CHURCH OF MONIKA: What We Talk About When We Talk About Community-Based Art [Spaces]

May 15, 2016
11:00am

At this Sunday’s cHURCH, Maria-Christina Villaseñor will invite the community to explore community spaces.

The shifting demographics of Open Source’s immediate community, at the intersection of South Slope, Sunset Park, and Greenwood Heights, reflect an alarmingly ramped-up pace of gentrification and the challenge of escalating housing and artist studio/exhibition space costs. As a result, increased time and economic pressures often leave little time for meaningful exchange between us as creatively-engaged, progressively-minded neighbors.

At the same time, Open Source and a number of new, recent projects and spaces have popped up in our surrounding neighborhoods that strive to offer artistic exchange with the community and provide a space for dialogue. The paradox is that a thriving arts community often invites the kind of mass gentrification and development that leads to the displacement of the working-class and often creative community-bases. We invite you to join us at this presentation and informal open forum, embodying the ethos of Open Source as a shared network, to share how your work and projects, need for community-based artistic presentations, dialogues and gatherings are working (or not working), and what you think is needed to make a more inclusive and responsive arts community in South Slope.