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Beacon blog: Connection is a human theme

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 22, 2013 - This week, the Beacon has been hosting open mics in four areas that have been getting help in identifying how arts can help them and that may get further aid through the Kresge Foundation.

These events have come at the end of a series of meetings in and exploration of Old North, Midtown, the Garden District and an expanded Loop done under the auspices of the Greater Saint Louis Community Foundation with support from Arts & Education Council and Regional Arts Commission. The goal is to build collaboration and develop ideas from within neighborhoods rather than bringing in outside organizations to plan.

While the Beacon has been reporting on the activities of the Kresge Arts St. Louis project and has been profiling the areas, we also wanted to help bring more individual voices into the discussion.

The open mic sessions fit into the Beacon’s efforts to reach out and listen. We used to do a series of roving neighborhood events called Beacon & Eggs. These involved going into an area, armed with coffee and pastries, and listening to a local panel and neighbors. Inevitably we’d learn something new.

That, too, has been the case with the "open mic" sessions. We originally thought of such events as a way to revive the neighborhood engagement, but it has also been a perfect fit as a public listening event for the Kresge Arts St. Louis project.

The format was simple: Everyone who signed up got three minutes to tell us what we should know about the arts in their neighborhood. But it was my observation, from organizing, moderating and attending all four of the events, that a common theme was connection: Connection to neighbors, connection to other artists, connection to the region. All via a connection to the arts.

To be clear, the Beacon is playing a reporting and convening role in the process and will have no role in determining the outcome or next steps.

But in engaging with the neighborhood, the Beacon went a step beyond telling their stories. To play this role in this process was a natural outgrowth of the Beacon's ongoing coverage of the arts, community development and arts funding in St. Louis. The benefit in engaging is that we learned about stories we wouldn't have otherwise. Bringing people together made the conversation broader and richer than most one-on-one conversations. The sessions also reminded us of the crucial and ongoing role the arts plays in the health of our communities.