Hope Corps: Restoring Communities through the Creative Workforce
Image: Oddfellows Cafe in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, Photo by Nick Bolton
By: Julia Reed
Seattle has always been a creative city. From the artistry of the Coast Salish tribes to the jazz days on Jackson Street, to its world-famous painters, writers, dancers and sculptors, and its tech industry creatives driving advances in virtual reality and gaming, the creative ecosystem of the Seattle area has been central to the city and the region’s success. It makes people want to live here, and companies want to locate here. It gives character to the city and shapes the identities of its neighborhoods and communities.
In recent years, our creative ecosystem has been under threat. The rising cost of living, the lack of affordable housing, the tough economics of festivals and entertainment venues meant that many creatives struggled to make ends meet[1]. Then came the pandemic.
With bookstores, galleries, theaters, festivals, and concert venues shuttered and out of town visitors in sharp decline, the creative economy went from struggling to nearly impossible. The jobs that traditionally sustained creative workers in tough times -- especially in the education, hospitality, and tourism industries -- also dried up.
This isn’t just about individual job losses. This is a loss of a whole community that is central to Seattle. That gives us our community identity and cultural expression. That makes the city a great place to live, work, and thrive. If our creative workforce goes into permanent decline, so will the innovation and spirit of the city.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Seattle is poised for a post-COVID recovery, and creative professionals can be central to that revitalization.
This spring, Kinetic West is teaming up with local creative leaders from across the area, including Randy Engstrom, former director of the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, in supporting the creation of Hope Corps – a workforce strategy for civic, economic, and cultural recovery. Not only because we think Hope Corps can transform our city, but also because it could be an important model recovering communities across the country.
Reviving the City
Like many cities, Seattle’s communities are isolated in lockdown and fractured by COVID-19 losses -- especially communities of color that have been disproportionately harmed by the pandemic. Seattle’s downtown core is facing high vacancy rates and few visitors[2]. Creative professionals possess unique skillsets to solve these problems.
Art is not just decorative. It has the power to bring a community together, inspire pride of place, establish identity, and drive economic growth. The Statue of Liberty, New Orleans JazzFest, Cloud Gate (aka the Chicago Bean), Northwest Folklife, this is art that instantly centers you in a specific place, generating both revenue and identity for their hometowns.
As cities across the nation look to recover from the impacts of the pandemic, art is a critical tool to rebuild our social cohesion, generate income for small businesses, and bring life and vitality back to our streets. Art can tell the story of the pandemic and imagine the better future we hope is coming.
Hope Corps: A better future through the creative economy
Hope Corps is a creative workforce strategy for cultural, economic, and civic recovery. It is inspired in part by the New Deal programs of the Depression, which gave employment to writers, artists, and actors, like Dorothea Lange, Diego Rivera, and Jacob Lawrence.
Hope Corps will build on ongoing work led by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture to put creative professionals to work on projects sourced from local communities that benefit the COVID-19 recovery.
The project organizes participating creatives into cohorts based on their skills, with each cohort managed by an intermediary partner, a nonprofit or community-based organization. A Community advisory board helps Hope Corps choose projects and directs cohorts to serve community needs. Philanthropies, government funders, and crowdfunding campaigns sponsor the cohorts to complete community projects like revitalizing shopping districts, promoting vaccine use, or creating public art.
What Hope Corps can do
The final projects created by Hope Corps will be determined by the needs and wants of communities in Seattle, especially BIPOC communities, but we can start to imagine some of the projects the corps could take on:
● Repurposing vacant store fronts into publicly viewable art spaces
● Organizing outdoor mini-festivals to revive parks and community spaces
● Street theater and dance performances to draw people to small business corridors
● Oral history and storytelling gatherings telling the story of our collective pandemic experience
● Creative campaigns promoting vaccinations and COVID-19 safety
● Free art, theater, and music courses taught by professional artists
● Hospitality workers creating free “take home food festivals” featuring local chefs
● Community guidebooks sharing the history and identity of local neighborhoods
● Pop up public art installations to encourage people to explore their local area
● New neighborhood-specific murals on themes of resilience, survival, and recovery
What you can do next
We’re working on Hope Corps because we believe in the impact it can have for our city.
This has been an incredibly difficult year for our city, but Seattle is a creative town. We innovate, we change, we adapt, we find a way to keep going and making and connecting. Hope Corps can help us bring back the city using the resilient creative skillset that has always gotten us through.
We also know there are cities just like ours across the nation, trying to pick themselves up off the mat of this pandemic. Hope Corps can be a model for national recovery that is centered on community and creativity.
Seattle isn’t waiting. Through the work of the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Hope Corps initiatives have already invested more than $475,000 to support 96 creative workers in meeting community needs. This idea is ready to grow, bringing in more partners, creatives, and community voices.
If you want to be a part of creating Hope Corps in Seattle, you will soon be able to donate to the Hope Corps Fund through the Seattle Foundation, as well as track Hope Corps’ progress on the web. In the meantime, if you have an idea for a community project or an intermediary organization that could be part of Hope Corps’ work, send an email to julia.reed@kineticwest.com to share your suggestion with Hope Corps’ planners and coordinators.
Building a more inclusive, vibrant future for our communities won’t happen overnight, but by harnessing our creative workforce, we start to envision a future filled with hope.
[1] “Artists are being squeezed out of Seattle, how can we keep them?,” KUOW, Sept 25, 2019
[2] “Will downtown Seattle bounce back” Seattle Times, Feb 22, 2021