Five Questions With: Rebekah Greenwald

"Just as the prospects of an abandoned building change when panels with beautiful murals replace broken windows, secure the space and improve the look of the neighborhood, so too can small changes in life have a big impact around them."

Rebekah Greenwald, executive director of Riverzedge Arts, joined the nonprofit in 2009 after helping develop small organizations, programs and coalitions in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island. Under her leadership, Riverzedge launched Expanded Learning Opportunities Woonsocket, Riverzedge Mobile Studio, and other programs to spur creative youth development. She also serves on the boards of directors of Fund for Community Progress and Woonsocket Main Street Riverfront Initiative. Here, she discusses how Riverzedge Arts “makes change through art.”

PBN: The mission of Riverzedge is to improve lives and places through art, design and creative problem-solving. How do you accomplish this for youth?
GREENWALD:
Art and design are what we do as creative studio or project teams, and as a community of practitioners. We take on challenges that range from creating a logo design for a client, to choosing plants with the right root length for a rain garden, to redesigning how teens learn and receive credit at Woonsocket High School. In this sense, teens are included in the mission as both the agents and objects of change.
I think it would be accurate to say that teens improve their lives and places through art, design and creative problem solving by coming to one of five studios four afternoons per week, year round, year after year to make art, learn new manual, intellectual and technological skills, take on entrenched community challenges and reconfigure their relationships with peers, self, adults and place as they make, sell, create and install.
That relationship between “self” and “world” is not only key to art-making in general; at Riverzedge it is key to designing one’s future.
Just as the prospects of an abandoned building change when panels with beautiful murals replace broken windows, secure the space and improve the look of the neighborhood, so too can small changes in life have a big impact around them.
In a small urban city where many students struggle to graduate, what happens when a student instead graduates on time and pushes toward high achievement? A whole future changes. We might support youth success by requiring minimum performance standards in school, active pursuit of a high school diploma or equivalency degree, and application to art school, college or other post-secondary training, but it is the teens themselves that get or stay on track, reach the benchmark and improve their future options.

PBN: What initiatives in economic development have led to concrete results?
GREENWALD:
This is a tough question in light of persistent challenges in attracting and retaining businesses in Woonsocket, the causes of which we continue to tackle in partnership with the folks at NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley, a community development corporation, and numerous others, and as part of the newly renamed Downtown Woonsocket Collaborative.
I believe, and precedent shows, over time, our attentions to beautification, resident-led design, and creation of new built and natural spaces will have great effect, as has been the case in Providence, for instance.
A few years back, I was asked to create an economic case for support of our VISTA volunteer program and found pretty startling results: every successful teen who breaks the cycle of poverty and unemployment plaguing their city will save $13,900 per year between the ages of 16 and 24 and $170,740 over the course of their lives (source: Corporation for National and Community Service and White House Council for Community Solutions data, 2012). For the 300 teens we serve each year, breaking the cycle of lack of access to opportunity and multi-generational poverty can have profound economic effects on the future of this city and state.

PBN: Riverzedge is based in Woonsocket but part of your mission is to seek out new opportunities beyond that. What have you done in this respect?
GREENWALD:
We really nailed this one in the design and delivery of our “Expanded Learning Opportunities” Woonsocket initiative at Woonsocket High School, which pairs teens with “industry mentors” in their worksites all over the state. As you read this, small groups of teens are exploring careers while they complete projects they designed for school credit in the University of Rhode Island’s new pharmacy building, Brown Alpert Medical School labs, Rhode Island Hospital, a local bakery, a boxing gym, a recording studio, etc. This upcoming year, we are exploring dual credit pilots with higher education.
Other examples include our Green Design Lab youth presentations at the 2014 Rhode Island Compost Conference and Sustainable School Summits. If all goes well, next year, Green Design Lab teens will be collaborating with Worcester, Mass., teens in a year-long project with the Worcester Tree Initiative.
I should mention we have sent multiple groups of youth to Rwanda, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and other places as another feature of our programming and each year we take a trip to a regional museum like Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s a big world and to ensure equity and access, we really need to be in and part of it.

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PBN: Tell us about your shop that sells hoodies and notebooks: how does it fit in with your mission?
GREENWALD:
Right now, it’s an on-line shop, but we hope to change that when we secure a permanent and final home base. The shop features all original works designed, printed and fabricated by teen artists, and the sales help to fund educational stipends we pay teens that participate in our intensive studio social enterprise program.
Social enterprise – the commercial products and services we produce and provide as the means of improving youth and community prospects – is the core of our mission and design of our arts programming. Teens earn income and get to expand and express themselves as artists and entrepreneurs on high wage career tracks.
Generating a quarter of our operating budget models self-sufficiency and ensures our survival. What it takes to meet the demands of the arts and design marketplace, especially in Rhode Island, is a truly effective talent and professionalism booster for teens and staff it turns out.
It’s exciting, too. We have client deadlines and business plan goals, and we operate in the same small business world as the rest of Rhode Island, only with non-profit status in light of our social mission. Actually, buying products is a really easy way to support us, so we hope your readers will check us out, and then get involved.

PBN: How many volunteers do you have and what are you doing to add more?
GREENWALD:
Especially because of the way we rely on industry mentors, we have at least 50 volunteers working with us at all times, and another 150 or so each year that help out with one-time or short-term projects like painting our studios or building a greenhouse. Recently, volunteers from Fidelity, organized by the United Way, were instrumental in getting plants into our rain garden and our new green house built in time for spring and summer programs. We haven’t had a greenhouse since Hurricane Sandy!
Strong partnerships with companies like Fidelity and Citizens Bank, as well as the Met School and ServeRI, which support us as Expanded Learning Opportunity sites, hands on deck and our base of vitality and support, are key to our survival, and so important, they are the focus of VISTA volunteer support. We fulfill the highest promise of harnessing Rhode Island talent to invest in urban youth. It is why we are who we are and do what we do, and there is always room for more. Give us a call or drop us a line. We will probably change your life!

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