Voices from the Field

If you have enjoyed a cultural experience in New Jersey, chances are volunteers helped to make it happen. Across the country, however, volunteerism is down. According to a December 2021 Gallup Poll of 811 adults, the percentage who reported time spent volunteering fell to 56 percent, continuing a downward trend from 65 percent in 2013 to 64 percent in 2017. From ushers to docents to studio...

"Son, take a good look around. This is your hometown…" (My Hometown , Bruce Springsteen, 1984) Who knew that almost 40 years after The Boss released this iconic song, arts, history, tourism, economic development, and community revitalization would come together under those words to give the borough of Freehold dynamic new meaning? On March 8, I attended the news conference at the Freehold Fire...

More than 13 years ago, I started as the part-time director for this small-but-mighty program at Third Westminster Presbyterian Church at 780 Salem Avenue in Elizabeth called the Institute of Music for Children. As the arts were being cut in schools, the Institute was started by the church in 1995 to help provide arts education to their neighborhood youth, where children could learn and grow...

Join the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey on October 15 for a workshop on connecting community development, creative placemaking, and more! Through the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, community art has become a beacon of light in uncertain times. New Jersey’s local painters, sculptors, community gardeners, musicians, poets, dancers, and all other artists have proven...

“We always have a choice of how we respond to the crisis. That’s what arts does: it gives students a voice.” Since the onset of the pandemic and throughout the past year, the landscape of arts education has changed dramatically. At schools throughout the state of New Jersey, students were forced to communicate and create from home, or through major restrictions. However, in spite of this blow,...

I was matched with ArtPride New Jersey after being selected to participate in the Diversity in Arts Leadership program by Americans for the Arts. This year, DIAL matched undergraduate students whose backgrounds are underrepresented in the arts to select arts organizations in New Jersey, New York City, and Nashville. I will be using my experience with DIAL as a prerequisite when applying for future...

Visual ethnographer Michael P. Smith often described New Orleans as a “cultural wetland." 1 It is from this framework that I similarly consider Waterfront South, the Camden neighborhood where my organization Camden FireWorks is situated. Often non-residents describe Camden using deficit-based descriptors like “underserved,” “disenfranchised,” or “poor.” Although Waterfront South people implicitly...

Words are important. Words are all around us and with you right now as you read this. Words, to me, are among the most beautiful gifts that I have ever gotten from or given to anyone. I believe this so strongly that I’ve dedicated myself to ensuring that words play an important part in the lives of others. I currently serve as my hometown’s Poet Laureate. As the first ever poet laureate of...

Mid-October 2020, during the last phase of a difficult political time in general, Susanna Baker, Executive Director of Studio Montclair , reached out and asked me if I would be interested in proposing a show honoring Women’s History Month. I started with two words: women with a ‘y’ and werq. I looked them up online. From the Urban Dictionary: Womyn This is a term used by those who feel that having...

The Windows of Understanding (WOU) public art project, which launched on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, is now underway in New Brunswick, Highland Park, and Metuchen. Celebrating its fourth year, the WOU initiative unites local artists, organizations, and businesses to promote awareness and informed conversation around social justice issues impacting our local communities. Hiawatha Cuffee, "Rise"...