to see more activities for kids in the neighborhood.
• The kids talk about how the experience helped them defy negative perceptions of their neighborhood and of the people who live there. One of the girls reflecting on the project says, "Just because we live here doesn't mean we're all bad." I loved seeing how the kids came up with the idea of spelling out P-A-R-K-H-I-L-L in the fence. You get the sense that as they are working, a new vision for their community is taking root and growing. So, not only do they walk away feeling proud of who they are and what they've accomplished, but also of the place where they're from.
• It takes a whole host of community leaders and organizations--listening for the pulse of the neighborhood, paying attention to the voices of the people--to pull something like this off (notice all the sponsors in the opening credits)
  

What would it take for churches (our church?) to invest in projects like this?

God and Gardening Pt.3

Here it is again, "Using Nature's Bounty to Feed the Hungry", this time a little closer to home in Milford, NJ. A guy has leftover vegetables in his garden, donates them to a local women's shelter, and is surprised by the warm reception he gets from the shelter worker. So he starts a nationwide database, ampleharvest.org, to connect gardeners with local food pantries and shelters.

God and Gardening Pt.2

Hey Friends in Brooklyn,
Maybe its the midwestern farmer in me, or maybe its because urban farming and whole foods are hot topics these days, but I can't stop thinking about this idea of churches feeding their communities by growing their own fresh produce. It seems like this idea is really catching on.

After my last post, Bob sent me a link to an ABC news story about Will Allen, who's training people to do urban gardening in Milwaukee. The NYTimes magazine also did an article on Allen last summer.

Well, here's another story about an evangelical church, this one in Garden City, Idaho, that built the "garden 'o feedin" (get it?) to provide fresh food in the community and invite neighbors to come together. To me, this is such a compelling way to engage the community for a number of reasons:

(1) It meets a tangible need in the community (providing food for the hungry). In this sense, these new community gardens function much like the traditional church food pantry. But herein lies the difference:
(2) The community gardener says, "No, we're not content to handout whatever food gets donated, we want to provide nutritious food, food that will actually benefit the person's health, and the whole community's health.
(3) By doing so, the church community acts prophetically to fill a gap where the powerful food industry has failed: Making fresh produce affordable (free!) and accessible to low-income individuals and families. This is a way of feeding the hungry that bears witness to the inequities of our world, and seeks to mend, in a small way, the divide between the "haves" and "have-nots."
(4) Finally, this is ministry with the community as much as ministry to the community. In a community garden, neighbors, both churched and unchurched, labor together--cultivating the soil, planting seeds, and reaping the harvest--for the benefit of the larger community. All are co-laborers, invited in to share together, commune together for the common good.

What do you think? Have you heard of anything like this before? What can we learn from this?

God and Gardening

Here's the story of one church that turned their flower beds and landscaping into garden plots to grow food for their community. Check this out:
http://www.throwmountains.com/blog/groceries-god-and-gardening/

The Scum River Bridge in Queens

Here's an example of how art can actually bring transformation to a community.

Astoria Scum River Bridge from Jason Eppink on Vimeo.

Coming in at No.12

Bay Ridge ranks 12 on the list of New York's most livable neighborhoods put out by New York magazine.
Check it out here:
http://nymag.com/realestate/neighborhoods/2010/65374/index6.html.
It's also mentioned here:
http://bayridgejournal.blogspot.com/2010/04/bay-ridge-citys-12th-most-livable.html

Housing Evictions Among Minority Women

A New York Times article this morning highlights the growing number of minority women being evicted from their homes. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19evict.html?emc=eta1