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- 100 Families Oakland
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- Robynn Takayama
All too often the name "Oakland" is paired with some social problem --far more often you hear about the people taking the initiative to do something about it.
There were 148 murders in Oakland last year. That?s an increase of over 57% from 2005. To address this alarming number, philanthropist F. Noel Perry and the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts have developed a program that tackles urban violence by bringing together families and neighbors through the arts. It?s called 100 Families Oakland.
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Piece Description
All too often the name "Oakland" is paired with some social problem --far more often you hear about the people taking the initiative to do something about it. There were 148 murders in Oakland last year. That?s an increase of over 57% from 2005. To address this alarming number, philanthropist F. Noel Perry and the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts have developed a program that tackles urban violence by bringing together families and neighbors through the arts. It?s called 100 Families Oakland.
Broadcast History
KALW on April 12, 2007
Transcript
[Ambi1: windchimes, door open]
Narrator: Nearly two-thirds of the Oakland homicides in 2006 happened in East Oakland where Jautan Stancill has been a homeowner for over 20 years.:08
JAUTAN: People perceive East Oakland as a rough, dangerous area that you barely want to visit someone in and you don?t want to live in. ? The reality is that ?just because you live in a particular area, they call this area, the ?ghetto? it doesn?t mean that you have that mentality. :19
Narrator: In fact Stancill says you can?t have that mentality if you want to fix the problem of violence. Treat a neighborhood like a war zone and it becomes more of a war zone. If you really want to turn a community around, Stancill says you need something else. Like art.
That?s the idea behind the 100 Families Oakland program: It offered 10-week art workshops to families in four Oakland communities: Fruitvale, Chin...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
Possible intro:
LEDE: All too often the name ?Oakland? is paired with some social problem ? far more often you hear about the people taking the initiative to do something about it.
There were 148 murders in Oakland last year. That?s an increase of over 57% from 2005. To address this alarming number, philanthropist F. Noel Perry and the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts have developed a program that tackles urban violence by bringing together families and neighbors through the arts. It?s called 100 Families Oakland and the culminating artwork is on display at the Oakland Museum.
Independent producer, Robynn Takayama (TAH kah YAH mah) visited participants from the East Oakland site.
Outro information: The second round of 100 Families Oakland for East Oakland and Chinatown will be celebrated on June 16. A new session starts with Eastside Arts Alliance in September '07 and back in West Oakland in January 2008. They are also exploring the opportunities for starting 100 Families Bayview in San Francisco.
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James Reiss
Posted on June 03, 2007 at 06:26 AM | Permalink
Review of 100 Families Oakland
Can art turn a community around? With crime rates soaring in 2007, this piece suggests that it can.
The east side of Oakland, California has long been known as a ghetto; its gang-related violence is legendary. Although philanthropist F. Noel Perry and the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts are never mentioned in Robynn Takayama's tactful drop-in, Perry and the CAPL are responsible for the "100 Families Oakland" project.
Against the backdrop of drive-by shootings and an overstretched, under-funded police force, families from the Fruitvale, Chinatown, East, and West sections of Oakland recently banded together to mount an art exhibition. Takayama's interviews of several women involved in the project come through all too loud and clear; at times the volume needs to be lowered and the rumbling bass decreased.
Twenty-year East Oakland resident homeowner Gitan Stansill talks about 10-week art workshops devoted to plaster of Paris body casting. One scary ex-con, who wandered by and was prevailed upon to add clay to the papier-mache sculpture of Stansill's 15-year-old daughter cradling a baby, is reported to have been so thrilled with his creation that he exclaimed, "Look what I made! Look what I made!"
He and others of the "100 Families" saw their work exhibited at the Oakland Art Museum. The mayor of Oakland attended the opening, and Tayakama's piece ends on a happily-ever-after note.
Which makes my phone call to my daughter -- who lives in Fruitvale, and who, with her husband and my two-year-old grandson, were attacked by a couple of unleashed pit bulls in a public park on Coolidge Avenue yesterday -- all the more disturbing.