Crowds gather for the finale at the Dia de Los Muertos Festival at Mesa Arts Center, serenaded by Mariachi Reyna de Los Angeles, which led the closing processional to the Community Altar
Updates
We had four different brainstorming sessions last week that went extremely well. The purpose of the sessions was to get key stakeholder’s wheels turning about the possibilities for this space, and to lay a foundation for the next steps in planning. Mesa Arts Center design architect, Michael Tingley, helped lead the sessions and did a great job of getting people to think about the environment and the emotional experiences they desire at the Café Society space, as well as the activities they want to experience there. Sessions were held with a group of ASU Polytechnic students, downtown stakeholders and Mesa Arts Center staff, area artists and makers, and educators.
We’re (finally) almost done with the Request for Proposals for our Shade Sculpture artist. We hope to distribute it by the end of this month. We also hope to finalize our artist consultant around that same time. Three members of our core team are attending INST-INT, a new conference on Interactive Art being held at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis this weekend. We will meet with a possible artist consultant team there, as well as learn about a lot of new work that may influence choices about the Café Society project.
Recent Wins
Two weeks ago we held our 7th annual Dia de Los Muertos Festival, which is the largest Day of the Dead festival in the Phoenix area. The turnout and diversity of the audience was terrific, and that activation of our Café Society site was wonderful. The new Alliance Pavilion was used for performances, with another stage nearby on the north plaza. Just days later, the Arizona Republic named Mesa Arts Center’s Dia de Los Muertos Festival the best Dia de Los Muertos event in the Valley! In an entirely different but equally successful event held on our project site, a special dinner was held there prior to a sold out Vince Gill concert one week prior to the festival. There were 174 diners at this event at the future Café Society site, thoroughly enjoying the environment and great weather, and providing a sense of the kind of social engagement for which the site can be perfect.
Last week, we hosted an amazing two-day event organized in collaboration our artist partners Phonetic Spit, a Phoenix-based spoken word organization. The event started with preliminary rounds of a Poetry Slam on Thursday evening, followed by a Unity Day on Friday filled with workshops, and culminating in a City-Wide Poetry Slam, the finals of the event the night before. Wow! The powerful work, the feeling of family among these young people and the artists, and the sense of empowerment and purpose that emerged out of the work Phonetic Spit is doing in the schools was really fantastic. Giving these young people the understanding that Mesa Arts Center is their home is one of the goals of this work, and of the 21st Century Café Society. This event confirmed that we are making great headway.
Also last week, Mesa made national news when Apple announced that it is locating a manufacturing plant here. We are excited to welcome Apple’s workers to our community, and know that this is the type of development that confirms the importance of creating a vibrant urban center that engages everyone in the arts.
Insight/Provocation
Listening to the input of different groups at our brainstorming sessions, I am struck by how much of what excites people is the opportunity to feel at home—to feel really comfortable. Comfort is about being able to play and experiment, to have comfort in the form of food and comfy seating, to have open-ended opportunities, unscheduled and unplanned. This is the opposite of what presenters and event planners are accustomed to doing. It is, in part, about giving up control.