Losing Cincinnati
The Cincinnati City Council did not renew the 22 year-old Cincinnati Arts Grant Program funding individual artists and art organizations. The proposed monies for saving the program were a very modest $142,000.00.
http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/council/pages/-3654-/ item #200900421.
As written by Tom Callinan of the Enquirer, “it is estimated that the neighborhood [Over-the-Rhine] is only two buildings away from losing more than 50 percent of its historic building stock.”
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100114/EDIT03/1170303
There is a common denominator: US.
How much of Cincinnati must be lost before we hit bottom? One hears much ‘hood’ bashing: Price Hill blames gentrification of OTR for an influx of crime, Northside will not visit downtown, OTR states the ‘burbs are full of sheeple’ and many believe Indian Hill is the first plowed on snow days. These are actual comments heard in various places from various people and the year or season does not seem to matter…and I am a pot calling all the kettles black because I have done it myself.
…and we are still losing Cincinnati.
Brick by brick and vote by vote; every professional that migrates to Chicago, every musician that marches off to Austin, every new family that moves to West Chester equates a loss for our city. In combination, this is scary. Agenda 360 http://www.cincinnati360.com/ and Vision 2015 http://www.vision2015.org/ have addressed the loss and come up with some recommendations for stemming the tide. Cincinnatians for Progress did a great job of educating the public on the real teeth of Issue 9. http://www.cincinnatiansforprogress.com/Home.asp
Since Richard Florida’s first book in 2003, The Rise of the Creative Class, these are just some of the initiatives taken up by numerous nonprofits, civic organizations and political groups around the city. All of this is good and applauded.
…but we are still losing Cincinnati!
It appears we lack a TRUE grass-root, citywide effort. One not motivated by pet projects, politics, place, socioeconomic background, race, or ego where ordinary folks who are willing to donate their time and talent come together to form and work on a common, focused agenda.
Cincy Voices is a start to this grass-root effort in reaching across boundaries that have so long divided and are conquering our city.
OTR is the canary. If OTR is not saved, then what hope is there for the rest of the neighborhoods? We know what needs done thanks to the OTR Foundation (and the recommendations will help other neighborhoods); we must find a how.
http://www.otrfoundation.org/historic_preservation.php
http://www.otrfoundation.org/Part3PDF.pdf
This is a personal call to arms for me. Ordinary citizenry may not have money, but we have numbers. Let us find common ground and figure out how to use our numbers.
Classicgrrl
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Every person from every strata that you mentioned in the article needs to destroy the prejudices and pre-conceptions of the others. It is silly, to me, that people still walk around with these mindsets, and they are, again to me, the prevalent ones. I rarely see many of these differing sects actually making a conscious effort to truly knock down barriers and be as accepting as I think many of them project themselves to be.
Come on people we need to unite, travel explore and i dont mean Wal mart!
Cincinnati Art Snob poses her thoughts on this, including her reasoning for reframing the discussion, in a blog post here:
http://cincy-artsnob.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-cincinnati-really-vanishing.html
I’ll have to chime in with more of my own thoughts on this later on as I am buried in work right now.
Loki, CincyVoices Founder
I often discribe Cincy’s art scene, not as being “underground” but being another dimension. It’s not hidden or crawling around in the corners but simply unseen, undetectable, because of the way we interact with the city itself.
We drive past so many galleries we don’t stop at.
We have so many opportunties for daytime bands or scenes but they go unscheduled.
We have the arts going on around us or waiting for the opportunity to be seen but we live such segmented/segregated lives.
We meet for sports games, work, & bars. If you don’t drink, don’t like sports, OR are unemployed you’re kinda don’t have many places to meet new people/events UNTIL you get into that “other dimension”.
The fact it’s so hard to see is why we end up churning out thousands of kids who can’t wait to see the arts on the coasts & flee when they get their degree. We have many emerging & talented artists who have to leave to make their name or stay here & languish trying to get that “next level” because the lack of support.
you say OTR MAY be lost? What is it now, in a waiting period? Yes the archiecture is beautiful. But the real question should be what to do with MOST of the people in OTR. It was ranked most dangerous neighborhood in the country for a reason. Now I am not a person who is afraid to drive through or even walk around there at night. However, I would never live there based on the danger factor. I am a licensed social worker with a master’s from UC. I live in Clifton, girlfriend in Northside. So I do love diversity, arts, culture just as much as the next person. I did grow up in the burbs which can be a little plastic and artificial at times. But the burbs have some very important facts for raising a family, very good schools and safety. It’s not like young professionals are moving up to Chicago to live in south side. If you really want OTR to be this thriving cultural community you have to somehow remove the people that do not want this that do live their. Which one of you wants to address that without sounding like a racist bigot? “Yes the theater by the pimp and drug dealer wearing white shirt and jeans.” doesn’t sound very good to me. One must tackle the hard issues of the socioeconomic infrastructure that has matriculated in OTR.
CincyArtSnob is absolutely on the mark. Cincinnati needs to be seen in a different light. My brother is in from Houston for the first time in several years. He left Cincinnati because, bluntly, he didn’t like it. Too dangerous, unsupportive, better opportunities elsewhere. My goal is to get him down from Middletown to see the city this week while he is around. And to get him to see it in a different way than he did when he left nearly 10 years ago.
Travis,
You bring up some great points – Thank you so much for reading and for your participation. I need to think about your comments and formlute a more indepth response than I can right now.
Thanks!
Classic
Sorry, I have to laugh out loud every time I hear someone raised here talk about how dangerous it is. My home town is New Orleans, Cincy had less murders in a year last year than NOLA did in the months of Jan and Feb.
Of course perception is everything, it is what we rely on. Still, while bullets fly here (some near my new home in Northside) Cincy is far from the crime ridden perception perpetuated by some of the locals I have met.
-Loki, CIncyVoices Founder
That is a truism in most American cities. No matter where you live the lure of success in NYC or LA is a constant spectre. The trick is to create a thriving scene here, to lure people away from these habitual patterns and into exceptional experiences.
Many hands make light work, how many hands can be gathered for the arts in Cincy?
-Loki, CincyVoices Founder
Mr Gream, those stats making OTR the most dangerous in the U.S. were poorly interpreted raw stats.
Urban Cincy post
Mr Loki, Cincinnati used to have an insanely low crime rate, hence the current outrage.