“By 2025, East St. Louis, Illinois, will be a cultural arts destination where residents and visitors not only see, hear, learn and celebrate the city’s rich, multi-layered history and culture, but that the residents participate, contribute and economically benefit from the cultural assets within the community.”
In July 2015, the National Endowment for The Arts’ (NEA) awarded Creative Exchange Lab (CEL) Center for Architecture + Design, an ‘Our Town’ grant to do an Art & Cultural Assessment of East Saint Louis in Illinois. In the 2014/15 application to NEA, CEL had made the case that it was plausible that East St. Louis could utilize its unique rich history, and being home to many culturally significant celebrities, champions and legends such as Katherine Dunham, Miles Davis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee --just to name a few—not only as catalyst for reconciliation but also for an equitable sustainable economic development through the arm of Art & Culture, place-making and creative sector entrepreneurship, if supported by right policies. CEL’s primary partners in the project are the City of East Saint Louis City, and HSSU’s CNA faculty and students.
The main component of the project was a cultural assessment of East St. Louis. To encourage public involvement CEL created a website where an interactive cultural assets map was developed to serve as a tool in this process. The purpose of this website was to inform about this cultural heritage, to solicit community engagement, and
to empower the stakeholder to contribute additional information to this site during the two-year duration of the project and beyond.
In order to utilize this knowledge as a potential stimulus for economic rejuvenation of this extremely distressed city, CEL sought out community and institutional partners, as well as, local artists through two requests for proposals (RFP). In terms of the arts and culture partners and anchor institutions, CEL established initial collaboration with The Jackie Joyner Kersee Center (JJKC), the House of Miles Davis East St. Louis (HOME), the Katherine Dunham Museum (KDM), the New Life Community Church (NLCC), and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE).
