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Creative Community: A Role of Campus- Community Partnerships in Culture- Led Urban Regeneration

Araya Santisana*

aAraya Santisan, Kasetsart University, 50 Ngam Wong Wan Rd., Latyao, Chatuchak, Bangkok, Thailand

10900

E-mail address: asantisan@hotmail.com

***Paper presented at The 2nd International Symposium on Business and Social Sciences (ISBSS), Rihga Royal Hotel in Osaka, Japan, November 8, 2013.

ABSTRACT

Creative community, the vital linkages among public art, culture and knowledge- based economy, can provide a new direction for urban regeneration. By reinventing places into an active cultural districts and enriching visitor experiences, campus- community partnerships could empower residents and their connections to the present. Using a case study of Kadeejeen Art and Cultural Community, a riverbank community along Chaophraya river in Bangkok, this paper will focus on a role of campus partnerships in cultural development strategy and public art in urban regeneration. Specifically, it examines the way in which community- based art festival can create a creative economy by returning a community to a new vitality through a combination of new creative attract tourism, city’s image and economic development. This paper argues that campus- community partnerships, as a starting point of collaboration, help build community engagement, neighborhood improvement and promote authenticity of the place through these involvements- “share visioning”, “bridging” information flow to all stakeholders, “leadership” and “reciprocity” toward public art and cultural activities throughout the entire culture- led urban regeneration. Keywords: creative community, campus- community partnerships, culture- led urban regeneration, community- based art festival, public art and cultural event

1. INTRODUCTION

The emergence of culture- led urban regeneration helps build city’s cultural district across the world and is now one of at the heart of culture and community revitalization frameworks in Thailand. As a case study, the practice of Kadeejeen cultural district, an art and cultural- based community, had emphasized the role of campus- community partnerships in urban place-making and revitalization since 2008. In addition, the increasing of successful community projects from the university involvement highlights an important key of community engagement and public participation in neighborhood revitalization. Campus- Community Partnerships is now growing in popularity as an approach to support community with a thriving in the academically form of curricular and co-curricular programs, interdisciplinary research centers and committees, presenting organizations, and student laboratories. The thesis of the paper is that the campus- community partnerships propose a new model as a starting point of collaboration in urban regeneration in Thailand. Especially, campus-

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community partnership in urban culture- led urban regeneration is not only significance in the economic development plans of cities but also in neighborhood improvement because of its implications for building community capacity and stimulating collaboration among diverse groups of stakeholders in the neighborhood and drawing tourists coming into the community by public arts and cultural activities. However, to build a strong and trust relationships are challenging aspects of any campus- community partnerships. This article, as my own record of some intellectual observations in Kadeejeen neighborhood- a campus- community revitalization project done in Thailand by UddC (Urban Design And Development Center), is based on a pilot study seeking to understand how campus- community partnerships enhancing its role on place-making and on civic engagement and cultural perspectives are presently being addressed and why these programs work. It introduces the background underlying the campus engagement approach to support community engagement in the first section. Then, it discusses a case study of Kadeejeen arts community, Bangkok, Thailand in section 2, 3 and 4 for the context of community history, community arts and cultural- led activities, and conclusion respectively. 1.1 What is Campus- Community Partnerships? Todays, urban planning and community development in higher education across the world are attempting to strengthen their connections with residential neighborhood by responding to and engaging with communities beyond teaching and research. Collaboration between university and community provides a playground for faculty, research, engaging students and service- learning including community to establish communications and partnerships that will improve the condition of individuals, families, and communities. These roles are called in various ways: universities as citizens (Bringle, Games, & Malloy, 1999), universities as partners (Maurasse, 2001) and campus- community partnerships (Bringle, Hatcher, 2002, p. 505.) A number of articles what is called campus- community partnerships have detailed how and why university work and collaboration provide a powerful contribution regarding their insights and applicability to community development areas. Bringle et al. (2002) indicated in their literature work that:

Campus- community partnerships are as a series of interpersonal relationship that build one on top of the other to create a bond between institutions. It is a framework that provides the “give and take”, the “ups and downs”, the “fits and starts” in a service- learning partnerships that are aspect of the growth of any relationship.

According to Mandell (2010), many theorists in civic engagement such as; Putnam and Briggs highlighted the importance of creating “bridging” ties- a relationship and social capital as social support that bring resources back to local neighborhood and develop meaningful spiritual community. In other words, it is about developing people and their communities through meaningful community involvement and participation. This way, universities have a particularly potential in society to facilitate societal responses to the sustainable challenges facing communities. The language of community involvement, civic engagement and campus- community partnerships in urban planning, then, interconnect social, economic, and environmental benefits community into plan for future direction. Campus- community partnerships provide hand-on lessons for all participants. Students, faculties and communities must be ready to undertake a comprehensive visioning and planning process, otherwise; it is unlikely to succeed. In many cases all stakeholders and

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actors are relatively diverse, each with unique features. It is important to have mentor teachers as facilitators of the partnership helping conduct field observations, organize workshops and make recommendation for strengthening the program. Moss and Grunkkemeyer (2010, p. 241), pointed out in their paper of “Building shared visions” for sustainable communities that, generally conflicting views of what community residents want and expect of their community make it difficult to understand and to identify resident’s desires and arrive at a community consensus for the future. They also added that there are a few attentions and few solutions from a public hearing unless the topics are controversial. Often development decisions are lack of a share vision of what the community really wants and needs. Swisher, Rezola, & Sterns (2012, p. 1) indicated that truly participative development involves diverse stakeholders with varying perceptions, motivations and values. Crafting a sustainable community must therefore begin with the participants asking themselves which values they share and which are central to the community’s cultural identity. However, to make the issue of campus- community Partnerships possible, another remarkable study of Malm E., Eberle S., Calamia J., and Prete G. (2012) highlighted that applying the broader concepts of “reciprocity” in the campus- community engagement will enhance the success, sustainability and satisfaction of working in partnership. The study indicated that by using an annual community Arts festival, a model of campus-community partnership in the concept of reciprocity could be created. In sum, we could see that all findings of these studies seem to give a picture in that the campus and community should see itself as a partner in education. Every partner should provide knowledge and generate collaborations in all form of teaching and learning together in every context. As a result, the educational experiences will play a major role on giving a tool and useful skills of how to operate cultural events and socialization process that all neighborhoods need to learn to interact with each other and help them understand their own strength and role in society.

2. CU AND SOA+D- KADEEJEEN PARTNERSHIPS

2.1 Kadeejeen Neighborhood: Historical Background Kadeejeen community is situated on the west side of Chao Phraya River. (See Fig. 1) All settlements are located in part of the Thonburi district. In retrospect, Kadeejeen or “Kudeejeen” or “Chinese Church” name came from the history of the area’s prominent Chinese community. Actually, kadeejeen became a cultural melting pot, with Thai, Chinese, Portuguese and Muslim settlements since the early 1900s. Kadeejeen was a major commercial area of the city during the early Ratanakosin period, as well as a residential area for high-ranking government servants and their retainers. (Kulsrisombat N., 2012)

Fig. 1: Map of Kadeejeen Community and cultural heritage places in Kadeejeen area

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Source: http://lifetrips.wikispaces.com/Bangkok-+ADE/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/Love-Kadeejeen/244689208897948

Kadeejeen community was referred as the ‘Venice of the East’ for its neighborhood in a rich cultural heritage, music, and cuisine for many decades. All neighborhood settlements are consisted of a striking collection of both wooden and masonry shop houses and private housing. However, because of the congestion of new cheap rental houses built by leaseholders for rural immigrants and workers, the image of the Kadeejeen neighborhood, finally, become less attractive since the conflict between the exist residents and the new comers happened. Kadeejeen became recognized as one of the tourist destinations again by the project of Community- based Art Festival creating from the concept of campus- community partnerships in 2008. This approach enabled the tourist to discover local traditional cultures, rituals and historical places in the community. Thanks to its uniqueness of three religious, each religious community continues to function today together with all Kadeejeen neighborhoods. 2.2 The Dynamic of Community- based Art Festival: CU and SoA+D - Kadeejeen Partnerships Given the importance of Kadeejeen as a historical place and one of visitor destinations, there are a number of organizations in which are interested in improving Kadeejeen historical significant. In 2008, considering that Kadeejeen as the oldest community along the Chaophraya riverside, the Association of Siamese Architects Under Royal Patronage (ASA), Thailand chose this place as a pilot project to conserve the cultural heritage by presenting installation art, photography, lighting installation at night. This project was named “the Conserving Kadeejeen Project (CKP)” and the Conserving Kadeejeen Group (CKG) was then established as a core team which consisted of: (1) members of Conservation Committee of ASA; (2) leaders of the six communities of Kadeejeen; and (3) academics from the Architecture and Urban Design schools network. (Kulsrisombat N., 2012) Urban and Regional Planning from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand (CUURP) joined this program as main actors. As an action research, Dr. Niramon Kulsrisombat- head of Urban Design and Development Center (UddC), chose to observe the linkage between culture-led urban regeneration policy and practice in Bangkok by conducting the mapping cultural process in assessing the artistic and cultural values as well as a “Photo Safari” exhibition in the community. There are many university involvements in art activities, for example; SoA+D Graduate Program in lighting design by Dr. Chanyaporn Chuntamara and Dr. Acharawan Chutarat, headed of the program, participated in the “Kadeejeen-Art of Three Piers” as a project design of street lighting in 2012 while several partners including residents launched some exhibitions on Kadeejeen cultural heritage, products and activities. The first project was the Kadeejeen Cultural Mapping which aimed to: (1) survey, identify and document cultural resources through participatory methods; and (2) to use the cultural map as a tool for a collective learning platform helping communities to recognize and safeguard their cultural diversity. As a result, a multi-layer mapping technique, which involved various groups of people to evaluate and identify the cultural resources based on their values, knowledge and background, was created. (Kulsrisombat N., 2012) However, there were still less motivation and inspiration to younger residents, local leaders in the community and city government of Bangkok. Therefore, First Edition of Kadeejeen Art Festival was initiated only as an experiment to build wider community engagement and gain

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more conversation from local government and other attentions. Several activities have been undertaken by campus- community engagement, service- learning programs together with public and private agencies to promote Kadeejeen as an Art district for a more inclusive process in the culture-led regeneration project. Generally, the biggest difficulty in fostering more engaged partnerships is to get people to speak, get them to separate ideas from personalities, to be in a playful, and to do it. Group discussions normally have an amazing capacity for going straight to solutions by someone and being in the old way of thinking. In other words, they go straight to the solutions they already know how to do. Thus, such deeply service- learning implementations in “bridging” ties and “Building shared visions” activities helped get people in brainstorming and create fantasy art solutions with no rules resulting in a more and more creative cultural events and conscious of the unity of their historic places and community values. (See Fig. 3)

The second, the third and the forth edition of Kadeejeen Art Festival were the successful stories of Kadeejeen. Each of these community arts events was inherently interesting and academically important in demonstrating the conceptual of university- community partnerships. In addition, these cultural activities have propelled a new movement in culture-led urban regeneration in Thailand. They increase community engagement in the neighborhood regeneration process as well as community and public awareness of the neighborhood’s cultural heritage.

3. PUBLIC ART IN ACTION 3.1 Learning from Kadeejeen Art Community Initiative Some notable lessons learned in building collaborations and partnerships from this case study of Kadeejeen art and cultural community answer the raised questions about whether community- based arts festivals can be used as a tool for community development, economic revitalization and for capacity building or not. Definitely, most of arts programs involve with community members in all creative activities. While many engagements are important, arts and cultural activities highlight the challenge of potentially lacking of main actors, information flow and communication. Focusing on long-term cooperation in the future, “leadership” of local leaders plays crucial role in responsibilities and communication.

Fig. 3 “bridging” ties activities by CU- assigned students to engage community in service-

learning experience on the third and forth edition. Source: http://www.kadeejeen-klongsan.org/index.php/data

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Most successful activity of community- based Art festival that made a big difference was described as “Kadeejeen Art in Sois festival”. Each edition of this theme was designed as Street Art interpretation activities spread over a number of locations in Kadeejeen neighborhoods with the link of key leaders. To illustrate, the first edition, the idea of the first implement for “cultural mapping” to help protect cultural heritage in Kadeejeen was introduced as a guideline for further regeneration efforts. Although the first edition of art and cultural events seemed unclear and lack of cooperation between all level of local government and leaders of community who will take responsibilities for this action in the future, the creative movements could be perceived at the local level and be gained some bonds among neighborhoods. Consequently, the second edition in the end of 2010 focused on strengthen community collaborations and promoted sense of Kadeejeen by engaging three religious institutions in the community- Buddhism, Islam and Catholic, including expanding the theme of cultural heritage in arts and cultural events to link artists involvement. As a result, these living art interpretations could be presented the stories, and meaning through painting, art installation, lighting, symbols, music and historical building. As seen from Fig. 4, most of these arts programs seemed to recognize heritage places and community life as important facets of local economic development. Especially, in many other cultural activities and photo exhibitions, Kadeejeen art and cultural community could promote its elements of creative tourism to the whole society.

Fig. 4: Cultural Arts activities in the second of Kadeejeen Art Festival Source: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Love-Kadeejeen/244689208897948 3.2 Practice of Community- Based Arts in Sois There are great amounts of arts programs and cultural projects in Kadeejeen neighborhoods. Some of the major arts events lied in the theme of public art such as; community- based street art and sketch works by artists from Bangkok sketchers group.

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4. CONCLUSION Sustainability requires people who are experienced with the type of “bridge building” and “world spanning” that university-community engagement encourages (Hollander, 2009). Kadeejeen community could return back to a new vitality through a combination of new creative economies and traditional customs and economic development. It was the important step toward integrating campus- community partnerships throughout the entire cultural- led urban revitalization. Nowadays, Kadeejeen turns into a famous tourist destination in Bangkok and a favorite destination for study trips of delegates from other local communities. This should allow us to draw some useful findings for campus- community partnerships both at the top down approach and at the bottom up approach. First, we could see from Kadeejeen case that campus- community partnerships work well in calling for residents, neighborhood and local agencies for a vibrant, more socially and environmentally neighborhood that provides increased opportunities for community capacity building and economic development. Yet, in reality, for the events of “Arts in Sois”, artist actors could not find easily in the community itself. On the other hand, as mentioned by Dr. Kulsrisombat, the Art Festivals in Kadeejeen community were successful because of the main active participation by various outside organizations- Conserving Kadeejeen Group (CKG). It will be a big challenge for the next Kadeejeen festival’s success in the neighborhoods whether it would be accomplished through a bottom-up approach or not if those people- the core team, from outside were left communities to suit themselves. Second, it is notable that community- based arts festival initiative explicitly mentions “reciprocity”- Art and cultural events and refers to sustainability issues. Art festival leads to

Fig. 5: Community- based Street Art activities organized by UddC Source: researcher

Fig. 6: Sketch Works activities (Artists; Wattana Poolcharoen, Supawat Hi) organized by

Bangkok Sketchers group Source: https://www.facebook.com/SketchwalkChaophraya

A combination of community- based street art projects was enhanced the success of “reciprocity” art activities, sustainability and satisfaction of working in the campus- community engagement. Moreover, these arts projects created an artist network and celebrated many distinctive neighborhood art venues available to area residents by bringing out the positive attributes and characteristics of the neighborhood. Yet, these community art activities did not emphasize to develop or change exactly economic prosperity. Rather, as shown in Fig. 5 and 6, they tended to focus on the big-ticket of social change activities, neighborhood improvement and the importance of local quality of life and local creative place to live and work. In short, these art strategies viewed the economic role of community- based art festival as something more than tourist attractions.

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urban regeneration more broadly. Then, it supports the concepts of “reciprocity” in the campus- community engagement as having been mentioned by Malm E., et. al., 2012) As a result, a more cooperation among residents and all neighborhoods in the concept of the traditional institutions of Thai society; Baan-Wat- Rongrian (lit. Community-Temple-School), existing in the community as a triangular model, is a key factor in providing strong foundations for information flow and cooperation beyond the wall within neighborhoods to built a good understanding and capacities of such communities in Kadeejeen and Khongsan area. Most importantly, the action of leaders of each neighborhood as a mediator in creating the communication between residents and local governments is a crucial factor in the active participation of Thai community. Many lesson-learned from this case study- Kadeejeen art community, stress that university- community partnerships in the process of “share visioning”, “bridging” ties- information flow to all stakeholders, “leadership” and “reciprocity” in cultural- led urban revitalization strategies are the starting points and keys.

5. REFERENCES

Bringle, R. G., Games, R. & Malloy, E. A. (Eds.) (1999). Colleges and universities as citizens, in Stephen, J.C., Hernandez, M.E., Boyle, M.E. (2009). Learning from University-Community Partnerships (Past and Present) for Sustainable Development. Working Paper No. 2009-04. Worcester, MA: Clark University. Retrieved Feb. 14, 2013 from working paper.

Bringle, R. G. and Hatcher, J. A. (2002). Campus- Community Partnership: The Terms of Engagement. Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2002, pp. 503- 516.

Hollander, E. (2009) Forward. In Mcilrath, L. & Labhrainn, I. M. (Eds.) Higher education and civic engagement: International perspectives. Burlington, VT, Ashgate.

Kadeejeen-khlongsan Regeneration Project Available online at http://www.kadeejeen-klongsan.org/images/folder7_4/folder7_4_1/55/2012-kadeejeen-khlongsan%20regeneration%20project-nk251212.pdf Retrieved on Sep 18, 2013.

Kulsrisombat, N. (in Blog) Cultural-Driven Urban Regeneration: A Case Study Of The Kadeejeen Neighborhood, Bangkok. Available online at http://www.cisasia.net/Case_Study_Brief/Bangkok/04-BKK-Art-Revitalization.pdf Retrieved on Sep 19, 2013.

Kulsrisombat, N. (2012) Inclusive, Culture-led Urban Regeneration: A Case Study of the Kadeejeen Neighborhood, Bangkok. Available online at http://www.kadeejeen-klongsan.org/index.php/data/data4/data5 Retrieved on Sep. 1, 2013.

Malm, E., Eberle, S., Calamia, J., and Prete, G. (2012). Partnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement, Vol 3, No 2.

Mandell, Joyce. (2010). Picnics, participation and power: linking community building to social change. Community Development, 41(2) pp. 269- 282.

Maurasse, D. (2001). Beyond the Campus: How Colleges and Universities Form Partnerships with Their Communities, in Stephen, J.C., Hernandez, M.E., Boyle, M.E. 2009.

Moss, M. L., Grunkemeyer, W. T. (2010). Academic journal article from Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society, Vol. 41, No. 2. April- June, pp. 240- 254.

Stern, Mark J., and Susan C. Seifert. (1998). Community revitalization and the arts in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Social Impact of the Arts Project.

Swisher, M. E., Rezola, S., & Sterns, J. (2012). Sustainable community development step 3. University of Florida Cooperative Extension Service, EDIS. pp. 1-2 Available online

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at http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/CD/CD02700.pdf Retrieved on Sep. 20, 2013.