from BCA's 2006-07 Annual Journal

Bronx Council on the Arts (BCA) is celebrating over 45 years as a private, non-profit membership organization that is the official cultural agency of Bronx County. Recognized nationally as a leading arts service organization in providing cultural services and arts programs, BCA serves a multicultural constituency in excess of 1.2 million residents. BCA provides an array of services to 5,000 artists and more than 250 arts and community-based organizations. BCA continues to advance its mission to increase opportunities for individual artists, embrace community development through the arts, and outreach to arts organizations to increase their funding as a fundamental step in organization building.

In 2001, BCA designated a one mile-long strip of the lower Grand Concourse area as the South Bronx Cultural Corridor. The South Bronx Cultural Corridor program is part of BCA’s effort to ‘brand’ a portion of the South Bronx as an area with a high concentration of cultural activity. This corridor has been dubbed the “Gateway to the New Bronx” and our on-going efforts there demonstrate art-based economic development for the South Bronx. BCA’s goal for the corridor is to attract visitors, increase commercial activity and engage the community in a variety of South Bronx cultural events.

We are working to implement our comprehensive vision that addresses the physical, economic and social needs of the local community with:
(1) Commercial activity that reflects market realities, balances neighborhood needs, and respects the existing character of the community;
(2) Marketing campaigns that use resources wisely and target the trade area effectively; and
(3) organized and engaged stakeholders to guide the revitalization process through its entire course.

BCA proposes a three prong strategy that will anchor the community by providing Bronx residents with the resources to flourish in the community in which they live. The second stage will channel the community by identifying and connecting creative potential. The third phase, branding the community includes the creation of a marketing and communications strategy that will expose the cultural community assets to both South Bronx residents and a much wider audience. These three theme areas are designed to be implemented in phases as part of a three to four year strategic plan.

BCA has taken the opportunity to lead community development efforts through the arts. Our approach to economic development is unique in that it strays from the typical artist gentrification scenario that is seen in other parts of New York City. As opposed to bringing artists into the area, BCA will identify and encourage artistic people who are already living in the South Bronx and are part of the community. By creating an indigenous creative economy based on the inherent strengths of the community, BCA is leading efforts to create an economically vibrant area.

Community Arts Grants
The purpose of Community Arts Grants (CAG), funded by the New York State Council on the Arts’ Decentralization program, is to foster the continuing development of local cultural resources responsive to community needs. CAG helps to ensure access to arts and culture in each Bronx neighborhood including areas that are geographically isolated, economically disadvantaged, and ethnically diverse.

The basic principle of the Community Arts Grant is local decision-making using a peer panel evaluation process. CAG support enables emerging organizations to grow professionally and to enhance the cultural climate in communities and neighborhoods where they live and operate. To that end, this year’s panel awarded $80,600 in grants to 47 Bronx organizations. Total amount funds distributed was. Additional funds were distributed to Bronx organizations through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Greater New York Arts Development Fund.

NYSCA Local Capacity Building Grant
Funded by the New York State Council on the Arts’ Arts In Education Program, BCA supported arts integration projects which will establish long term relationships between Bronx schools and Bronx artists/organizations. These grants generally support projects that are small and represent first-time or new forays into arts education on the part of the school applicants. This year we provided $20,525 to eight school/artist/arts organization partnerships.

JPMorgan Chase Arts Education Grant
Our JPMorgan Chase Arts Education Program encourages partnerships among Bronx schools, and Bronx artists/organizations for projects utilizing the arts to improve teaching and learning. The grant serves as an incentive for developing and sustaining long-term relationships among schools and the Bronx Arts community regarding residency and non-residency programs. This year, 17 partnerships were granted $60,000 for a variety of school based projects.

Get It Together 2007: Arts-In-Education Round Table Symposium
This year, New York State Council on the Arts funded BCA to organize an arts-in-education round table to address ongoing issues and/or topics of interest to our arts education community. Get It Together 2007: Arts-In-Education Round Table Symposium was held on National Teachers Day, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 at Hostos Community College. The symposium featured an interactive panel discussion facilitated by Greg McCaslin, Center for Arts Education, a presentation by the Romare Bearden Foundation on their new arts education curriculum and a lecture-demonstration by Christal Brown, Director of INSPIRIT, a Bronx dance company.

BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own)
BRIO celebrates its 18th year of providing financial support and recognition of artists putting forth their very best in the areas of literary, performing, media and visual arts. Twenty-two Bronx artists will receive awards of $2,500 for artistic excellence in one of the following categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Playwriting, Poetry, Screenwriting, Acting, Choreography, Dance, Storytelling/ Spoken word, Performance Poetry, Instrumental/ Vocal Music Performance, Music Composition, Crafts, Painting, Printmaking, Drawing/ Illustration, Artist Book, Sculpture, Film, Computer Animation, Digital and Computer Arts, Documentary or Narrative Film/Video. The award selection is made through a peer panel process utilizing professional artists in the respective disciplines. BRIO awardees must complete a one-time public service activity to receive their complete cash award. Known as the ACE (Artists for Community Enrichment), this activity is an essential component for all BRIO recipients and must be performed within the one-year period of their award. The ACE provides artists with additional visibility and demonstrates to the community the wealth of artistic talent available in our borough. Since its inception in 1989, the BRIO Awards program has continued to provide support for the artistic development of Bronx artists. Over the years, more than $500,000 has been awarded to 185 artists. This year a record 255 submissions were received. Only Bronx residents are eligible to apply for the BRIO award.

The Bronx Writers' Center (BWC) continues to serve as an integral part of the development of many writers in all genres. Through the Writers' Center, literary artists can receive skill-building instruction and attend first-rate workshops that address various levels of writing abilities. Writers with a desire to improve their talents are welcomed to take one of our free creative writing workshops, which cover the gamut of literary disciplines. BWC also offers professional-development seminars on the more practical aspects of the literary field, such as editing and marketing a self published book, and finding outlets for writing in literary journals and magazines.

Our longstanding programs continue to thrive. BWC's Chapter One Fiction Competition awards a total of $4,000 to four writers whose initial chapter of new work shows exceptional promise. Winners, chosen through a peer panel process, give public readings of their work in Bronx venues. BWC's Literary Arts Fellowships have been successful in identifying and nurturing gifted writers; two awards totaling $10,000 are made annually through a competitive, peer panel process. Fellowships are now awarded only to residents of the Bronx. Selected Fellows participate in a public service activity building the capacity of other Bronx writers while progressing in their own efforts. Writers wishing to connect with literary communities and audiences are encouraged to attend and participate during one of our public award winners' readings. 2006-07 BWC Chapter One Winners: Art Blount, David Samuel Levinson, Lynn A. Lurie, and Nora Maynard. 2006-07 BWC Fellowship Winners: Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa and Peter Selgin.

Bronx WritersCorps
Bronx Writers’ Corps (BWC) is part of a national program created to improve literacy levels and to provide avenues of expression for residents of the most underserved and challenged neighborhoods. The program is in its twelfth year of sending professional writers to community based organizations in the Bronx.  This year BWC sent writers to the Jackson Avenue Family Residence, Willow Avenue Family Residence and Nelson Avenue Family Residence. These Tier II transitional housing facilities help families find permanent residences while providing them with the necessary social services to make the adjustment. The youth we serve range in age 10 to 14.

WritersCorps also services both Horizons and Bridges Juvenile Detention Facilities. Our professional performance poets provide literary opportunities for youth up to age 18, introducing them to creative writing as well as performance poetry.

Two new after school sites were introduced this year: Intermediate School 192 and Public School 89. Literary artists at these schools work with teens and pre-teens to introduce or develop their interest in the written and spoken word, largely through creative writing and performance poetry.

Participants at each site make up a team in the Youth Poetry Slam League. A culminating slam was held at the Bronx Library Center. Each site also produces a group anthology.

Urban Digital
We continue to expand our "new media" program which instructs young people on the many creative and vocational aspects of digital technology and the Internet. The programs incorporates many of the websites that are important in the lives of young people (YouTube and MySpace among others) while giving them the tools: digital filmmaking, podcasting, and creative writing to create uniquely personal projects.  Approximately 50 young people have participated during the first year of the program.

Longwood Arts Project is the contemporary art center of the Bronx Council on the Arts, supporting artists and their work, especially emerging and under-recognized artists, through Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, Digital Matrix Commissions Program, and public programs that provide platforms for free and open dialogue. This year, commissions were awarded to artists Chris Burns, Michael Paul Britto, Carol Sun, and dan k. williams. Longwood presents exhibitions of works produced in various media, affording many artists their first major solo exhibition. We encourage experimental, interdisciplinary practices that connect artists, communities, and ideas within and beyond the Bronx.

The most recent exhibition South Bronx Contemporary: Longwood Arts Project’s 25th Anniversary was organized by the three previous directors of Longwood along with the current director and included over 60 artists in various media. A catalogue was produced with essays by Betti-Sue Hertz, Edwin Ramoran, Eddie Torres, and Fred Wilson. A limited edition print Something We May or May Have Not Known by Wilson was also produced to commemorate the 25th anniversary and is available for purchase. The exhibition was reviewed by The New York Times and The New York Sun.  Other exhibitions this past year include the group exhibition En Foco’s New Works Photographs Awards and the solo exhibition Grimanesa Amoros with a catalogue produced with Hostos Center for Arts and Culture.

The Bronx Council on the Arts has long demonstrated its dedication to the cultural development of the community and to our borough’s independent artists by offering diverse and exciting programs as well as mentoring, guidance, financial and promotional support.

With the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, we were able to re-design the BCA website to include the newly-established Bronx Artists Forum which will serve as an ongoing tribute to the award-winning Bronx artists who receive BCA’s support. This forum will serve as an online showcase and an archive of their work, making it accessible to art critics, consumers, presenters, and curators.

Located on the opening page of BCA’s website, the Bronx Artists Forum includes previous and current winners of BCA’s BRIO Award, the Longwood Arts Project’s Digital Matrix Commission, and the Bronx Writers’ Center’s Literary Arts Fellowship & Residency and Chapter One Fiction Competition & Reading Series.

Artisans Initiative
The Artisans Initiative, a project of the BCA Development Corporation has a growing membership numbering over 80 creative, motivated, culturally diverse artisans working in various traditional and contemporary craft forms. Various media represented include pottery, jewelry, wood, metals, glass, weaving, knot tying, quilting, doll making, religious crafts, etc.

Participants include a diverse immigrant community including Mexican, South American, and Central American artisans as well as those from West Africa, Korea, Puerto Rico .Japan, and Poland  The program offers services, training, professional development workshops, vending, exhibition, and teaching opportunities as well as grant and loan opportunities to underrepresented artisans, living and working in the Bronx.

Artisans are also offered small business management counseling, individual assessment and evaluation sessions and marketing workshops to ensure market readiness.  The BCA Development Corporation coordinates community based services and functions as market developers to assist participants in launching careers as entrepreneurs.

“Many Hands, Many Places”, the first annual exhibition of the work of artisans living and creating in the Bronx, showcased ceramics, woodcarving, metalworks as well as introducing cultural craft such as Maedup (Korean Knot Tying) and Mudcloth (West African textile printing technique)  stemming from immigrant craftspeople. The innovations applied to traditional works, forming contemporary and original one of a kind works were embraced by the public. The exhibition was a featured attraction of New York City’s Immigrant History Week.

The Artisans Initiative members participate in annual fairs and festivals including Culturefest and The Bronx Food and Art Festival. Artisan’s work has been sold at the Bronx Museum of the Arts under the label and will be available for sale at the Longwood Art Gallery@Hostos.

Arthandler Training Program
The Arthandler Training program will celebrate nearly 10 years of innovative training programs that directly benefit Bronx residents with jobs and provide service to New York’s fine arts industries including galleries, museums, auction houses, art shippers, corporate collectors and designers. The program has trained more than 170 artists and arts institution personnel; all seeking to augment their incomes, or to take up a new trade in a downsized economy, or to simply to try something new to improve their lives. 

This year, The Department of Small Business Services renewed our certification with the New York State Department of Education as a Certified Training Provider. This status allowed us to reach an even greater number of qualified students who are interested in pursuing work in this ever-expanding field, especially in a climate where the current workforce is rapidly aging out. To that end, we have expanded our pilot programs to target a labor force of young achievers. In addition to hard skills training in arthandling, we continue to provide job placement, career development, and entrepreneurial opportunities to our graduates.

HANDLE IT!
In collaboration with the Riverdale Mental Health Association, the BCA Development Corporation/Bronx Council on the Arts Fine Arts and Technical Services Bureau (BCADC) certified 22 young adults between the ages of 17 and 21 years in arthandling and gallery assistance skills. The Handle It! Career Program is designed to address the underlying causes of structural unemployment experienced by New York’s high school dropouts and unemployed youth. Through an extension of the Handle It! Career Program, the Bureau plans to certify another 14 art handler technicians to send into the fine arts work force. Upon graduation, they will be proficient in contracting out their services for the three most common activities in which art and artifacts are moved: Intake and preparation, exhibition installation and dismantling, and packing and shipping. They will also be proficient in identifying the historical record of many of the world’s art movements and representative artists. To date, the majority of our young graduates are either working or in continuing education programs.

The Bronx Culture Trolley, a project of the South Bronx Cultural Corridor, has become a “must do event” on the calendars of “First Wednesday” regulars from all five boroughs and beyond since its inception in December 2002. Making a cultural loop through the lower Grand Concourse, its riders are treated to some of the hottest cultural attractions, dining establishments and entertainment venues in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. With the help of the Bronx Tourism Council, the BCA operates The Bronx Culture Trolley on the first Wednesday of each month (except January and September) providing Bronxites and tourists alike a fun way to travel via a replica of an early 20th-Century trolley car. Its riders have the freedom to hop on and off to enjoy various activities at stops along the route giving them full control of their evening.

Attractions include art exhibits, poetry readings, film screenings, and live theatrical, musical, comedy, and dance performances at such venues as the Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, Hostos Center for Arts & Culture, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Pregones Theater, Yankee Tavern, Hagan Saint Philip Gallery, and the Downtown Bronx Bar & Cafe. The quaint atmosphere of the new Artisans Boutique features a talented group of Bronx artisans whose imaginative creations are yours for the browsing and for the buying.

Trolley nights have also provided tours of local artists’ studios and have expanded to such cultural Hunts Point hot spots as the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, Mud/Bone / Studio 889 and The POINT. “Works-in-Motion”, featuring live entertainment on board the trolley, continued this year with a performance by Rhina Valentin and The Pirates of the Cultural Corridor, scenes from playwright Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 opus, and TRANSIT, a multiple-channel video installation with visual artist Eleanor Dubinsky.

For more information on the Bronx Culture Trolley and its monthly venue of free events, visit www.bronxarts.org/culture_trolley.asp.

Trolley Day at Fordham University
If you can’t bring the arts to the students, then bring the students to the arts. And that’s exactly what BCA did on April 11th when we provided this free opportunity to students of Fordham University. The trolley picked them up from Fordham and brought them to the South Bronx Cultural Corridor of the lower Grand Concourse. While there, they visited Pregones Theater for a backstage tour and a discussion of the theater’s history; Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College for a gallery tour and talk by the director and staff; and a guided tour of the exhibitions of the Bronx Museum of Arts.

Between the Trolleys
Trolley night venues freely open their doors to Bronx Culture Trolley riders on every first Wednesday, but they also offers an assortment of events and activities throughout the month between trolley nights? To help promote these venues, the Bronx Council on the Arts instituted a new one-panel, double-sided monthly handout called “Between the Trolleys”.

“Between the Trolleys” is a quick at-a-glance reference tool designed to briefly list venue names, activities, locations, dates, and contact information with an updated version at the beginning of each month. Venues include the Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Pregones Theater, Hostos Center for Arts & Culture, the Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance, The Point, and Mud/Bone / Studio 889.

First Wednesdays at the Library
The Bronx Library Center and the Bronx Council on the Arts, in their first collaborative effort, established “First Wednesdays at the Bronx Library Center” – a series of nine free performances, workshops, readings, and demonstrations. The artists selected for this initiative were all recipients of the 2006 BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) Award. The program took place on First Wednesdays (from October 4th through June 6th) at 12:15pm at the Bronx Library Center at 310 East Kingsbridge Road at Briggs Avenue in the Bronx. It was open to the public and admission was free. Additional “First Wednesdays” sponsors include the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and JPMorgan Chase.

Artists who participated in the 2006-2007 Season of “First Wednesdays at the Bronx Library Center” are: Luisa Beltran (writing workshop), Desi Moreno-Penson (staged reading), Alison Koffler (poetry workshop), Luis Ojeda (staged reading), Noel MacDuffie (dance performance), Toni Roberts (writing workshop), Dana Frobig (classical concert), Anthony Purdy (musical performance), and (in the center) Elly Erickson (singing performance).

Cultural Collaborations
BCA collaborated with community organizations and elected officials to present cultural events throughout the borough: with the support of Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, BCA sponsored performances and workshops at a number of Bronx Senior Centers; with the help of Councilmember James Vacca,  BCA placed writers in after school programs;  in collaboration with State Senator Jeffrey Klein BCA sponsored public performances in Loretta Park, Mosholu Parkway, Colucci Playground, Tracey Towers, Comras Mall, Reservoir Oval Park, and Harris Park. BCA was also a co-sponsor, along with the Bronx Tourism Council and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr., of the Bronx Food and Art Festival. The Council also provided fiscal sponsorship to many independent artists as well as organizations including the YW Conservatory of Dance, Latino Youth in Communication, and Mass Transit Street Theatre.

BCA Cultural Card
The Bronx Cultural Card is designed to connect cardholders to the wide variety of arts and cultural activities in the Bronx while developing new audiences for arts providers and new customers for Bronx business and dining establishments. The card is available free-of-charge to BCA members, subscribers, enrollees and volunteers of the Bronx cultural organizations and businesses listed in the next section as well as to matriculated students in our 12 Bronx colleges and adult education facilities. The Bronx Cultural Card provides two-for-one or discounted admissions, cash or percentage discounts on gift shop purchases, and premiums at local restaurants. Visit www.bronxarts.org/cultural_card.asp to see what owning the card has to offer. 100,000 cards are distributed annually.

BCA serves as a clearinghouse of information for independent artists, arts organizations, and community groups. The Council makes available a wide range of resources and services available to our constituents. BCA continues to be the place where people in the Bronx and beyond come to for answers to questions and solutions to problems.

Bronxarts.org
Our website has become a prime destination for those searching the internet for information on the state of the arts. Our on-line presence seen by thousands of visitors each week has opened up BCA to not only the Bronx but to everyone on the World Wide Web. The Bronx Artists Forum section now features works and profiles of our award winning artists. The posting of our many initiatives has garnered national and international attention. Additionally our site is linked to other service providers compounding the benefit of this resource.

E-news Update
This monthly e-publication is a compendium of timely information important to the arts community. Resources and opportunities beyond those offered by BCA are presented. Included within the E-news Update is the monthly calendar of events, which allows arts consumers to take advantage of the Bronx’ cultural wealth and at the same time benefits arts groups and organizations by helping build audiences.

E-Blasts
To insure that our community of artists and organizations as well as the general public don’t miss out on any available opportunities, BCA sends announcements regarding events and resource availability that come to our attention between issues of the E-News Update.