Healing Power of Arts & Culture

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August 15, 2016

By: Justin Chotikul

National Creative Placemaking Fund, Fieldbuilding

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

For the newcomer and native alike, the Tenderloin can be a visceral experience. The streets are strewn with trash and often reek of urine. And nearly every corner offers evidence for why this neighborhood has become the poster-child for what it means to have so many people living without permanent housing. Yet look closer, as Hanman and Jennifer instruct, and you notice the levity, heart, and resilience beneath the grime.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

A pedestrian strides past a poem (dedicated to the neighborhood) which closes with the line "Broken dolls sleepwalking in the wretched decay / Revelry Just beginning" --an apt summary of the neighborhood's many compelling contradictions.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

The Wildflowers Institute spent several years conducting interviews, focus groups, and door-to-door canvassing to identify cultural leaders, elevate talented artists, and incubate community dialogue. They've discovered that the concept of "healing" is the connective tissue between the Tenderloin's artists and its residents.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

San Francisco's tech-boom has dramatically accelerated development throughout the entire Bay, with the Tenderloin representing one of the few working-class holdouts left in the city. Hanmin and Jennifer worry that the "influence of money and power for increased development [may come] at the expense of the organic fabric of this community". Wildflowers's "Hidden Gems of the Tenderloin" project is above all interested in how to balance those interests in ways that benefit Tenderloin artists and residents.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

Hanmin and Jennifer host recurring 'incubator' workshops and discussion groups with an eclectic cadre of Tenderloin artists. These conversations focus on identifying a common set of experiences that can in turn be channeled as a force for change. In this shot, Hanmin describes a prototype for one of the incubator's planned exhibitions.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

Culture "isn't what people say it is," stated the noted anthropologist (and Wildflowers board-member) George Foster, "but how they behave". Wildflowers investigate these underlying assumptions in an exercise that asks community members to use miniatures, models, and toys to depict their community. These various tableaus reveal much about how residents themselves view their neighborhood. Taken together, they help form a "cultural vocabulary" for the community.

photo credit: Justin C.; mural: APEXER

For many residents, the streets are the Tenderloin's "living room". It's only appropriate that the decor of this shared space matches the swagger and vitality of the conversations within it.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

A cultural asset map in Wildflowers headquarters. The pins denote various artistic landmarks in the neighborhood. The sharpie'd line highlights Saint Anne's Valley, the historical declivity from which the Tenderloin grew. The valley now represents one of the dominant 'cultural' thoroughfares of the neighborhood.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

A snap of snaps: This is but a fraction of the 650+ Tenderloin artists/cultural leaders that Wildflowers has identified and engaged with over the past several years.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

The Wildflowers incubators function as artistic workshops, cultural planning sessions, and, sometimes, group therapy. Composed of poets, painters, musicians, and the like, Hanmin describes this select few as the 'shamans' of the community: those who convey the teachings and institutional history of the neighborhood, catalyze the creative potential of its residents, and provide a cathartic 'space of enormous compassion' through their art.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

The many bold murals that adorn the Tenderloin are perfectly suited to its boisterous street activity. Though these bright splashes aren't exactly 'hidden gems', they're an apt backdrop for the community's eclectic and colorful cast of creatives and eccentrics.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

Like the city it resides in, the Tenderloin is full of counter-cultural landmarks. The Compton Cafeteria, at this intersection, occupies a seminal place in LGBT history. In the fall of 1966, the Compton Cafeteria was the site of one of the first riots for transgender rights in the country ----and this occurred a full three years before the more famous Stonewall Riots in New York City. Perhaps the most significant repercussion of the Compton Cafeteria riot was the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit (NTCU), the first peer-connected advocacy network of its kind. (As Hanmin and Jennifer pointed out, these informal, overlooked networks are now a common feature of the Tenderloin.) This new street sign was actually unveiled in June of this year, at the conclusion of the city's Trans March.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

Though the Compton Cafe is one of the more sensational episodes in Tenderloin history, I counted nearly a dozen of historical placards like this during our stroll through the neighborhood.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

This painting by a famous local artist was hung in one of the Tenderloin bodegas we stopped in. The vivid colors and phantasmagoric composition echoes the emotional trauma of many of the community's residents.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

This sculpture, also by a local artist, shows how effective art can be at distilling the emotional character of a place. The figure could be a busker or street hustler on any given Tenderloin corner. His (her?) world-weary posture hints at a lifetime of struggle, but the face speaks to an irrepressible grit and hopefulness.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

Hanmin shows me a model, developed in the incubator by Tenderloin artist-residents, that outlines the different values enshrined in our culture. It's not hard to ascertain which represents 'market values' and which describes community values.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

"Healing," Jennifer and Hanmin would continually remind me, was the one constant throughout their years of research and fieldwork in this community. The Tenderloin is home to various groups of displaced refugees fleeing violence in their native land --including Laotians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Ethiopians. It's also a focal point for the thousands of homeless --young and old-- who wander the city's streets. And now it's one of the few low-income neighborhoods remaining in San Francisco, with denizens who have struggled with addiction, trauma, and all manners of loss. Despite these realities, Wildflowers has discovered that this is a space of 'enormous compassion', with artists leading the way in harnessing this healing as a creative, constructive force for change.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

This smiling mother and daughter agreed to let us take their picture. Their warmth and joy served to punctuate the points that Hanmin and Jennifer had emphasized all afternoon: Like every community, the Tenderloin can be a place of pain and suffering, yes. But it's also proof-positive in the transformative power of a community struggling to regain its footing -- using arts and culture as crutch, walking stick, and guidepost. In that sense, it's emblematic of a uniquely American spirit, and undoubtedly a case-study for effective creative placemaking.

photo credit: Justin Chotikul

My tour concluded with a coda from one of my favorite authors. According to Jennifer and Hanmin, this quote regularly changes, but whoever curates is certainly tuned to the pulse of this dynamic place.

"Any strategy for cultural equity must come from significant numbers of people who share a common experience that in turn becomes an energy force for change," says Hanmin Liu, the president of the Wildflowers Institute, a nonprofit devoted to "discovering the informal ways that things get done in a community and the leaders and activities that quietly make a difference". A 2014 ArtPlace Grantee, Wildflowers has devoted the past several years toward identifying the connection between artists and other residents in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. That connection -- or 'energy force', as Hanmin describes it -- is "healing". Last week I had the privilege to speak with Hanmin and his wife, Jennifer Mei, who runs the institute with him. Together they accompanied me through this fascinating section of the city, educating me on the many 'gems of the Tenderloin'.

View the discussion thread.

The Healing Power of Arts & Culture: Creative Placemaking in San Francisco's Tenderloin

August 15, 2016

By: Justin Chotikul

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