New Publication Out Now: Invented Emergency (For Small Cities & Big Towns)

We just received a few boxes of our newest publication, INVENTED EMERGENCY (For Small Cities & Big Towns), published through White Water Gallery. They look so good, we can’t wait to give them out!

INVENTED EMERGENCY is built on the research developed for Surviving North Bay, a residency and exhibition by Broken City Lab, hosted by White Water Gallery in the summer and fall of 2012. Surviving North Bay developed as a series of exploratory public interventions, micro-gestures, and tactical responses to North Bay. Each of these exploratory initiatives called on public participation to engage with North Bay, its infrastructures, and its communities. Throughout the residency, we collected research on the city in support of an exhibition that aimed to not only examine the practice and production of a northern locality, but also present a range of resistive tactics that can help the community survive, or help one survive the community. Emergencies became shorthand for this series of resistive tactics and gestures and INVENTED EMERGENCY extends these ideas towards developing a series of starting points and positions for new (and revisited) radical practices.

Pick up your copy at CIVIC SPACE, or let us know if you want one, and I’m sure we can arrange getting one in the mail to you!

Huge thanks to Clayton and Robyn and everyone at White Water Gallery for making this possible!

This project was generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

Artist in Residence Mary Tremonte Printing at the Windsor May Day Parade

Mary Tremonte of Justseeds Artist Cooperative Printing at the Windsor May Day Parade in Drouillard Park.

Spirit of Windsor: An Outsider’s Guide by NICOLE LAVELLE & SARAH BAUGH Opens April 18 at 6:00pm

Image courtesy of Nicole & Sarah’s blog – blog.sincerelyinterested.com

If you haven’t checked out our recent video of Nicole Lavelle and Sarah Baugh interviewing one another about their residency and project here in Windsor, then you’re missing out on all the interesting ideas and experiences framing their new project, Spirit of Windsor: An Outsider’s Guide.

This new project is quickly coming together (and officially launching here at CIVIC SPACE on Thursday, April 18th at 6pm), and you can check out more of their process in the meantime on their awesome project blog!

Please join us for a publication release party and a celebration of the city!

Spirit of Windsor: An Outsider’s Guide is a project from Portland-based artists Sarah Baugh and Nicole Lavelle. Arriving in Windsor with absolutely no previous knowledge of the place, the two spent one week investigating. They responded to their status as visitors to the city of Windsor by creating a guide based on walking, wandering and chance. The resulting publication is a cursory glimpse of this place, intended to act as a jumping-off point for locals and visitors alike.

Copies of the guide will be available, as well as refreshments and door prizes from local eateries and businesses. Select excerpts from the guide will be exhibited in the space.

When: Thursday, April 18, 6-8pm

Where: Civic Space, 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor ON

All are welcome!

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Also on April 18th from 7:30pm to 9pm…

SB Contemporary Art is pleased to present a group exhibition titled, Survey featuring the work of four artists completing the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Windsor; Amanda Dudnik, Michael Marcon, Allen Matrosov, and Pearl Van Geest.

Nicole Lavelle & Sarah Baugh Discuss Their Plans at Civic Space

Late last week, two Portland artists–Nicole Lavelle & Sarah Baugh–arrived at CIVIC SPACE in a brown Volkswagen Westfalia camper van to spend a couple weeks exploring Windsor and eventually designing a Windsor Tour Guide publication. They took a few minutes yesterday evening to ask each other questions about what their collaborative project at CIVIC SPACE will entail.

Stay tuned for more announcements about their publication launch, happening April 18th at CIVIC SPACE.

Windsor is Forever: A Short Documentary

With Portland-based artist-in-residence, Jason Sturgill, we reframed his previous project, Art is Forever, as Windsor is Forever  – a community-driven art and tattoo project that gave Windsor residents an opportunity to make a permanent commitment to the city. Participants chose from a flash tattoo set created in collaboration with local artists and illustrators to receive as their free tattoos, which were offered free of charge by Dave Kant of Advanced Tattoo, and Jon Jimenez and Steve Jones of Flying Dagger Tattoo.

During the event, Andrew Frickey captured the tattoo artists at work and conducted interviews. The results were compiled into a short documentary which can be viewed above.

We’d like to thank everyone who came out for the sketch night and to everyone who helped make this project possible.

Tattoos by Dave Kant, Steve Jones & Jon Jimenez.

Short Film Directed and Edited by Andrew Frickey

Blog Party: A New Biweekly Get-together

Blog Party

We’re very excited to announce a new biweekly blogging night, Blog Party, starting Thursday, April 11th here at CIVIC SPACE! Blog Party aims to bring together local bloggers to discuss ideas, inspiration, and issues in the city and beyond, providing a time and space for writing, learning, and creating together, regardless of skill level.

Hosted by Sara and Josh, Blog Party is both an opportunity to learn and teach, and ultimately make great blogs. Blog Party works like a pot luck — you bring something you know how to do, and everyone else gets to sample it — together, we’ll learn how to blog better, faster, and smarter.

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Upcoming Dates

April 11th & 25th

May 9th & 23rd

June 6th & 20th

@7pm, Civic Space – 411 Pelissier Street, Windsor

The Social Practice Workbook – Artist Talk with Jen Delos Reyes (watch it online now!)

Jen Delos Reyes–a Portland-based artist and educator–has curated an exhibition here at Civic Space called The Social Practice Workbook. This exhibition is a collaborative effort between students of Portland State University (PSU) and takes the form of an assemble-it-yourself display of short writings and assignments from PSU’s Art & Social Practice MFA Program. Jen took the time to supplement her exhibition with an artist talk held at The University of Windsor’s School of Visual Arts today.

The entire talk can be viewed below and on our YouTube channel.

Windsor is Forever Recap

Last Thursday, March 7th, we transformed Civic Space into a tattoo shop for one full day. This was the final event in a project we co-hosted with Portland’s Jason Sturgill called Windsor is Forever. In the spirit of Jason’s Portland project Art is Forever, Windsor is Forever became a community-driven art and tattoo project that gave Windsor residents an opportunity to make a permanent mark on themselves. It also gave us an opportunity to discover what Windsor might look like as a set of icons. We found out which objects or symbols were important to Windsor residents, and which could begin to tell a story of what Windsor was and will be.

Windsor is Forever allowed us to connect with artists from the area and help create something that would last forever. This project demonstrated that Windsor is very important to many people, and for some, it is an integral part of their identities.

Civic Space was transformed from a multi-use studio space to a sterile and appropriately-lit tattoo parlour in a day. This wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of everyone who played a part in making Windsor is Forever a reality. The commitment from those involved and the participants themselves was incredible.

We should also note that if you didn’t get a free tattoo on Thursday, but you’re interested in using one of the designs, don’t worry. The flash set that was created from Monday’s Sketch Night and from submissions thereafter will be available at local tattoo shops shortly!

We’d like to give huge thanks to everyone involved in this project. Thank you Jason Sturgill, Dave Kant, Steve Jones, Jon Jimenez, Arts Council Windsor & Region, all the reporters who came by to document the event, everyone who came out and contributed to Sketch Night, and everyone who contributed a Windsor story and came to get free a tattoo!

To view the entire set of tattoos finished during Windsor is Forever, please click here.

Micro-Project: Make Your Own Bunting (Web App)

Whether making your own guerrilla celebration, working on a gallery installation, or even getting ready for some upcoming holiday festivities, we think our little automagic bunting app will make everything a little bit easier.

We got tired of hand-setting each letter when we’ve made bunting in the past, so we cooked up this simple little web app that takes any string of text you enter and converts each letter into a one-page gif file, ready to be printed, trimmed (using the handy built-in guides), and strung together using your favourite little bull clips, tape, or other hanging mechanism.

Try it out and send us a picture of what you do with it!

A Proposal for Making It Easier to Stay Here: On Economic Development, Tax Policy, and Youth Retention

I sat down with a couple of different people over the last few weeks to discuss the possibility to rethink how we collectively address youth retention in Windsor. It’s an incredibly pressing (and yet somehow invisible) emergency. As a faculty member and collaborator with many recent graduates, it’s a professional and personal challenge to see people move away from Windsor. And yet, it’s so rare that recent grads do stick it out that it’s impossible to imagine how huge of an impact they could have on the city.

And, of course, it also begs the question — why do people move?

The draw of a bigger city, their experiences here in Windsor, and job prospects are all often cited for packing up at the end of an undergraduate degree, and for good reason. These things can weigh heavily on a decision of staying in Windsor after graduation, as the city itself cannot offer much in lieu of them. However, I have to wonder what ‘the thing’ is that might help recent graduates decide not to move away. What about this city might be able to draw people to stay and even bring people back?

It started with cheerleaders. Or more specifically, an idea for a guerrilla cheerleading squad. that went something like this: What if we paid unemployed recent graduates to show up to political events — city council, funding announcements, town hall meetings — to advocate for more resources being put towards youth retention? The guerrilla cheerleading squad would show up, make some noise, and hopefully draw attention to the lack of ambition and absence of real work being put towards keeping young and creative talent in this city.

But, that conversation led to an honest assessment of potential impact. A cheerleading squad might make the paper once, it might draw some attention to the issue, but ultimately, we wouldn’t be arming ourselves to have a conversation about what should be done, or what could be done with some imagination, to address the issue. The long-term impact would evaporate.

So, that led to another conversation. How could we enact a kind of long-term impact towards addressing the lack of initiative put towards youth retention at the regional level? It’s a conversation that I’ve been having for two years (and probably even longer), and yet it feels like the exact same conversation over that entire time.

There’s a reality here in Windsor that always seems to surprise people from away when we tell them about it. First, commercial property taxes are really, really high. But that’s not the surprising part. Second, there’s a lot of vacant commercial spaces and a lot of need for affordable space. But, that’s not surprising either. The third and surprising part is that if you own a commercial property, and it’s vacant, you can fill out a two-page form and get a property tax rebate. So, naturally, there’s little incentive to reduce the rent to reflect the realities of the market and economy here. And in turn, there are few opportunities for a young start-up of any kind to get into a space and get to work doing whatever great thing they might want to do.

Long-term impact will be driven by some radical short-term changes here in the city. These changes need to be developed specifically for Windsor, they should try to solve a couple of parallel problems (but not attempt to solve every problem), and they should be something that might be able to make national headlines. With that in mind, there’s a preliminary plan. It’s early, it’s naive, but it’s going to be further developed and researched. And, it goes something like this:

Instead of a tax rebate just for vacant space, that same rebate should be extended to allow (actually, to encourage) landlords to make their space available free of charge for new businesses, artists, and non-profits operating in their first year and still access the rebate. Businesses, sole proprietors (artists), and non-profits would all register to verify that they were indeed a new startup and they would find the appropriate vacant space and interested landlord — perhaps in collaboration with the area’s BIA. The landlord would fill out a very similar to what already exists two-page form, while noting their request for exemption of the necessity for 100% vacancy for supplying space to one of these startups, and ultimately receive the same tax rebate while supplying vital and incredibly necessary space for young creative people. In the second year of such an arrangement, the startup renting the space could pay a graduated fee (perhaps 50% market value in year 2, 75% market value in year three, and full market value in year four if they could stick it out), or perhaps they would just enter into a normal lease agreement. The bottom line is that the vacant space is filled, there is wealth and job creation, and most importantly, a young creative person sticks it out in the city. And, hopefully, we can tell the world that the city is doing this.

As I noted, research on this is really, really preliminary. There might be a huge number of hurdles or there might already be plans underway to do this, there could be a thousand examples of similar programs elsewhere or it might be a truly unique take on municipal action on youth retention and economic development. We’ll find out as time goes on.

In the meantime, if you have any links, resources, or research to share, please post it in the comments. More soon.