From ashes, the McColl Center for Visual Art has become a notable success. McCOLL CENTER FOR VISUAL ART
The church was first built in 1926. A magnificent neo-Gothic structure on the edge of uptown Charlotte, its congregation once numbered 500 strong. But the decline of Charlotte's city center and an eroding membership base led the church to be sold in 1981. Four years later, a fire swept through the building and its singed carcass became a symbol of a bygone era.
Today, against great odds, it has emerged as a hub of creativity and a cultural touchstone for the community.
This unlikely transformation began when Bank of America bought the church in 1995. With funding from the bank, its Chairman Hugh McColl and the Arts & Science Council, a team of architects was given an unusual challenge: turn the church into an urban artist community.
Informed by best practices globally and artistic input locally, the result is stunning.
Spill over into the community
McColl Center for Visual Art boasts nine artist studios and more than 5,000 square feet of gallery space. The space lends itself beautifully to collaboration and artistic connection.
In the former bell-tower, Knight Foundation Writer-in-Residence P. Scott Cunningham types away on an old typewriter as he gazes up at the soaring rafters and windows above. A floor below, Cuban-born Quiesqueya Henriquez works on her collage and sculptures. Down the open hallway are Charlotte-based painter Isaac Payne and University of Chicago-trained, Vietnamese artist Thu Kim Vu.
The artists-in-residence program provides each artist with a stipend, materials budget, travel expenses and housing in a nearby apartment. There are three cycles of residents over the year. In the most recent cycle just 26 were accepted from a pool of 269.
The center also offers an "affiliates" program for artists within 50 miles. They don't receive the same material benefits but the creative advantages are undisputed - and spill over into the community.
To engage the citizens of Charlotte, each artist is expected to conduct two outreach activities during their residencies. For instance, artist Felicia van Bork worked with Project Art Aid and local cancer survivors to create paintings to raise money for the American Cancer Society.
San Francisco artist Daniel McCormick worked with the Nature Museum, Mecklenburg Parks and Recreation and students from Queens University of Charlotte to develop an eco-art installation designed to reduce erosion and clean storm water runoff in Freedom Park. The model proved so successful that the center is replicating it and establishing an environmental track to its residence program.
"Charlotte is dealing with the challenges of rapid growth and development which threaten our green spaces and water quality," says center President Suzanne Fetscher. "Our environmental artists create community partnerships that educate people about those challenges and involve them directly in environmental art projects. Beneficial art becomes the tie that binds people of all ages to improving their community."
Helping execs get innovative
The center also offers a summer institute for school children and has forged a partnership with the business community.
Launched in 2005, the Innovation Institute was Fetscher's way to foster a deeper connection between the city's leadership and the center's artists. She was interested in how the artists' daily creative process could help infuse innovation into corporations.
Kicked off with a three-year Knight Foundation grant, the institute has worked with hundreds of executives from most of Charlotte's leading corporations. The six-day sessions bring 12 executives together with artists and organizational development specialists. Each session focuses on developing a specific creative capacity. Themes include pushing boundaries, getting beyond the predictable, dealing with failure and having courage in the face of struggle.
Coming out of these sessions, 92 percent of participants have made changes to their lives and 79 percent made changes to their business. The institute's impact has inspired the launch of customized programs, including with city leadership, and workshops for individuals looking to infuse creativity in their lives and business.
It's worth imagining what might have been lost were it not for a clear vision and timely investment. The burnt out shell may have given way to a generic set of condos - or just crumbled further into disrepair. Indeed, similar buildings in communities throughout our state sit abandoned, waiting for the ideas and resources needed to transform them.
Investing in our artistic communities in a time of economic challenge is not intuitive. But if we are serious about maintaining our creative, competitive edge as well as our cultural richness - the center offers a model of where we should be heading.
Christopher Gergen is the founding executive director of Bull City Forward and on the faculty of the Hart Leadership Program at Duke University. Stephen Martin is a speechwriter at the nonprofit Center for Creative Leadership. They can be reached at authors@bullcityforward.org.
Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/06/26/2407232/art-and-innovation-uptown.html#ixzz1QQXnwGj5