As social-practice art picks up momentum, some blurring of definitions is occurring. The People’s Liberty philanthropic lab, an extension of the Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, has been giving $10,000 project grants to individuals who submit ideas for projects. Sometimes, those projects involve the arts — other times, there’s artistic inspiration in the very proposal. Now that the fifth round of project grants has been announced, it’s useful to look at the winners.
When John Dixon attended January’s Women’s March with his sister and girlfriend, he was struck when President Donald Trump’s administration characterized the huge crowds opposing his policies as “professional protesters.” That certainly didn’t jibe with anything Dixon saw.
“When they say the word ‘professional,’ it has a different association — a profit motivation,” says the Cincinnati industrial designer. “When you say that people are only out there because they’re getting paid — when they’re not getting paid and that’s not their motive — that marginalizes them.”
As a satirical response to that characterization, as well as a means to serve the practical needs of future protesters, he has come up with PROtest — a project that will create and package reusable, dry-erasable blow-up protest signs. The signs will be distributed for free. For this, he received one of the project grants.
The goal of his project, Dixon says, is to facilitate peaceful communication between differing groups in difficult times. “We’re trying to make sure we’re relatively neutral,” he says, adding that signs are a better form of personal/political expression than shouting, arguing or worse.
Currently, a company that makes pool rafts is working on creating the signs. Packaging has yet to be decided, but he’s hoping to get everything worked out by July 4.
Movies figure in Amber Kelly’s winning proposal. With FamilyFlickin, she wants to recreate a version of what she had known as a girl. “I grew up in Bond Hill and I went to the Showcase Cinemas in Bond Hill a lot,” says Kelly, a mother of two and a community psychologist living in Kennedy Heights. “I remember how close it was to my home and how much I enjoyed going. We want to replicate that experience in the old neighborhood.”
Her plan is to park three party buses in the large parking lot of Mercy Health’s Bond Hill corporate campus at Reading Road and the Norwood Lateral, the very spot that Showcase Cinemas 12 occupied until 2008. Each bus will have at least three built-in screens and hold about 25 people. There will be two movies (DVD releases) shown on a given night; only families with children will be able to board.
“You’ll get to meet other families as there’s more of a communal feeling to it,” Kelly says. She’s aiming for the first one to be held Aug. 12 and then two more in October and during the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend.
Television figures in the grant awarded to the commercial filmmaker Scott Fredette, who plans to make a pilot for a travelogue that explores Cincinnati’s cultural underbelly. It will be hosted by songwriter Yoni Wolf, who has the Wandering Wolf podcast. Writing from Africa, where he is shooting a branding piece for Luxottica eyewear in Tanzania, Fredette explained his project: “I have always been fascinated by subculture and, because of that passion, I’ve attracted film work that explores a city’s cultural underbelly,” he wrote via email. “For example, 12 years ago, I was in London scouting for a broadcast-commercial campaign. Our location scout took us on a tour of street culture, exposing us to the subversive murals of the at-the-time-unknown artist Banksy (and) the art galleries of London’s punk culture.”
There are five other interesting ideas that have received grants: Kaia Goodwin’s plan to use milk crates for modular intensive gardens; Christa Hyson’s idea to work with children to prevent opioid abuse; Karl Laube’s proposed six-week course to help people learn auto maintenance and identify honest mechanics; Kick Lee’s Cincinnati Music Accelerator; and Yemi Oyediran’s plan for community concerts featuring songs from the King Records catalog. For more info, visit peoplesliberty.org.
CONTACT STEVEN ROSEN: srosen@citybeat.com
This article appears in May 17-24, 2017.