Mike Bart

A20212888
The Debate
Soc-220


Proposal for Funding on Art and Culture Throughout Chicago


How art will increases education and job opportunities:
Art plays a very important role in education. Art improves academic performance
and provides benefits across a variety of subjects including, but not limited to history,
math, and literature. According to the 2005 College-Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile
Report, there is a drastic difference in SAT test scores between students that participate
in the arts and those who do not. In 2005, 1.5 million students took the SATs. Students
with four or more years of art have an average test score of 534 in the verbal portion of
the test and 540 in the math. This contrasts sharply with students with half a year or
less of art courses. These students had verbal scores of 485 and 502 for math
(Ruppert, p. 9). That is a 17 percentile increase in verbal placement and a 145 increase
in math (for the 2005 SAT score rankings). This reflects the significant impact that
teaching art can have on the academic success of our youth. Because of this increase
scores due to the influence of art, students that participate in art courses will likely have
an easier time getting into college and obtaining jobs. Not only is art a fundamental
element of traditional education, it supports and teaches creativity and innovation. In our
current society more and more jobs are held by the Creative Class. This is the social
class that is made up of the art and design based occupations, engineers, computer
programmers, scientists, and other knowledge oriented professions. These professions
thrive on innovation and creativity and, according to Richard Florida, make up a third of
the United States job titles and hold over half of the countries wages (Florida). This
class has shown to have a higher level of job security with unemployment only at five
percent. This contrasts significantly with manufacturing where on employment statistics
are between 15 and 25 percent (Florida). So not only does art help improve our
education and test scores for preparation for college and workplace but it also helps
provide the skills and abilities to work in a much more secure field.

Through the community participation crime will decreases:

Crime has always been a big issue in Chicago. Last year, in 2013, Chicago spent
$1.25 billion on police alone (Dardick). So is there a way to make the city a safer place
without just adding more police onto the streets? If we focus on the neighborhoods, we
can. By using the city as our canvas and the empty lot as our meeting ground we can
help improve and reshape the public responsibility. If the public starts to communicate
and share their neighborhoods together, they will start to reestablish a connection for
their neighbors and their community. This connection will help raise community
engagement and our citys citizens will care more about the city around them. An active
community will strive for safer streets and be engaged in improving the neighborhoods
and the city. In Little Village, teens are being organized by community groups to form
what they call a Culture of Peace. This is a collaboration that is intended to rehabilitate
Little Village and address the crime problem through art. Through this organization,
teens are removing gang tagging and graffiti and replacing the urban canvas with
cultural murals and street art. Gang graffiti has a big impact on our whole community.
Gang graffiti sometimes will trigger someone else to take another person right then and
there. Our idea is to be putting up murals where there was gang graffiti beforehand. It
changes the culture a little bit at a time, said Father Tom Boharis, St. Agnes of
Bohemia (Baichwal). This method helps occupy the free time of teens and allows them
to take ownership and pride in the community as well as displace the historical crime
culture. Other organizations in Chicago also educate our youth and keep them off the
streets through community gardens. Bronzeville Community Garden is an organization
that I have now worked with myself over the last two years. They strive for a better and
safer community through networking the garden itself but also embracing the leaders in
the neighborhood to help out with youth events. They host events such as bike tours of
Bronzeville. The Bronzeville Community Garden is currently collaborating with
Bronzevilles Business leaders and IIT for a popup storefront that is set to provide an
affordable location for local artisans to share and sell their goods to the community.
These types of community acts transform once bad neighborhoods into cultural centers
that embrace art and community.

The neighborhoods more beautiful and welcoming to the public and to visitors:

With these public projects like Little Villages mural program and Bronzevilles
Community Garden, the city starts to transform into a beautiful expression of culture and
art. Not only does the city become safer but its neighborhoods start to cultivate the
cultural and artistic talents of the local communities creating an attraction for visitors.
Over 40 million people come and visit Chicago every year; this contributed $11.8 billion,
of which $656 million was in tax revenue in 2008 (Goldberg). Tourism has a major
financial impact on any city. Because these neighborhoods will be more inviting and
culturally active, more and more people will start to frequent these revived communities.
This will increase business and help create and secure jobs.

How we plan to accomplish these goals with your help:

We are proposing that the City of Chicago help fund community groups to
accelerate this new reform across the neighborhoods. We would like funding for an
increase in community gardens and mural programs as well as after school art courses
offered for the Chicago Public Schools. This program would be implemented at all 471
CPS K-8 schools and would be offered to students in grades 6-8. The schools would
average 1.5 teachers at 30 students (20 students per teacher). The startup costs for an
after school program in Chicago with donated space is on average $3,000 per student
(Halpern, p.10). This cost is reflective of donated space, administrative time, and other
in-kind contributions (Halpern, p.10). Using these figures, the startup cost would be
budgeted at $42.39 million (471 schools * 30 students * $3,000). The Little Village
community recently voted on how their public arts budget would be spent. They
designated $60,700 of the budget toward mural art (Riley). Using this as a base figure,
we would like to start up similar projects 30 neighborhoods in Chicago. These locations
are based on socioeconomic status using household poverty levels as the primary
statistic and are ranked at the bottom 30 neighborhoods in Chicago (Census Data). The
selected location are: Riverdale, Fuller Park, Englewood, West Garfield Park, East
Garfield Park, Oakland, North Lawndale, Armour Square, West Englewood, Humboldt
Park, South Shore, Woodlawn, South Lawndale, Grand Boulevard, New City, Greater
Grand Crossing, Douglas, South Chicago, Lower West Side, Austin South Deering,
Burnside, Auburn Gresham, Chicago Lawn, Chatham, West Pullman, Rogers Park,
Brighton Park, and Uptown. This budget would require $900,000 ($30,000 per year * 30
locations). The project would run for a minimum of 10 years with the ability to increase
but not decrease the budget. This would come out to a total of $9 million over the
course of those 10 years. The next part of the revitalization project would include
community gardens. The Bronzeville Community Garden, which is funded through
various grants, has an annual budget of between $8,000-17,000. Based on this number,
we propose a budget of $15,000 per garden. This project would preferably reach 50
neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Using the same data analysis from the mural
project, we would be adding the neighborhoods: Gage Park, Kenwood, Pullman, Near
West Side, East Side, Hyde Park, Hermosa, Belmont Cragin, Albany Park, Edgewater,
Bridgeport, Logan Square, Montclaire, Washington Heights, West Ridge, Avalon Park,
West Town, and Avondale. This budget would be $15,000 per garden (using
abandoned City owned lots) giving a total budget of $750,000. For the accumulated
proposed budget we are requesting $44.04 million with $42.39 million towards after-
school art programs, $900,000 towards murals and public art projects, and $750,000
towards community gardens.

Baichwal, Ravi. "Little Village youth paid to remove graffiti, paint murals." ABC7
Chicago. ABC7 News, 25 J uly 2014. Web. 26 J uly 2014.
<http://abc7chicago.com/220313/>.
"Census Data - Selected socioeconomic indicators in Chicago, 2007 2011." . City of
Chicago, n.d. Web. 26 J uly 2014. <https://data.cityofchicago.org/Health-Human-
Services/Census-Data-Selected-socioeconomic-indicators-in-C/kn9c-c2s2>.
Dardick, Hal, and Bob Secter. "Emanuel to spend big on police OT in 2014." Chicago
Tribune. Chicago Tribune, 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 25 J uly 2014.
<http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-10-23/news/ct-met-rahm-emanuel-budget-
1024-20131024_1_police-ot-police-overtime-police-budget>.
Florida, Richard. "Unleashing the Creative Economic Revolution | Richard Florida | Big
Think." Big Think. big think, 15 J an. 2010. Web. 25 J uly 2014.
<http://bigthink.com/videos/unleashing-the-creative-economic-revolution>.
Goldberger, Ben. "Chicago Tourism: $11.8 Bilion Came From Over 45 Million Tourists
In '08." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Sept. 2009. Web. 26 J uly
2014. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/22/chicago-tourism-118-
bilio_n_295235.html>.
Halpern, Robert, Sharon Deich, and Carol Cohen. "Financing After-School Programs." .
Finance Project, 1 May 2000. Web. 26 J uly 2014.
<http://www.financeproject.org/Publications/financing_afterschool_programs.htm>.
Riley, Chloe. "22nd Ward Residents Vote for New Mural, Lights at Piotrowski Park -
Little Village - DNAinfo.com Chicago." DNAinfo Chicago. DNAinfo Chicago, 16 May
2014. Web. 26 J uly 2014. <http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140516/little-
village/22nd-ward-residents-vote-for-new-mural-lights-at-piotrowski-park>.
Ruppert, Sandra. "Critical Evidence: How Art Benefits Student Achievement." . 2006 by
the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, 1 J an. 2006. Web. 24 J uly 2014.
<http://www.nasaa-arts.org/Publications/critical-evidence.pdf>.