Gentrification and the Value of Arts Programs for Children

1. Introduction

Prevailing narratives – in academic debates, news and media, and fine art communities – position art scenes at the cutting edge of gentrification in North American cities and beyond. Nevertheless, whether artists are the victims or the wrongdoers is still hotly discussed. The debates seem to be at an impasse around the question, why do artists – despite their awareness of its effects and despite that they will possibly be among the displaced groups – engage in activities that likely pb to gentrification?

In the thirty years that have followed Sharon Zukin'south seminal Loft Living (1989), countless accounts of the involvement of artistic product in urban regeneration processes have been written – and emulated – in cities around the Global North. The narratives, substantially drawing on Zukin's "artistic fashion of product" have been rather straightforward: Depression-income artists build communities of cultural production in derelict industrial areas, and the resulting cultural buzz attracts cultural consumers and new art-affectionate residents, which, thanks to their esthetic dispositions, appropriate and commercialize the artistic lifestyle and raise the symbolic status of the expanse. Upper-case letter investments and existent estate speculations follow, using the aestheticization of place (Ley, 2003) as a selling point to exploit the untapped rent gap (Smith, 1996) and to raise belongings values. This makes the expanse unaffordable for lower-income populations, including the pioneering creative person community. Pushed out, artists movement elsewhere in the urban center looking for affordable spaces, and similar cycles begin afresh.

This narrative is widespread, but not unchallenged. While it has been accustomed that there are consistent connections between artistic communities and gentrification, these relations are circuitous and variegated, and the roles of artists as modify agents are still ambiguous. Recently, Grodach et al. (2018, p. 822) turned the causal caption on its head and plant that "while arts growth does occur in the context of gentrification, an arts presence is not driving the human relationship. Rather, gentrified environments lead to arts growth". Davis (2013) suggests that the emphasis on the artists' agency in gentrification contexts might be overblown due to their intrinsic visibility in urban spaces. Others insist that creative communities may benefit existing groups without causing displacement (Foster et al., 2016; Markusen & Gadwa, 2010). Pratt (2018) fully sympathizes with artists, depicting them every bit victims of the circularity of the art scene lifecycle and makes the instance that the continuous displacement of cultural workers, past now normalized, "undermines the delicate cultural ecosystems that sustain [the] economical and cultural output in our cities" (Pratt, 2018, p. 347). He suggests that gentrification should exist extended "to include not simply residential to residential 'upgrading' (classic gentrification), but also including transitions such as manufacturing to residential, manufacturing to cultural work, and cultural work to residential uses" (Pratt, 2018, p. 348).

Without resuming the reconciled disputes between cultural/demand (Ley, 1994) versus economic/supply (Smith, 1996), I depart in the understanding that "gentrification must involve both explanations of the production of devalued areas and housing and the production of gentrifiers and their specific consumption and reproduction patterns" (Hamnett, 1991, p. 173). Starting from this premise – that artists lonely practice not gentrify neighborhoods – and despite the divergences briefly mentioned above, what is known is that subsequently several decades of cyclical repetitions of like dynamics, artists are today aware of the effects their presence might bring, voluntarily or not, to the areas they inhabit and their most vulnerable residents (Brownish-Saracino, 2010; Farrow, 2020). Artists are also aware of being among the likely gentrification-displaced groups (Ocejo, 2011). Frustrated with their complicity in such processes, artists have sometimes engaged in disquisitional anti-gentrification and anti-commodification work (see due east.grand. Hollands, 2019; Kwon, 2004; McLean, 2018; Novy & Colomb, 2013; Pritchard, 2019; Rosler, 2010; Valli, 2015a). These political efforts are growing, however they seem insufficient to disrupt the overall dynamics of cyclical gentrification of fine art scenes and residential areas. New York City, with its continuous "migration" of centers of artistic product – from Greenwich Village in the 1880s to SoHo in the 1960s–70s, East Village in the 1980s, Williamsburg in the 1990s, and Bushwick in the 2000s (Zukin & Braslow, 2011) – epitomizes the consequent and longstanding relation of the cyclicality of local fine art scenes and the linear progression of gentrification. Empirically, this article draws on a report of the latest frontier, Bushwick.

This research seeks to uncover the underlying reasons why artists continue to reproduce the same behaviors and ways of transforming urban spaces despite knowing the effects this has on themselves and other more disadvantaged groups. This results in vicious circles of artistic and residential gentrification. The hypothesis is that they do so not but because alternatives are constrained by low incomes only also considering they hold some professional person stakes in the cyclical patterns of this reproduction, which have been overlooked in studies of art-related gentrification.

Based on empirical research in Bushwick, the sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu and of urban geographers of fine art scenes, I advise that there is a twofold blind spot in the existing explanations of the recurring cyclical patterns of fine art-scene lifecycles and gentrification. Although the empirical insights relate to the Northward American context and Bourdieu writes in a European and indeed French context, parts of his conceptual framework usefully illuminate the dynamics in the Bushwick case study and bandage light on two overlooked aspects in gentrification research. These disregarded aspects are the cyclical dimension of creative careers and the part that artistic career trajectories (and their cyclical dimension) play in the cyclicality of art spaces. I contend that these 2 factors, combined with the structural racist legacy of the North American city and the backer forces that drive urban redevelopment, contribute to reproducing well-worn patterns of gentrification and push it forward in space and time. In particular, this study illustrates how cultural producers in Bushwick accumulate symbolic uppercase to advance their careers through the construction of a local art scene that reproduces the dynamics of past art scenes and previous generations of artists. This shifted material and symbolic sense of place non only fuels gentrification but too affirms the local art scene and its private members in the cultural field. This explains why artists and cultural workers go on to deploy the same place-making modalities despite unwanted consequences.

The remainder of the commodity is organized as follows: first, I present a conceptual framework that unpacks the relations between artists and urban spaces, the circularity of local art scenes, and the uppercase accumulation strategies in the cultural field according to Bourdieu. Thereafter, I depict the research methods and the Bushwick case. In the following department, I requite an empirical assay of the Bushwick fine art scene.

2. Circularity in artistic careers and in the linear/cyclical (re)production of gentrification frontiers

ii.1. Creative careers and local fine art scenes: proximity, visibility, and production/consumption lifecycles

The trajectories of artistic careers are arduous, uncommonly precarious, and pervaded by structural inequalities (Bain & McLean, 2013; Brook et al., 2020; De Dios & Kong, 2020; Gill & Pratt, 2008; Glauser et al., 2020; Neilson & Rossiter, 2008; De Peuter, 2014). Rather than an output of mere individual talent, research shows that creative production is a social and spatialized process: communication and space are two cardinal dimensions of this procedure. First, artists' daily activities increasingly involve communication, marketing, cocky-promotion, and networking in gild to proceeds visibility, recognition, and brownie and ultimately position oneself on the creative production field (Currid-Halkett, 2009; Richardson, 2016; Thornton, 2008). Second, artists need geographical proximity to have role and assert themselves in the art world: a viable and resilient artistic career is a geographically situated process that unfolds through communication, networking, collective display spaces, and sociability (Pasquinelli & Sjöholm, 2015). Visibility on the local level is the outset footstep in consolidating creative identities: "Those places and spaces that artists inherit and occupy, which frame their lives in real and imagined ways, are integral to the construction and maintenance of their identities" (Bain, 2004, p. 425).

The intertwined spatial and communicative practices of artistic production in urban spaces often pb to the formation of local art scenes. Scenes have been conceptualized as:

collectivities marked by some grade of proximity; as spaces of assembly engaged in pulling together the varieties of cultural phenomena; as workplaces engaged (explicitly or implicitly) in the transformation of materials; as ethical worlds shaped past the working out and maintenance of behavioural protocols […] and as spaces of mediation which regulate the visibility and invisibility of cultural life and the extent of its intelligibility to others. (Straw, 2015, p. 477 original accent)

Scenes are besides divers every bit "informal, communicatively established social constructions [that] are based on the local narratives as well as the self-descriptions of entrepreneurs" (Lange, 2011, p. 259). Not only synthetic through narratives and representations but also through esthetic and material practices, scenes represent artistic milieus which "serve every bit atmospheric stimulation for many people endeavoring to feel connected to a specific urban place (…) where they tin launch their own entrepreneurial project" (Lange, 2011, p. 259). Countercultural scenes also offer kinship and emotional back up for marginalized cultural producers (Farrow, 2020). In the highly competitive, individualized, and united nations-secure cultural field, early on-career artists and cultural entrepreneurs often find a network for informal social security and mutual help in local scenes. Scenes are a local embedding ground for building resilience, exchanging knowledge, building professional connections, and collectively acquiring recognition and visibility (Lloyd, 2006).

Scenes are not only centers of cultural production – as substitution and economic nodes – only as well sites of cultural consumption. The product/consumption relation is key to the cyclical rise and fall of urban centers of cultural production, and therefore has received much scholarly attention. The dynamics can be briefly summarized equally follows. The esthetics, the deportment of "seeing and being seen" (Blum, 2003), the reshaping of streetscapes semiotics (Stahl, 2009), and the aestheticization practices (Ley, 2003) of artists all feed the image and the allure of the area they patronize as hip and desirable. As described past Zukin (1989), the symbolic economic system of urban art scenes tends to attract increasingly educated and sophisticated consumers. Urban areas initially defended to cultural production become bonny sites of symbolic consumption for city dwellers with urbane taste and a sensitivity for distinctive esthetics. Cultural consumers are usually wealthier than the cultural producers and hold the cultural and social capital to popularize their taste and lifestyle through different media. Gradually, cultural production in the area becomes secondary to other more remunerative activities such as retail and lifestyle living, changing the graphic symbol of the area (creative gentrification, following Pratt, 2018). Equally the purchasing power of the new wave of incomers is higher, investment capitals enter the surface area and existent estate values rise, which fuels a process of demographic change toward more affluent residents (i.east. residential gentrification). In one case the surface area is largely unaffordable for low-income cultural producers and other residents, artists and producers typically move to cheaper metropolis areas, triggering a similar rise and fall of creative production-related gentrification.

Some clarifications in this well-known narrative should be noted. Beginning, Pratt (2018) warns that the roles of cultural producers – artists and cultural consumers, or in other words, hipsters, bourgeois bohemians, or the creative class – in art scenes and their gentrification should not be conflated. While this is a relevant distinction among individuals, the places of product and consumption frequently overlap in art scenes and together touch on place identity (Lloyd, 2006). Moreover, the mostly immature, highly educated, often underemployed population of an art scene feeds the local economic system by providing a cheap labor pool (McRobbie, 2016) and condign "creative person-entrepreneurs" (Zukin & Braslow, 2011), with cumulative effects that hamper clear-cut distinctions. 2nd, the germination and evolution of centers of cultural product tin exist more or less planned and sustained by formal policies and market investments; withal, it well-nigh frequently occurs in specific urban areas that not simply offer available disused spaces and affordable rents but also have sufficient transport connections and basic services (Zukin & Braslow, 2011). Recent research has suggested that art scenes tend to sally in already gentrifying spaces (Grodach et al., 2018). Tertiary, while policies and existent estate markets shape the framework for facilitating the reinvestments that lead to gentrification, it is crucial to situate such investments in longstanding cycles of (racialized) disinvestment and reinvestment, without which, the uneven development and grade turnover at the core of gentrification could not happen (Marcuse, 1985; Smith, 1987).

2.two. Capital aggregating in the cultural field: generational innovation cycles

Co-ordinate to Bourdieu (1983), artists and cultural producers are characterized by a contradictory relationship between their loftier cultural majuscule and a rather weak economical capital. Even so, despite their weak economic capital, they occupy a relatively privileged class position,¹ as summarized by Ley (2003, p. 2531):

Middle-course origins and/or high levels of instruction, frequently both together, are required to establish the aesthetic disposition. The of import point is that the artful disposition, affirming and transforming the everyday, is a class-privileged temperament. Through the considerable cultural upper-case letter of its creative workers, it is a feature of the dominant class, whereas—because of their weak economical capital—it belongs to a dominated faction of this grade.

In the field of art and cultural product (i.e. the field in which cultural goods are produced and circulate), the accumulation of economic capital letter follows a specific logic that differs from other fields (Bourdieu, 1983). Following Bourdieu, for cultural producers, symbolic capital letter consists of "economic or political capital that is disavowed, mis-recognized and thereby recognized, hence legitimate, a 'credit' which, nether certain weather condition, and always in the long run, guarantees 'economic' profits" (Bourdieu & Nice, 1980, p. 262). In the cultural field, "the only legitimate accumulation consists in making a name for oneself, a known, recognized name, a uppercase of consecration implying a power to consecrate objects (…) and therefore to give value, and to appropriate the profits from this functioning". In other words, building prestige for oneself in the cultural field is the only way to open possibilities for deriving profits in the long run. Hence, the rejection of the commercialization of ane'due south work, especially past individuals new to the field, is "neither a simple ideological mask nor a complete repudiation of economic involvement" (Bourdieu & Nice, 1980), but rather the only strategy to mature and somewhen reap the full economic value of their symbolic capital letter.

Significantly, to gain a foothold in the field, new producers need to accumulate symbolic upper-case letter and legitimate their position in relation to established producers. They proceeds "stardom" past striving to constitute an advanced, a new generation of producers, and a "new arrangement of tastes" that "pushes the whole set of [consecrated] producers, products, and systems of tastes into the by" (p. 290). This subversion is necessarily relative and mirrors past circles of innovation and generational succession:

The dominated producers (…) have to resort to subversive strategies which will eventually bring them the disavowed profits only if they succeed in overturning the hierarchy of the field without disturbing the principles on which the field is based. Thus their revolutions are only e'er partial ones, which displace the censorships and transgress the conventions but practise so in the proper noun of the same underlying principles. (p. 269)

The maintenance of the underlying principles and the "rules of the game" ethos, which sets inclusion criteria in the cultural field, the relative social positioning within it, and the mechanisms of recognition and legitimization, are not mutated simply rather reinforced through the affirmation of new generations of producers. Legacies of the by are maintained and reproduced in order to build recognition and distinction:

In the present stage of the creative field, there is no room for naivety, and every act, every gesture, every event, is (…) "a sort of nudge or wink between accomplices." In and through the games of distinction, these winks and nudges, silent, subconscious references to other artists, past or present, ostend a complicity which excludes the layman, who is always bound to miss what is essential, namely the inter-relations and interactions of which the work is only the silent trace. Never has the very construction of the field been nowadays so practically in every act of production (p. 291, emphasis added).

The "games of stardom", therefore, are self-referential within the field's system of values and tastes and exclude those who do non take part. As volition be shown, this understanding is crucial for its spatial implications in the context of creative and residential gentrification.

Combining the work of Bourdieu with literature on geographical and sociological research on art scenes and gentrification allows to highlight and address a missing link in the explanations of the cyclical life-patterns of urban centers of cultural production (or local art scenes) and the office that this cyclicality plays in the career trajectories of the scene's members. Understanding this gap also helps understand its foil dynamic, that is, the part that individual scene members play in sustaining the cyclicality of the scenes' lifespan and the connected risks of gentrification. This gap is explored empirically through the case of Bushwick.

3. Methods

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over 7 months in 2013–fourteen, when I conducted in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, and participatory research methods on the ongoing gentrification procedure in Bushwick, NYC (Valli 2017). The empirical findings presented here are part of a larger collection of 39 interviews with Bushwick residents that included both long-time and new residents. The long-time residents' perspectives are presented in Valli (2015b, 2020) and presently recalled in the coming department. This article focuses on the new residents' perspectives and specifically draws on 18 interviews with individuals who have lived in Bushwick for less than 10 years and whose daily activities contributed to the new art scene. The interviewees, contacted through their websites and snowball sampling, were self-divers visual, performance, or conceptual artists and/or directly involved in artistic activities every bit arts gallerists and curators. Among these, five conducted parallel activities as fine art educators or other non-art-related jobs. The empirical data of 18 interviews gives fractional rather than totalizing perspectives into the matter of written report. Withal, despite the limitations, the patterns described in this article emerged quite consistently in the narratives, making it possible to describe some generalizations.

4. Bushwick

NYC has a longstanding tradition of citywide patterns of art scene migration followed past gentrification, with the latest areas being Williamsburg in the 1990s and Bushwick in the 2000s.

Bushwick adult as an industrial area in the Due north part of Brooklyn (Effigy. i) patronized by European migrants until the first one-half of the 20th century, with Dutch, German and Italian communities predominating at different stages. In the 1960s–70s, the social limerick of Bushwick radically changed: the white middle-form who had hitherto represented approximately 90% of Bushwick residents began to flee to the suburbs, while working-form African American, Puerto Rican, Dominican and other Caribbean area populations moved in, condign the bulk in 1970s.

Creative careers in the cyclicality of art scenes and gentrification: symbolic capital accumulation through infinite in Bushwick, NYC

Published online:

25 March 2021

Figure 1. Location map of Bushwick in NYC. Author

Figure i. Location map of Bushwick in NYC. Author

In the 1960s–70s, marginalizing and racist metropolis policies and healthcare withdrawal targeting black and working-course neighborhoods (redlining) left Bushwick amongst the most impoverished and crime-ridden areas in the metropolis. The devastation of the poor'southward communities "resulted from deliberate withdrawal of housing preservation services such equally fire control service and housing code enforcement from the poor areas of New York city" (Wallace, 1990, p. 1226). These cuts triggered a respective epidemic of structural fires, which led to a meaning loss of housing stock in poor neighborhoods, homelessness, a loss of 50–seventy% of Blackness and Hispanic populations in certain blocks, including parts of Bushwick, and increased overcrowding in the remaining housing, which then led to more incidents of burn down. Likewise disquisitional is the combination of "white flight" and the direct actions of realtors and landlords in displacing tenants in Bushwick since the 1970s. Widespread blockbusting practices fueled white flying during the 1970s, while at the aforementioned fourth dimension, landlords harassed and forced out low-hire tenants in order to burn buildings and collect insurance coin (Disser, 2014).

These weather of disinvestment and racialized policies built upward tension that erupted in Bushwick (and other poor neighborhoods like the Bronx) during the 1977 NYC blackout, when many Bushwick shops and vacant houses were looted and vandalized in rage and despair. The turmoil attracted great media attention to the marginalized conditions of Bushwick and prompted the public administration to human activity. In the blackout's aftermath, the NYC government and the local community worked collaboratively to develop and implement an action programme that has subsequently formed the basis for Bushwick's current reinvestment through public housing construction, regime subsidies, and community-led anti-crime initiatives (deMause, 2016; Dereszewski, 2007).

Despite these efforts, Bushwick remained ane of the poorest neighborhoods in the 1990s, where the boilerplate household income in 1990 was only around half the urban center average ($42,500 compared with 78,500 USD).² Crime (especially drug dealing) continued to flourish in vacant lots and so-called crack houses. Informal resources-sharing networks and community institutions such as churches, youth programs, senior citizen groups, block associations, and political clubs were key in building a sense of community and belonging despite the difficult circumstances (Dereszewski, 2007).

Yet poverty and relatively high crime rates, in the late 1990s, Bushwick started alluring an influx of new residents, many of whom were pushed out from the neighboring gentrified Williamsburg. Bushwick is well served by subway transport, and an abundance of vacant warehouses (in the Northwest area) provides affordable and large loft spaces. In the 1990s, artists started populating and reconverting these buildings. According to Creative New York, (2015), between 2000 and 2015, Bushwick saw a 1,116% increase in its creative person population – the biggest increase in any New York Urban center neighborhood. In 2000, 150 artists officially resided in the neighborhood, which increased to 1,800 in 2015. Manhattan was still dwelling house to the about artists, but it saw a x% decline in those 15 years. Every other borough witnessed a rising in its artist population, especially Brooklyn, where the number of artists increased by 72%, with Williamsburg and Greenpoint collectively coming in 2nd later on Bushwick (with a 75% increase to ii,908).

Cultural consumption has likewise exploded in those years – to the extent that in 2014 Vogue named Bushwick amongst the "15 coolest neighborhoods in the world" (Remsen, 2014). Real estate developers have been targeting the second wave of gentrifiers past capitalizing on the burgeoning art scene and cultural fervor. To exemplify this, an Airbnb website states,

All kinds of creative types have been filing into Bushwick and a considerable corporeality of trendiness is trickling in from its ultra-hip neighbour to the west, Williamsburg. New dive bars, bodegas, and gallery spaces continue to flourish, fueled by the intrepid movers and shakers that are pouring into Bushwick'due south converted loft spaces.³

Information about the indigenous composition of the fine art cluster in Bushwick is not available. Yet, we know that the U.s.a. art market is characterized by deep systemic issues of race (and gender) inequality. For instance, a contempo written report constitute that 85% of artists who have works exhibited in 18 United states major museums are white and 87% are men (Topaz et al., 2019), and similar compositions become for art fairs and arts instruction.^iv Hence, there is scope to presume that the ethnic composition of the local art customs in Bushwick is largely white. Indeed, Bushwick is undergoing rapid indigenous change. Today the largest share of the population is Hispanic or Latino, accounting for 65.three% of the population. The second largest group is Black or African American, with 17.3%, followed by White 10.5%, and Asian 4.6%.^v The share of the white population (10.5%) is still lower than in other gentrifying areas, where whites represent on average twenty.6% of the population (NYC Furman Center, 2016). However, betwixt 2000 and 2014, the number of white residents in Bushwick showed a 322% increase (from about 3000 to almost 13 000 white residents),⁶ accompanied by a general increment in immature adult households (18–35 years old) and households without children.

The NYU Furman Center (2016) classified Bushwick as one of 15 gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC. While NYC as a whole experienced a 22% increase in average hire between 1990 and 2010–2014, Bushwick saw a 44% increase (NYC Furman Center, 2016, p. 6). Bushwick today represents a "reinvested, but notwithstanding disinvested" (Cahill et al., 2019) neighborhood, characterized past aggressive real manor redevelopment and global urban tourism seeking a bohemian lifestyle and a "gritty", "accurate" city (Hernandez, 2019) combined with a convergence of deepening inequalities and the intensified criminalization of young Blackness and Brown people (Hernandez, 2019).

The demographic, economic and esthetic changes in the past 20 years accept not gone unnoticed by the longstanding population. In Valli 2020, 2015b, I prove how long-time residents are threatened by the shrinking availability of affordable housing in the neighborhood. The burgeoning of both creative activities and new places of consumption has triggered a sense of exclusion and displacement that has eroded their sense of place-belonging. In their accounts, the incoming cultural producers and consumers are conflated by a generic "hipster" characterization to signify entitlement and privilege. A sense of displacement emerges in the embodied come across with the new residents and places just is rooted in the legacy of structural racialization and disinvestment that are at the origins of both the past marginalization of Bushwick and of its contemporary gentrification (meet too Ferreira, 2014; Hernandez, 2019). As Cahill et al. (2019) put it:

Experienced past communities of colour every bit a form of state abandonment and betrayal, as neighborhoods are revalued and sold off to the highest bidder, gentrification is articulated past Black and Chocolate-brown neighborhoods equally a violence that is anything simply slow. After decades of weathering the slow violences of disinvestment, at present communities of color are threatened with social and spatial exclusion. (p. 1140)

v. Making Bushwick art scene: symbolic majuscule accumulation through gentrification

five.1. Accumulating symbolic capital through space

In Bushwick, the artists and cultural producers I interviewed were building a distinctive space where they nurtured their artistic career aspirations, sustained by cloth and social infrastructures. The neighborhood was the canvas and integral part of the construction of creative identities. The symbolic and cloth reconstruction of Bushwick though artistic activities (i.e. a symbolic component of gentrification) was neither accidental nor a side issue of artistic production simply rather intentionally pursued and crafted through communication.

Similar in other areas, in Bushwick "[w]ith no funding and few opportunities to show their work publicly, artists take adapted by creating some other art world. They transform unlikely spots – any place they can beget – into temporary and sometimes permanent exhibition spaces" (Kosut, 2016). As one interviewee put information technology, "It'due south pretty easy to run a gallery here. You could just have a room and put artwork in it and say it's a popup testify" (Jenny, artist and gallerist). Almost artists in Bushwick at the time of my fieldwork were in the early phases in their careers. Many engaged in entrepreneurial activities and actively created an artistic community by establishing relationships and catering to the desires of their fellows. These "artist-entrepreneurs" (Zukin & Braslow, 2011) opened and managed art galleries, organized collective social events, and hosted parties and openings as strategies to connect with other members of the art world and "build community". Going to exhibition openings, participating in festivals and open studios events, and undertaking curatorial activities were a constitutive fundamental part of creative work – strategies for making oneself "visible" in the scene and creating a name for oneself.

Shortly after moving to Bushwick every bit a new art college graduate, Jenny (artist and gallery owner) decided to open a gallery with two fellow artists from the neighborhood. I asked most her motivations behind this initiative:

The chief driving strength for me is having a reason to connect with artists. I only want to talk to artists and exist effectually them, and this made information technology possible. It just seems then much easier when you are the facilitator rather than just being an creative person and trying to implant yourself in dissimilar roles. It's pretty easy to do. Equally long as you take the infinite and tin afford to have the space, you can practice whatever you desire with it and people will follow. People are excited to help out.

Being part of a growing local fine art scene not only implied mutual support but as well peers' competition. Visibility and making oneself worthy of find by the press and art critics was again the aim along with the strategy to survive and emerge. Jenny continued,

If certain galleries will end up doing better than others? That's a pretty large conversation right now amidst everybody. It's starting to get really competitive, since there's and so many of u.s.a.. You actually have to do things that people pay attention to. At this indicate, if coin isn't that of import, press is actually important. You really gotta exercise something different to go people and press to pay attention.

The construction of individual artistic identities was strongly connected to the establishment of the local art scene within the city cultural field. The increased popularity and widespread reputation of Bushwick as an artistic hub had direct benign effects for the art economy and individual artists' careers. Generally, galleries that are located in a growing cluster of artistic activities receive more visitors and increased possibilities to build a reputation in the city fine art scene. Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) illustrates the DIY and entrepreneurial spirit of the bourgeoning artist community in Bushwick and its eagerness to reach out and create exposure for the local art scene. It is an event past a artistic producers, grassroots, volunteers-based system that started in 2006 to showcase the neighborhood galleries, studios, and artists. Over the years, it has become New York City's largest open up-studios event (Figure. 2). The creative reputation of Bushwick has expanded exponentially through this annual festival. The promotion of Bushwick was advanced also by "hyperlocal" online printing (mainly blogs, eastward.grand. Bushwick Daily) "created and run by Bushwick enthusiasts to serve and celebrate the greater area of Bushwick".⁷ Such outlets selectively portrayed, curated, and communicated the "new" Bushwick to those orbiting around the recently established artistic community.

Creative careers in the cyclicality of art scenes and gentrification: symbolic uppercase aggregating through space in Bushwick, NYC

Published online:

25 March 2021

Figure 2. Bushwick Open up Studios BOS 2014. Author

Figure 2. Bushwick Open Studios BOS 2014. Author

For Bourdieu, the only legitimate accumulating of majuscule in the cultural field is symbolic, which involves making a name for oneself to later reap economic profits. The accumulation of symbolic upper-case letter for scene members was a spatialized process which involved the collaboration and collective visibility of the local fine art scene. Emerging artists and cultural entrepreneurs articulated and negotiated their identities equally creative producers by putting themselves on the map of the local art scene and by making Bushwick a recognized part of the New York art scene's map.

five.2. Relating to by generations: re-producing the "frontier" equally transitional space

In 2014, Bushwick's art gallery landscape was equanimous of over 60 spaces, some of which were well established and well known, often relocated from other areas of New York, but well-nigh of which were emerging, DIY, artist-run spaces. The local art scene positioned itself – figuratively and spatially – at the margins of the established New York scene. In the words of art critic James Panero (2012),

Bushwick's contribution has been to construct a commercial art scene of its own that is advertizing hoc and where near anyone tin participate. (…) Bushwick has gone confronting the grain, not by turning against the bolt of art just by turning art into a article that is local (…). By going local, Bushwick does not rails against the art establishment of museums, auction houses, mega-collectors, and celebrity Chelsea galleries. Instead, it sets upwards a feasible, alternative culture of arts patronage. (…) In Bushwick, with art amassed on row-house walls or presented in flat galleries, the locals make it work. (…) So, just as nosotros accept alternative art, an culling system has emerged to support this art.

Historically, the thought of a territory on the "borderland" has been symbolically and esthetically attracting for artists (Douglas, 2012; Hubbard, 2016). In gentrifying contexts, artistic production is particularly intertwined with the urban landscape it is embedded in (Bowler & McBurney, 1991; Deutsche, 1996; Harris, 2012). For newcomers, the loft buildings and warehouses of Northwest Bushwick were not only attractive for their prices just also the allure that arguably recall ideas of the "edge" and "frontier" previously seen in past art scenes.

Deborah, a well-established artist who owns ii buildings in Bushwick (her studio and a gallery), recalled that when she visited the area for the first time in 2006, she 'quickly saw that information technology could be an artist neighborhood; you could simply run into that there were some young artists, and you lot could but experience that it could exist a really exciting neighborhood to be an artist in' (interview). Three weeks later, she bought a vacant edifice and opened her studio there. Bushwick'south esthetics vividly inspired her art making:

Parts of Bushwick resemble a post-apocalyptic landscape of rubble, urban disuse, defunct businesses and abased houses. (…) This odd mural possesses a simultaneous allure and menace that I take as the starting betoken for my paintings. (interview for Village Vocalization, 2011)⁸

Crucially, there is a strong temporal connotation to the space of the frontier. Justine, a 30-yr-old artist and curator from Texas, talked nigh the connections between Bushwick every bit a "transitional space" – in terms of mail service-industrial urban and social transformations – and the bodily lives of artists. She felt that artists cull to inhabit transitional neighborhoods similar Bushwick because these spaces mirror a stage in their lives that is provisional and open to possibilities. The tensions and restless changes stimulate a unique creative atmosphere, "an island of thought" in her words, which encourages creative exploration and collaborations. Artists need to create stiff social connections and tight artistic communities to support each other in their precarious, transitional experiences:

Nosotros are all kind of stuck in a transitional space mentally and physically, and we are not in the point of our lives where we can or necessarily want to become out of it. And and then with those pressures come a lot of different connections that are very deep, that would otherwise non be made, with the community. I retrieve that'due south how we very strongly try to survive. (Justine, artist and curator from Texas, in Bushwick since 2008)

Several interviewees, fifty-fifty those who moved to the neighborhood less than two years before our interview, maintained that Bushwick had more than crime when they moved in, thus positioning themselves among the "pioneers". They distanced themselves from more recent arrivals, implicitly accusing them of being moved by superficial motivations related to lifestyle and trendiness.

Rahim, an Israeli photographer who moved to Bushwick in 2005, was priced out of Williamsburg and "looking for the side by side identify" (interview). He recollected the changes in the neighborhood as he perceived them:

Now, it'southward very maverick, very chic, people want to exist here to meet trendy people and so on. Back then, information technology wasn't bohemian and trendy at all … Bushwick xv years ago was known equally a place where you brought your car, and you burn it in lodge to get money from the insurance. It was like a war zone. You could come across cars burning. In that location was a lot of criminal offence, a lot of mugging, stabbing, stealing, and a lot of prostitutes … So back then, people weren't moving here because they liked fancy places. They but wanted to find a inexpensive place. Today, people motion here considering they heard nigh Bushwick. They heard about bars. They want to meet artists.

Mary, an artist from New Jersey who had been living in Bushwick for i and a half years at the time, associated the change and the expansion of the bar scene with the business organization of eventually being displaced:

Sometimes, I wonder if people secretly get pissed off to encounter more kids coming in. That's what I would await, honestly. Fifty-fifty my friend and I are like that — every time a new bar or restaurant opens up, we are similar "F***! This place sucks, information technology looks like Williamsburg! Every fourth dimension a place similar that opens, we're gonna leave from hither sooner".

Daniel, an artist and art educator from California, wanted to distance himself symbolically and geographically from the growing incoming population: "It's artists everywhere, to the point that I'll go somewhere else."

Scene members showed an awareness of gentrification paths in New York and wanted to be at the forefront of this process (come across besides Douglas, 2012). They cherished the thought of constructing a place and a moment that could have been Greenwich Village in the 1960s, or SoHo twoscore years ago, or the East Hamlet in the 1980s. Making History Bushwick, a collaborative volume written by locals in 2016 to celebrate Bushwick arts, arguably echoes the ambition to make Bushwick a worthy landmark of New York'due south (continuously moving) art scene tradition.

As contended by Bourdieu, to create a new avant-garde, new generations of artists need to reproduce the boundaries of the field and position themselves at the edge of it. This is the strategy to accrue legitimacy in the form of symbolic capital. Bushwick's generation of artists carve their position at the margins of the metropolis art scene – figuratively and geographically – by means of reproducing the cycles of creation and gentrification of previous generations of local art scenes. Past doing and so, they non just legitimize the fine art community but also contribute to pushing the gentrification "borderland" forrard in urban space.

v.three. Confronting the art scene gentrification: protecting symbolic capital

In the interviews, I asked whether and how efforts were made to reach out to residents. All of them answered that "the customs" mattered to them. Standing our conversations, it became clearer that with "community" they meant the artists' community, and not the Bushwick population equally a whole, equally I had mistakenly expected. It became evident that the nature of daily interaction betwixt long-time residents and newcomers ranged from parallel coexistence to polite detachment. With few exceptions, a general lack of business organisation for the problems historical Bushwick residents might be facing considering of gentrification besides emerged. The biggest efforts fabricated by artists toward resisting gentrification were mostly circumscribed to preserving the creative customs from further commercialization and speculation. The case of Arts in Bushwick (AiB) and the successful annual Bushwick Open Studios (BOS) mentioned before substantiates this argument (Figure. two).

Julia, an artist who had been involved in organizing BOS since 2008, explained that the distinctive feature of the event was inclusivity for all kinds of artists despite income:

The city has its industries like art and style, and information technology'southward all for profit. So, it'southward really important to me that we [AiB] are independent and not corporately funded, considering it allows everybody to participate. In full general, every other art outcome in the urban center is either really difficult to go into or [has a] very high fee or both, or [is] curated past i person and based on market values. For the art, it's really special to have something that's detached. People tin can't actually participate in other venues really easily. You lot accept to work on your social connections to go into a gallery. Information technology'due south very difficult to go far, allow alone a fair. We cater to ideally everybody — people can pay 35 USD or volunteer for v hours. Anybody can participate. And if you lot can't pay, nosotros tell y'all "okay" anyhow.

As a grassroots and professedly inclusive festival, while at the same time, extraordinarily successful in terms of participation and visibility, at that place were fundamental discussions among the organizers about how to maintain the result'south independence:

Some people in the organization don't meet the smaller aspects of gentrification as so bad, like bartering with bigger companies, taking more money from them and real estate companies and stuff. I and some people feel like we need to be super business firm even though we're merely a volunteer arrangement. We are a volunteer arrangement, but I recollect we're i of the biggest presences politically considering we have that capacity to have a stance. I remember that without putting [a] really firm opinion on bartering with organizations who are working to preserve the community outspokenly, nosotros are not benefitting the artists or anybody. (Julia, above)

Since its birth, BOS had seen an exponential expansion in the number of participants, visitors, and kinds of activities involved, to the point that the many organizers felt it morphed into something that was alienating artists rather than benefiting them. The number of registered exhibitions for BOS went from roughly 150 in 2007, to more than than 320 in 2010, to around 600 open studios and 1,100 artists in 2015.⁹ With the introduction of ticketed openings, live mural art making, food trucks and vendors stands everywhere, the original focus on artists and community seemed to have shifted toward more consumeristic and partying-orientated purposes, leaving the art producers as a backdrop to scene-seeking visitors. To annul this trend, the organizers gear up a few strategies to readdress the contents and the format of BOS toward its original spirit. New guidelines in 2015 stated that only artists who resided in Bushwick or had their studios there could participate equally open studios, and group shows were required to characteristic at to the lowest degree 50% local artists. Furthermore, the 2016 edition of BOS was moved from June to October, supposedly in the attempt to lessen the "summer political party" feeling associated with it.

All in all, the general picture was an creative community busily organizing to reinforce itself and multiply the occasions for internal interaction and self-promotion. Despite some initiatives running parallel to the artistic activities, comparatively little was done to engage with existing long-time resident communities or tackle gentrification's furnishings on Bushwick and its residents more broadly.

There were noticeable exceptions. Some artists and galleries tried to involve residents through youth-outreach and arts teaching. One example was a well-established nonprofit gallery that offered after-school programs partnering with local schools. Through the programs, students could visit local studios and larn familiarity with art practice. Molly, an art educator from Manhattan in accuse of the program, explained the efforts to accomplish out to locals who were non ordinarily involved in the arts:

Nosotros are an open free public place, and nosotros try to be as attainable equally possible, but I also acknowledge that this might not be welcoming and accessible to everyone. Art spaces can be intimidating for a lot of people who are not exposed to them, so other than teaching the kids fine art-making techniques and vocabulary, I was aiming for them to feel comfortable at this gallery and eventually come back, and mayhap bring their parents and feel welcome in this neighborhood infinite. (…) I don't think that'due south something that's but gonna happen because the art galleries are hither, and the doors are open up … I recollect it takes a little more on both sides to make that connection.

Coexistence does not necessarily hateful communication or meaningful relations, and art spaces can be perceived as intimidating, inaccessible, and exclusive (Shaw & Sullivan, 2011). Like nearly recent retail and eateries, they typically cater to newcomers' tastes and are both symbolically and economically exclusive (Valli 2015). This exclusivity, however, did non announced to be a concern for most of my interviewees (with few exceptions, as mentioned to a higher place). Instead, the concerns of those involved into nurturing and protecting the artistic community revolved around threats of exploitation by external economic interests, which would undermine creative production itself.

In Bourdieu's terms, emerging cultural producers need to accumulate enough legitimation, or symbolic capital accumulation, earlier beingness able to convert it into economical capital and thus reap the total economic returns. Rejection of commercialization is neither an ideological façade nor a complete refusal, merely a strategy of majuscule accumulation.

v.4. Depoliticizing gentrification

Gentrification-led displacement for long-time, low-income residents is a confusing experience, which usually entails the disruption of important ecologies that sustain entire families' livelihoods and oftentimes pushes them into more peripheral areas (Fullilove, 2016). As I explain in Valli 2020, 2015b, the by and large Blackness and Latinx longtime residents of Bushwick perceived newcomers every bit transient populations whose temporary presence exposed the neighborhood to changes that will have long-lasting, unsettling consequences for many of them. Arguably, this sense of exclusion and displacement from the art scene was sustained by the games of distinction within it, which, in Bourdieu'due south terms, "exclude the laymen" and are self-referential.

While witting of mechanisms of artist-led gentrification and the impacts it had in other areas of NYC, nearly of my interviewees tended to downplay their own agency in the process and fabricated sense of gentrification as a natural unfolding of demographic change. The most recurrent manner of explaining recent transformations in Bushwick was analogizing to "the same affair that happened in Soho, Lower East Side, Williamsburg" – a story of relentless city modify, and gentrification being an unavoidable component of it. In many accounts, the consequences for long-time residents were downplayed (i.e. seen every bit unfortunate just "natural" and a normal process of "alter"). Possible oppositional reactions from long-time residents were sometimes condescended, categorized as natural, and hence stripped of political leverage. Peter, an artist and gallery owner in Bushwick since 2008, stated:

I think it's natural to wait that a new group of people moving into a neighborhood is not e'er going to embraced by people who lived at that place. It doesn't matter what you lot exercise, what color you are, if that has been the identify where you have lived for a long time, that you know, perhaps for 20 years, and new people are coming in, you are ever going to remember, what is all of this about? Even the ones of us who have lived hither for 4–5 years exercise the same.

Other accounts insisted upon the purported positive effects of gentrification: increased condom and street cleanliness, care for the environment, wider variety in grocery products, restoration of housing stock, and more cultural and recreational offerings. Rahim (in a higher place) maintained,

In a commercial way, there is no i bodega in all Bushwick that resents everybody moving out here. A lot of them have been remodeled in the past few years that couldn't afford to do it. They sell organic hummus and shit, while before, they were only selling rotten bananas.

Importantly, the art scene'southward participants disassociated themselves from the role of gentrifiers in various means. Some maintained that the arrival of artists did not cause deportation in a direct way:

Fifteen years ago, these were still factories, so in a sense, those of us who alive in shitty buildings here [lofts], or that were shitty, I hateful that weren't built to be apartments — nosotros didn't actually displace anybody! The factories closed up and left, it'due south not that people moved out here and kicked the factories out! (Peter, to a higher place)

Others, acknowledging that their presence indirectly contributed to the displacement of other groups, argued that it was not so bad after all, as the Hispanic communities had a relatively contempo history in the neighborhood:

People are existence pushed out by the rising rents, non only the Spanish population but also the artistic types. I think this might bring about a feeling of bitterness, but one must remember that the "local population" in Bushwick resided in Bushwick less than thirty years ago, so they are comparably new themselves. (…) The many changes are what makes Bushwick and New York in general so unique. So, speaking about gentrification, I intend it with a grain of salt. By referring to myself as a gentrifier, I simply am considering myself as the adjacent wave of immigrants into the neighborhood, bringing the neighborhood into its next phase. Change is constant everywhere. In New York, it's unavoidable. (Marah, writer and artist)

Equating gentrification to the historic voluntary migration of white working-center classes to the suburbs in the 1960s (white flight) means disregarding the current state of affairs in which communities are being priced out and unwillingly removed from their homes. It also means seeking legitimization through the bias of "white privilege" (i.e. the privilege of being able to be blind to racialization, course, and their violent effects) (McIntosh, 1988).

Finally, other respondents acknowledged that their personal activities and choices might have facilitated gentrification processes. Some perceived a conflict betwixt, on i side, their desire to consolidate their artistic identities and be part of the fine art scene, and on the other, their sensation of how in doing so they became implicated in gentrification. Nelly, a gallery owner, addresses this dilemma:

The hugest conflict I personally feel is, how can y'all beloved a place and make it even more beautiful and celebrate it without parting information technology and raising the rent? So how exercise I make the murals without raising the rent? Because now it'southward a beautiful mural, instead of a irksome wall!

Intentions to make Bushwick "better", "nicer", and "more beautiful", which recurred in the respondents' accounts are critical claims. While paved with positive intents, these claims might imply disregard for other existing kinds of esthetics and cultural realities (Valli 2020). In a gentrifying context in which groups struggle to compete for symbolic legitimacy and the stakes are as loftier as losing one's home, "making things meliorate" for one grouping typically means making the place palatable for consumers taste, and hence oil the gentrification auto. Denying or underplaying the structural ability inequalities of gentrification is a way to de-politicize, normalize, and hence discursively legitimize, gentrification.

6. Conclusions

This commodity has conceptually and empirically explored a node that still persists later on decades of research on the geographies of cultural production and gentrification: why and how practise artists engage in activities that likely lead to gentrification, despite their awareness of its furnishings and despite that they will maybe be amid the displaced groups?

The main argument put forward is that the career trajectories of contemporary artists are not only dependent upon geographical spaces of cultural product but also dependent upon their cyclical nature. The literature oftentimes positions artists as passive victims of this circularity, but this report suggests that they benefit from the circularity considering they capitalize on it – they accrue symbolic capital through space. Equally a result of the logic of uppercase accumulation in the cultural field, the actions of the members of art scenes fuel the cyclical rise and fall of centers of product. In contrast to the acknowledged beneficiaries of gentrification – the existent manor sector, for example, – artists and cultural producers practice not sustain gentrification dynamics for mere economic ends, but for their careers' sake, they grease the wheels for the reputation shifts that will be ultimately appropriated for gentrification, thus affirming themselves in the field of cultural production. This explains why, despite the likelihood of being displaced and their awareness of gentrification effects and despite the moral dilemmas raising from it (Mathews, 2010), artists and cultural producers, generation after generation, continue to engage in the dynamics that push forrad gentrification frontiers.

The article also discussed the ethical judgments of artists regarding living and working in a gentrifying neighborhood. Most of the interviewees distanced themselves from the role of gentrifiers by denying or underplaying the displacing effects on long-time residents, consequently depoliticizing the process in its everyday unfolding. The strategies for symbolic (and hence economic) uppercase accumulation in the cultural field buttress a social disengagement of the art scene from the residue of the neighborhood. Such detachment has several critical consequences in relation to gentrification. Start, it constructs a representation of place as "borderland", echoing revanchist tones and legitimizing gentrification as "urban regeneration". 2nd, a focus on internal fine art-community dynamics, and on "esthetic displacement" tones down the displacement of other communities, which are arguably more strongly exposed to the gentrification furnishings. Finally, and crucially, such divisions harm the possibility of collective political activeness confronting gentrification – one that would see long-time residents and fine art-scene members united in the same front end of resistance confronting the racialized capitalism that profits the well-nigh from gentrification and is its ultimate enabler (Stein, 2019).

In conclusion, by revealing and unpacking the missing link in the artistic career/art scene gentrification-intertwined lifecycles, this written report attempts to empirically and conceptually illuminate a blind spot in the existing explanations of art-led gentrification dynamics. This blind spot risks reinforcing both victimizing and deterministic perspectives about artists' "unavoidable" compliance of gentrification that obscure alternative developments and possibilities for resistance. In the same ways that artists lonely cannot gentrify neighborhoods, they cannot alone prevent gentrification; nevertheless, they do affair in in those processes.

How can artist communities counteract gentrification instead of endorsing it? This report shows that the potential for artists to counteract gentrification cannot be based solely within their esthetic practices, as some cultural aspects of gentrification are functional to the reproduction of artistic careers. In gentrifying contexts, creative practice that is discrete from the wider anti-gentrification class-struggle volition near likely stop upwards nourishing gentrification, fifty-fifty when their contents and underlying drivers are inclusivity and diversity. 1 example of this is provided past Farrow (2020), who expounds the construction of queer kinship equally material and emotional back up for queer life within the DIY countercultural scene in Bushwick and traces the tensions between commitments to inclusivity and the exclusionary implications of being based in a depression-income, racialized neighborhood. In the tensions of striving for creative freedom and autonomy in a city driven by financialization and ambitious real estate and, acknowledging that artists themselves may "live precarious lives due to low incomes, marginalized racial and gender identities and sexualities" (p. ten), the only fashion to contribute to inclusive urban change is to acknowledge "the structural valuation of artists and cultural producers past capital and city government over the lives of long-term residents (p. 15). Artistic practices can potentially become tools of positive, anti-gentrification social alter only if the mechanisms of their complicity with gentrification are unpacked and self-reflectively engaged with. Struggles confronting the gentrification of art scenes, as expounded in this article, remain circumstantiated if they do not encompass the wider issues of residential gentrification and the displacement of depression-income groups beyond art scene members. If artists and cultural producers want to rewrite the undisturbed cyclicality of art scenes and gentrification, they need to institute deeper connections and enact meaningful economies of intendance and solidarity with the residents in the neighborhoods they settle in, first of all, past acknowledging the sore legacies of "gentrifying, still disinvested" (Cahill et al., 2019) areas, and engaging in anti-deportation struggles that go across the commodification of art scenes. This sensation can hopefully contribute making newcomers to gentrifying neighborhoods "more equipped to seek common ground, navigate more than upstanding personal choices, negotiate sound policy decision, and choose nurturing engagements in civic life" (Schlichtman et al., 2017).

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Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02723638.2021.1902122

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