- You know, with any performance I could bring my whole entire troop, let's say, musicians, everybody.

And we could come here do it, pack up and leave.

Or we can sort of, you know, it's the difference if you're gonna make imprint or an impression.

We're more interested in making an imprint.

You know for me, it's really about possibility and to be able to sort of establish a platform that they can stand on and to see what's possible, it's really everything.

We all just need just one opportunity to see what's possible, that changes how we kind of choose to exist I think.

Being able to sort of have that kind of, sort of space to imagine what's next, what's possible.

But the community is left with this amazing sort of experience that they built.

(tense music) - I would probably describe Summit Lake as, I don't wanna say dark but maybe gray, kinda hidden, probably even maybe one of Akron's best kept secrets in a sense.

My husband grew up here.

When he brought up moving over here, I initially tried to come up with every excuse as to why it was probably not a good idea.

The house is too small, where are the kids gonna go to school at?

Everything, I didn't wanna do it at all.

You know parents want your child- you know, want your kids to be somewhere where you think they're gonna be safer.

And just hearing stories of drugs, fighting, about what might be happening out there.

(tense music) - This has been up here ever since I've been here.

And we've been here in Akron for 30 some years.

You don't need another basketball court.

You got four of them.

You got one in the gym, two down here, and one down here.

Everybody ain't going to the NBA.

Everybody child ain't no LeBron James, ain't- your child ain't no star.

You know, find some other stuff for us to do, you know.

Where the trades at?

That can be used for something, you know.

Somebody gotta have an idea, you know, People trying to find things to put over here.

You know, I know the potential of the neighborhood.

I know how many kids in this neighborhood.

You really have to find something in his neighborhood or they're gonna be subject to violence, because you got too many kids growing up too quick around here.

The people I associate with are called the go getters, because they ain't in nobody's business.

They gonna do what they gotta do to provide for their family.

- You know, for so long Summit Lake had been sort of like a transitional community.

People who have been displaced elsewhere end up landing in Summit Lake for two, three, four, five, six months until they can find somewhere else to move on to.

And I told you that time that I haven't always been a minister.

In fact, at one time I was a gangster.

I was part of the problem, as opposed to being part of the solution.

(soft music) Damascus road experience if you would.

Summit Lake had been designated a target area and it's not all about the residents, it's about things that could be that there's a renewed opportunity for happening here.

(soft music continues) - So at South Street Ministries, we're a faith based non-profit.

And one of the puns I made awhile back is how we're faith placed.

It's like the reality of a place means something, and it means something on a spiritual level.

And I think Summit Lake has that deeply.

Summit Lake's a place that you feel deeply in and deeply about.

There is a sense of place here that people will remember and know and feel.

And you know, as you come to Summit Lake, and walk the towpath, walk around the Lake, but also step into the neighborhood and you can go across Lakeshore, you can go across Crosier and there's a community of people that has a rich fabric and welcome, and joy and resiliency that in its own regard, is as mighty as the Lake itself.

And in a resiliency and strength that we wanna stabilize and partner with, and celebrate and see forward.

- I started the Civic Commons process from the very beginning three years ago.

Summit Lake had a history of being promised a lot of things that never happened.

And when Dan came in, instead of him coming in saying this is what we're going to do, there was a whole lot of meetings with the residents and asking the residents what they wanted to see.

So the trust has been built back up, that was lost years ago.

And that right there is a huge thing for this community.

- This part of town is kind of forgotten, but now it's changing.

And Summit Lake is becoming a recognized part of this city.

- Dan Rice came down to explain what the Akron Civic Commons was.

And I brought him outside of the building of reach and I said, "Close your eyes.

What do you hear?"

It was like, you would swear you were out in the country somewhere, but that's not what people think of when they think of Summit Lake.

They think of the violence, or they think about the people who've died in the lake.

And so I told, and I said, this is a community that I love and I care about.

And I can't be a part of anything that'll hurt it.

I said, this is between me and you.

If this is one of those things, let me know.

You know, I'm out.

And he was like, "No, I'm not asking you to trust me.

I'm asking you to come and do the work with me and just judge me by the work."

And I just- I respected that so much coming from him and that I've not regretted any part of this, it's brought great things to this community.

(soft jazz music continues) - This past three or four years have been just completely transformational both personally and professionally.

It changes you to be able to sit down and listen to somebody who comes from a completely different background, completely different education, but find that you share a common bond.

Because at the end of the day, we're all humans.

We've become much more into our tribes and it's because we don't spend enough time together with people that look differently than us.

It makes me think more about, okay, who's in the room but more importantly, who's not in the room.

What voices need to be heard, recognized, and valued.

And if they're not here, how can we engage them.

Because if we're not doing that, we're not engaging our entire community.

How can we work together to really create these great public spaces that are accessible, equitable, welcoming to everybody, regardless of your race, your gender, your education, your experience.

And so everything that we have done has put the residents at the front of the line.

(soft jazz music continues) - So they were skeptical at first.

Many of the residents are like, great.

Here comes another foundation guy or some other, you know, people to come in and, you know, do some token community engagement thing and then to go do whatever it was we were gonna do anyway.

You know that- And there was a lot of mistrust.

This neighborhood has had decades of disinvestment neglect.

They feel like, and rightfully so, that nobody cares about them.

And so we didn't wanna come in right out of the gate and start to make decisions.

It started with a lot of listening.

But- going to the community meetings, going to the community center, being present at events and things that are happening already in the neighborhood.

And when you're present, trust starts to build, and then you can start to say, "Hey, we've got- we're doing a picnic, we're doing a kayak and canoe launch.

We're doing these different things."

And that's been happening in smaller ways over the past two to three years.

And I think it's important just for any communities come back to put residents first, the priorities of the residents need to be first.

(soft jazz music continues) - How might we actually have the one of the performances, actually the very first performance at the Summit Lake Community Center.

What type of message would that send to our residents?

Because oftentimes folks in disadvantaged communities, disinvested communities, they don't have access to international art program.

And imagine the impact that that has on a small child that maybe doesn't have an opportunity to experience art in a regular museum, but now we're taking it outside the walls of a museum.

How we're actually taking it to the neighborhood.

Maybe that inspires that young child to be interested in art, maybe either as a hobby or as a vocation.

And that's the feedback that we've gotten that that experience was transformational for the neighborhood residents.

(indistinct chattering) - Part of the opportunity that we saw, and it was kind of a disparate pieces that ended up coming together masterfully, because part of the process is you trust Nick, you trust him and Bob and their team to do something remarkable.

So we basically understood that we were building good relationships with the residents in the communities.

They had come to other Civic Common's things, this wasn't the first thing that we did.

This was kind of a high point for our three years of work, to have a world renowned artist, to come to our city and then to have the two locations of the performance be at our art museum, which everyone knows to be one of our finest places.

And then the Summit Lake Community Center, which most people don't know exists.

And so to have this world renowned artist performing in both spots was special.

(indistinct chattering) (soft music) - You know, I grew up in a small town in Missouri.

You know, I really hadn't ever experienced an art museum until I went to college.

You know, for me, you know, growing up with seven siblings, brothers, and, you know, my father passed away when I was 17 of cancer.

And, you know, I know how to make something out of nothing because that's just sort of what I had to do.

I'm not interested in just working with an institution and working within the sort of urban part of a city in getting into these communities that don't really have this sort of access to culture.

And so, you know, I think for me as an artist, I've always, you know, through lectures, through presentations, when I look out in the audience and I'm like, you know, where are the people of color?

I have to ask myself, you know, as a visual artist, you know, what is my responsibility to sort of change the sort of demographics of what that looks like.

And so I think I was more interested in that, you know, it's a community center.

And community centers in a lot of ways, they are sort of non-existence in particularly in sort of under deserved sort of communities.

And so that was probably the first and most important thing that it becomes a sort of safe haven.

I think for me and my team, it's like we sort of have these ideas, that we have these sort of dream projects.

We wanna drop into a community, seek out and do the sort of field work in order to understand who's there and how can they sort of be folded into the project.

So the community is left with this amazing sort of experience that they built.

And that sort of is the sort of magic, you know, with Heard.

Heard is about dreaming.

It's about dreaming as our aspirations.

That's what, it's what sort of drives us to think bigger, to think outside of the norm.

And we sort of exist in a world where really don't do that.

If I couldn't dream, I don't know what I would be doing today.

(indistinct chattering) (soft music) - Music's always been in my life.

I really couldn't imagine what would happen without it, if I wasn't able to produce it at some capacity.

It's my way to, you know, send a message in some form or fashion, you know.

I feel like there were parts of the music that I could relate as audience could as well.

That would move you in a certain direction.

I think that may have been purposeful when we were creating it.

Going along with the choreography.

So to hear people say that, "Oh we liked it when you went to the dance party part."

And we were just, you know, dancing we couldn't stop moving, you know.

You know wherever their imagination took them, that's what they felt.

And it was- but it was out of the somber type feeling, you know.

And I felt like the music kind of helped along with the motions to get that across.

(soft music) I hope it leads to more creative collaborations for sure.

I've never done anything like that before.

And I think there should be more spontaneous things like that.

There's a lot of beauty in it, and it's such an Akron thing too.

Like the whole vibe was Akron.

So I hope that of course we can do more projects like this and that people really see the message in the art and what we were trying to do.

(soft music) - Day one has really been saved for the dancers and making sure they understood what they were gonna go through.

And then we would bring musicians in so they can see what they were gonna be working with.

And this time we went at it different, the museum has a lot of connections to musicians in Akron.

It's just I think the city is historically very music based.

And so they were brought in right at the forefront.

Just immediately, the making seemed so sympathetic to one another, the music and the artwork, they were just really incorporated and amplifying each other, but also just really like humbly like taking shape next to each other as they built themselves up.

As talented as everyone is, you never felt a sense of ego getting in the way.

It's a place that kind of leaves ego at the door and people want to build each other up instead of stepping on each other in order to feel bigger.

It's a very refreshing group of people to be around.

(upbeat music) (indistinct chattering) - Nick's process has challenged me to use my art or creative process unlike that I've ever been.

It's simpler, the steps are simpler, but he focuses more on the total product, the total feeling of what he wants to give to whatever presentation we're doing.

And the fact that we are wearing movable art or wearable art is the right time for it.

It's not about the dance moves, it's about you showing off the artwork.

So I have to trans- I had to think of it in a different way.

This is not about how high the dancers legs can go, how many times they can do but how I can show off his artwork pieces.

- There's always a little bit of like nervous anticipation stepping into a project where there are so many unknowns like this.

and just figuring out what the style would be like, what the choreographer's expectations are.

But the process has been really great.

I felt like Will set an amazing energy and just like set a good fast pace of like bringing everyone into just like investing and being present.

But there's been just lots of time and space allowed for us to offer our own creativity and to ask questions and to learn from one another, so it's been awesome.

(upbeat music) - You have to think of your head being like a foot and a half taller than it actually is.

So that's actually a part of your spine now.

And you have to like feeling the weight of it.

You think of yourself as a different being, you yourself forget that you're human.

At least I kind of did, but I still have that internal.

It was like my middle space of thinking with my brain and my body went between like the horse suit and my actual physical space.

So when you look at Nick Cave, you may wanna say, "Oh, well this is black art."

I think what I love about his work is it really transcends these titles.

He's able to accomplish that even with the dancers who are completely veiled and transformed and who are asked to work in tandem in a team to bring to life these majestic animals.

It will be really interesting to just step into a space, a performance space in which I am a horse.

(soft music) - We say this all the time, you don't know what you don't know.

Exposure is the key.

Bringing culture into the neighborhood.

And the looks on people's faces because this is a priority with Park East and Summit Lake residents, it's people getting that ah-ha moment that someone was intentional to make sure that they were prioritized.

And just seeing that look on people's faces, that's priceless to me.

And hopefully they get in the spirit that they wanna create that feeling for someone else.

(soft music continues) - When I first moved in, the handful of kiddos that I connected with are now 17, 18, 19.

So the hope would be not that like, they become me and do what I do, but they could live into that niche that they were created for, versus like just doing something cause it's there, like the next job, or like go to school cause people say you should and blah, blah, blah.

But that they find that niche that they can offer themselves in a way that's being true and they can be passionate.

They can love what they do and lead in that.

And so they become the next leaders.

(soft music) - You know, things go through cycles.

You know I think it's, you know, Summit Lake is now trying to redefine what it is and what it wants to be and how do you sort of do that.

And also how do you sort of maintain the sort of existence of the community that's there.

I mean, it's a very sensitive kind of moment but I think that this performance has an opportunity of bringing us all, sort of, to the table.

Building that sort of bridge, that sort of network from one to the other.

And that's why I can't wait till I- the audience is in that gymnasium to see what that looks like with this performance held in the center of that.

(soft music) I think the first and most important thing is that the community came out.

It's great to see that the kids are all sort of in front of where the performance was.

But I think it was really sort of what happened after the performance.

Everyone stuck around to sort of share this sort of moment with one another.

So we all sort of found common ground.

I think that that is really sort of where the power lies within art is that, you know, you can create something and although we're different races, different nationalities, different beliefs, we can all sort of find common ground in these sort of special moments.

And so I think for me, it was just recognizing that this was again, another one of those moments.

(soft music continues) - I can sort of like be settle with just showing in museums and galleries around the world and be happy, but that's not why I'm here.

I mean, for me to see Heard, if I was a kid, I don't even know what that would feel like.

So I mean to be, to have access to that it could be life-changing.

You know I think the arts have a way of solidifying relationships and building relationships.

And that's really an amazing sort of connection.

(jaunty music) (indistinct chattering) - I wanna be very clear about the work that we do.

It's not just about changing Summit Lake.

What we're doing through the Civic Commons is we're changing the world.

We're changing how people view each other, We're changing how people do business from the city level.

And I don't like to say down, but across to the resident.

People are getting their voices.

When you have a neighborhood that used to live in a constant state of lack, and that bar being raised, you just a stronger city.

So we can make a stronger city, we can make a stronger state.

You can make a stronger state, we can make a stronger country.

And that's what we're doing through the Civic Commons one city at a time.

(jaunty music) - From the performance they can see how people can come together and work and produce something nice and emotional.

And, you know, hopefully they walk away with a feeling of empowerment because then they- you can see, you know, that you can just take your imagination and go with it anywhere you wanna go.

It took years to get heard, but I would say these last three years the residents have been heard.

We still have a ways to go because there's still some things that need to be done.

But again, it will be the process of listening to what the residents want.

(audience clapping) - PA: All right everyone, we're gonna take about a 20 minute break- - But I think it was really sort of what happened after the performance, which I was sort of- I'm always curious to see, you know, either everyone sort of disperses quite quickly or they find themselves sticking around and sort of just sharing that sort of moment with each other.

And I think that that was what was so beautiful, it's that everyone stuck around to sort of share this sort of moment with one another.

So we all sort of found common ground through this performance, Heard.