Repurposing the Black Arts Movement on the South Side of Chicago

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores an instance of how the arts and culture led urban rebranding projects so central to the new urban economy play out in African American communities. Under the direction of the University of Chicago in collaboration with Theaster Gates, an African American artist, educator, entrepreneur and Chicago South Side native who has carved out a powerful position as a creative-pacemaker and arts impresario at the university a number of such projects are unfolding around the university and in the neighbouring impoverished Black communities. I place these developments in the context the history of racial segregation in Chicago, the ongoing role of the university as a major growth coalition partner and debates regarding creative development strategies in the neoliberal city. Perhaps most importantly, this chapter attempts to understand how and to what ends the highly political art of the Black Arts Movement is being resignified in the new era of market fundamentalism which, interestingly, owes its ideological underpinnings to the Chicago School of economics. By contrasting the urban context in which the Chicago Black Arts Movement emerged and its deployment today I hope to shed light on, in particular, the racialised dimensions of creative city processes.KeywordsCreative placemakingBlack Arts MovementChicagoUniversity industrial complexNeoliberal urbanismGrowth coalitionSegregationGentrificationTheaster Gates