Artist Meetup Blog Entry 7
July 2024: SOAC’s Celebration of Expression
How else can I begin this letter other than with a heartfelt, impossibly large “thank you” to the dozens of artists, SOAC and Arts Garage team members, and community members who worked tirelessly to pull off this exquisite celebration of the arts in Atlantic City?
A Recap of the Day
I began the day at 9:30am schlepping around two filled shopping carts at Acme in Ventnor Heights. I pushed the heavier one with one hand and my belly, and pulled along the lighter one, mumbling sorry‘s and excuse me’s to passersby. The deli was last-minute short-staffed and some of our deliveries were going to take longer than expected. I waited. All across Absecon island, other artists were preparing, too.
I was texting our mocktail mixologist Katie about ingredients, and knew that pots on her stove were already roiling at that early hour. I was in communication with a few artists who were putting the final touches of inspiration on a few last pieces to be shown during our celebration. I knew that performers were resting voices, practicing lines, brushing up on bars. I was alone in line, surrounded by grumpy toe-tappers awaiting their sliced meats, and yet I was peaceful, feeling already together with my people.
Stories of Atlantic City’s Project Director Toby Rosenthal—on her day off of all things!—stopped by the store and waited in line with me. We chit-chatted about the celebration, life, community, finding rest, therapy, good food, etc. What else is there?!
Toby left when I got the food. I checked out, dropped the evening’s goodies at the Arts Garage, headed home, scarfed a quick lunch down, showered in record time, and raced right back out. My colleague Byonce and the Arts Garage’s Liaison for Event Planning and Promotion Sarah Lacy had arrived before me, and were setting up tables and arranging the space for our celebration. Artists began arriving at the same time as me.
From there, those first few hours were a blur: we moved tables, set up lighting, hung art, and addressed all sorts of problems big and small. The goal of this event, as I am sure I’ve mentioned in the last few entries, was to allow our community members the chance to take part in designing the festivities. Another way this could be said is that the Celebration of Expression was a “professionalization event.” This meant that artists were asked to prepare their own tables and payment systems, hang their own art, ready their own performances, and we would be there as support. I cannot overstate how much this felt embodied by all of our members. I felt so deeply supported by the sense of collective ownership in making sure that this celebration would come together properly and equitably.
Some of the many beautiful examples: artists helping to load each other’s equipment in from the garage; community members assisting our mocktail bartender to set up our champagne flutes and other community members racing out to go procure extra club soda when the bar was running low; artists watching to make sure enough food was brought out fast enough to satisfy our hungry audience; performers jumping to help set up mics or move equipment in time for our roster of performers!
Last but certainly not least, deserving of its own line, are all who stayed after the event ended at 9pm to help tear down the setups, sweep, throw trash in the dumpsters, move couches, etc. etc. etc.
So many hands, so much support, so much investment.
From the moment we started these meetups, I have said:
This space belongs to you who populate the room.
I have hoped, from the moment that we started these meetups, that those who joined us truly accepted that ownership. On the day of our celebration, I felt so much pride in being a part of this collective ownership.
The Night’s Invocation
“Art is opinion, critique, reaction.
Art is expression.
It is voice.
It is a truly sacred thing to share in amplifying so many voices. It is my personal honor, every day each month that we gather for our meetups, to know that in that space you can feel uplifted, safe, and curious to explore together.
Art is never not political.
Let me repeat that: Art is always political.
The act of simply having a voice, taking up space, providing others joy, catharsis, and familiarity is a deeply revolutionary act. I stand here as a team member of the organization Stories of Atlantic City: it is central to The Story of Atlantic City, as with the story of every other city in America, that the voices of marginalized peoples have been systematically silenced for generations. Not here. Not in spaces where we can share our art. It is The Story of Atlantic City, as with the story of every other city in America, that we must build community to refute systems of oppression imposed by governance, greed, violence, law.
Our Artist Meetups are a reminder of the unbreakable tether between creativity and activism. It is liberating simply to dream among friends, to rest among neighbors.
And so, my invocation for our performances tonight is this:
May you find the courage to experiment, to play, to dream—safely in the comfort of all of these new faces—and to share your most honest self.”
Thoughts on Guiding a Space
Community organizing is a strange thing. If you couldn’t tell, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it as an art form. And yes, community organizing is an art form.
Many art forms that aren’t classically considered to be community-organizational in fact are just that. This is one of the biggest reasons I hold our artist meetups. I believe we can all be community organizers, and, often, we are (even if we don’t know it yet). Sometimes we just need a little push.
Dear friend of the artist meetups and alumna of SOAC’s Community Reporting Fellowship Michelle Tomko recently interviewed me about the meetups, designing the celebration, and my relationship to community organizing and SOAC in general. You can find that article here (or in our Arts & Culture Stories). She asked some beautiful, truly thought-provoking questions, and it was a joy to get the chance to put the forces that drive me into words for her.
Community organizing requires a sort of “buy-in.” I think that’s generally a very stagnant, corporate word. But in this circumstance, it describes it quite well. When sitting around a table at the beginning of an artist meetup, at the mic at the beginning of an event, or even just clearing your throat to make a quick announcement, you are asking for attention.
Attention as commodity: “Hello, I know I only have a moment of your time. I have something I’d like to sell you. It’s called community and it will cost you zero dollars but maybe a little bit of time, thought, and care—and did I mention it will undoubtedly help to refute that deep-seated overwhelming crushing loneliness imposed on all of us by so many different expressions of American infrastructure?”
Different community organizers practice this sort of buy-in in different ways. Michelle Tomko, for example, is hilarious, wholesome, and inviting. When she’s sharing space with others, I see her lean into a willingness to pause between beats, to make sure she’s asking a question that really addresses the group. I see her listening deeply. She is a superb interviewer, and, when in-the-round, that skill flourishes to bring people together. On the stage, her comfort and ease is what brings the audience together. Performers are almost always afforded the chance to be community organizers.
Here’s a favorite practice of mine as a community organizer: bumbling. If I can make a “mistake” and then lean into it within the first few beats, I’ve laid the foundation. For me, it’s a gamble. I won’t put numbers to it, but 50% of any crowd is immediately deeply intrigued by the confidence to remain calm and playful in a moment that might otherwise be seen as a social faux pas. The other 50%? They’re often deeply unconvinced: who is this person and why do they think they can make me feel any particular way? That hesitance is what makes the prestige so much more satisfying.
Oh, did I use the word “prestige?” That’s no coincidence: I view community organizing as magic.
The three beats to a magic act are the pledge, the turn, and the prestige.
The pledge is a pitch. It’s that moment of buy-in I mentioned earlier. It may only be words—folks are allowed to remain skeptical in this beat.
Next is the turn. This is when the performer takes their words, something you might not otherwise believe to be possible, and dives headlong into making it so: can they really pull it off? During the turn, time passes strangely. You wait with bated breath.
Finally, the prestige. As a community organizer, the prestige arrives when, in spite of—or because of— bumbling followed by confidence, grounding, and the wherewithal to pull it all together, those initially-unconvinced “audience members” become community members.
During a meetup a few months ago, Tomko mentioned to the group that a voice occasionally pops into her head, saying of her audience “they paid for a comedy show, not a civics lesson.” This kind of thing has been the focus of many of our group’s conversations since, and I think it’s pertinent to bring back into the conversation here.
A comedy performance has its own sort of pledge, turn, and prestige—we won’t go into that right now. But underneath it all, that first fork in the road: is your audience viewing your performance as a commodity or an opportunity to grow?
This question could be asked of any art form, and this is why I believe all artists are community organizers. Performative storytellers of all kinds are maybe generally more aware of this opportunity to provoke communal catharsis (I like to say that poets are just comedians that make people sad). But let’s experiment a bit:
• A painter may have their work in a gallery and so, yes, they are selling the piece. But they are only ever selling it once. To all other viewers, the painting is an invitation into the mind of the creator. A bridge is formed.
• An object-maker (an artisan, a crafts-person, whatever other descriptor you’d like to use for this type of artist) shares their wares, and their audience/viewer/purchaser becomes a part of their story, a part of their community-making. There is a literal buy, and also a conceptual buy-in. A piece of jewelry, a cabinet, a rocking chair, a knife, a tended garden bed, a scarf, a design embroidered into fabric: these all have stories that you carry with you when “ownership” transfers to you as the buyer.
• A writer crafts a world, as small as a scene or as large as a universe, with the hope that you might fall in, be changed, and come away with the memories made in that alternate dimension.
Maybe you can see what I’m doing here. This is a pledge. Take it or leave it. But… perhaps you see yourself in one of the above examples. Perhaps your interest is piqued. Perhaps you’re ready for the rest of the magic.
The Celebration of Expression’s Prestige
As the evening’s performances progressed, I saw more and more security and trust in the eyes of our audience, strangers-turned-community. I could see that they felt that they were a crucial part of this thing.
By the end of the night, many of those “strangers” were introducing themselves to me, thanking us for hosting this celebration, asking when the next would be. Some were offering assistance, services, ideas.
There is an undeniable magic to community organizing.
What’s Next for the Artist Meetups?
As we move into our next year of meetups, I feel very passionate about furthering our community of shared investment. We teased during the last few sessions that we should design some sort of community-wide ethics guidelines for the arts in Atlantic City. Well, the curriculum I am currently building will prepare us for just that.
It is my hope to run our meetings slightly differently than last year, albeit still following an echo of the forum/deep learning/trading post model of yore. 2023–2024 saw lengthy once-a-month in-person meetups focused on discussions, addressing community issues, and learning ourselves more deeply. It saw this blog pop up as the first accompaniment/accessibility to our in-physical-space gatherings.
For 2024–2025, I hope to provide more ways for our membership to interact with the meetups. Meetups will be split into two parts: 1.5 hours dedicated to work together and 1.5 hours dedicated to smaller breakout group work or community leadership practices. I am designing more ways for us to do things together. Talking is important—moving and gesturing and thinking-through-action is crucial.
I invite you to join our next meetup, Thursday, August 22nd, from 6–9pm at CRIL. You can head over to our Artist Meetup page for more info!
I can’t wait to get back in the space together!
Our Artist Meetup series and this year’s Celebration of Expression have been supported by New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a nonprofit that funds initiatives to benefit the State’s civic life and meet the evolving information needs of New Jersey’s communities. A first-in-the-nation project, the Consortium reimagines how public funding can be used to address the growing problem of news deserts, misinformation, and support more informed communities.