For my choose-your-own-adventure post, I was inspired by a conversation I had on the phone with my mom and sister. After our talk with the Northfield Arts and Culture Commission, I began thinking about how much the access to arts and culture differs between Northfield and my hometown of Oak Creek, WI.
While talking to my mom and sister, I noticed that much of the differences in access to arts and culture depended on the age of the person being asked. For example, my mom talked about the summer concert series available through the Oak Creek Community Center, farmer’s and craft markets, and many other events that she and her friends have attended. My sister, however, could only point to engaging with the arts through voluntary programs in school such as band, choir, and theater. I remember having a similar experience, as the only other ways I was ever to engage with the arts and culture at her age was through programs and events that were in Milwaukee.
I started looking into Oak Creek’s website and calendar events to see what events and programs I could find that were advertised to younger audiences, and came up with close to nothing. To show what I found, I crafted a diagram showing ways in which the City of Oak Creek encourages its constituents to engage with arts and culture and how this greatly differs depending on a person’s age.
As you can see, the most art and cultural programming that takes place in Oak Creek is geared towards older populations, specifically 50+ years of age. This is done through types of performances and artists that play in Oak Creek as well as the environment they take place in, which usually involves the consumption of alcohol or even age restrictions. While it’s great for places like the Oak Creek Community Center to engage with the city’s older population, it is also impossible to ignore their lack of programming for children, teenagers, and young adults. Other cities have things like art exhibitions and even art installations throughout the city that constituents can engage with without going somewhere for the explicit reason of engaging with art and culture.
A lot of the reason for the lack of accessible art and culture experiences is because Oak Creek’s population is overwhelmingly older, though new developments have younger families moving in at faster rates. Therefore, most of the people doing the programming are programming for people like themselves (it’s almost like representation matters! 🧐). But there is hope! While talking to my mom, she shared that they just received a community-wide survey gathering data on the community’s interest in putting together some form of an Arts and Culture Board in Oak Creek. I’m not sure how likely it is that the community will be in favor of such a group (it took three referendums over 12 years to get barely enough votes for a performing arts center at our high school), but it does show that the city and its population is at least moving in some direction of acknowledging the things art and culture can provide for a growing community.