Faculty Friday: Jeannette Guillemin
Each week, Faculty Friday highlights a member of the IOC Faculty Advisory Board by exploring their work at Boston University and examining their impact on urban studies and city development. This week, we’re speaking with Jeannette Guillemin.
Jeannette Guillemin is an arts advocate, counselor, and professor in the College of Fine Arts. In addition to serving as the Director of Arts Leadership and Innovation at CFA, she also teaches courses on the creative economy and cultural entrepreneurship, serves as the Advisor for the Arts Leadership minor, and has launched several multidisciplinary initiatives for CFA regarding arts advocacy and art intervention.
Professor Jeannette Guillemin is the Director of Arts Leadership and Innovation in the College of Fine Arts. She also serves as the Advisor for the Arts Leadership minor and has developed classes on cultural entrepreneurship and the creative economy.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
JG: When I moved to Boston, I became very active in community arts. I met a person who would become my mentor at the time; his name was Sidewalk Sam and he lived in Boston. He passed away a couple years ago, but he was this incredible man who would bring together artists, nonprofits, and for-profits, and he would work with the city of Boston to create events and experiences that were about bringing people together and finding common ground through the arts. He saw the arts as a vehicle for social change, and I witnessed how people would transform through these experiences. He was really influential in my development, both as a creative professional and as a person who was new to cities, because I didn’t grow up in a city. I grew up in a really small town, but what he did was make the city feel like a welcoming place.
I personally have a background in theater and creative writing. I got a Master’s in Arts Administration and then got a position working in the School of Visual Arts. Through my work in the School of Visual Arts, I had an incredible opportunity to listen to students and hear what their interests and needs are. I actually ended up going back and getting a second Master’s in Counseling because I wanted to be a trained listener. And from that work, I started to create programs in response to some of the needs that I was hearing.
I started a summer institute for high school kids, and then I was asked to teach a course in the Graduate Arts Administration program, called the Art World. That went really well. Then I created a course on Cultural Entrepreneurship with a colleague, Wendy Grossman. There was no other class like it. [Wendy and I] had this incredibly complimentary skillset. We found that people were interested in the work that we were doing, and from that we started writing and attending conferences. I also worked with a former dean to launch an Arts Leadership minor. As a part of that minor, we created a course for undergraduate students called the Creative Economy and Social Impact. We’ve been teaching that for three years. This past fall, we partnered with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and came up with a project where our students would create art interventions in response to a Request for Proposal.
How did you get involved with the Initiative on Cities?
I had been to some of [the IOC’s] events, and I really enjoyed them. I love that [you] bring people together from all across campus, and I love conversations on cities. From the work that we were doing, we thought it would be fun to reach out to the Initiative on Cities. In this realm, we think a lot about creative placemaking. How you activate space using arts and culture is an important driver for creating economic opportunities, evoking a deep sense of community and belonging, and reflecting the values of the community.
Why are arts and culture important for city growth and development?
Why should it matter? The arts are really the essence of our humanity. We can leverage arts and culture as a way to bring people together, to create spaces of beauty, to challenge people to think and see things differently, and to pause and reflect. I think that the time we’re living in is crying out for expressive experiences, as the world is accelerating and things are happening so quickly. We need time to slow down, open our eyes, and look around. I think when we create those opportunities in public spaces, we savor them.
I’ll give an example. For the Emerald Necklace’s anniversary this fall, they had a temporary exhibition, a fog explode. Japanese artists came in and created fog sculptures that would go off every hour on the hour. They were peppered throughout the Emerald Necklace, and they were magical.
You could go into these spaces and participate in this gorgeous transformation of space. And it’s an opportunity to slow down and experience [Boston] in a new way. Because the fog was filling the space, if you entered the fog, you couldn’t see anything in front of you, even something a foot away from you. Then we’d approach each other and make eye contact when we’re about six inches away. The intimacy of that space creates an experience like no other, because normally we would just avoid people. You don’t want to look in someone’s eyes, but there is something magical in this transformation of space that allows people to interact, to reach in and find their expressive selves.
For me, that is essential to living. And I think that it can happen in all different kinds of art – I just think that the arts are an efficient way to transform how we can be together.
Is there anything specific about Boston or Boston culture that you think manifests itself in the art and culture of this city?
One noteworthy thing that we saw in our project [with the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics] is that Boston is a city of neighborhoods, an intriguing little collection of lots of different neighborhoods. We also have historic sculptures that really tell a part of our history, but the infusion of public art is very welcome. I think that our city is also really defined by its universities and some of the oldest and most established or respected cultural institutions. There is such a cultural richness in our city.
What’s your best piece of advice for young artists or students who are eager to engage with their city or get involved in the public space?
A lot of students might not realize that all of Massachusetts has local cultural councils, small organizations that support the arts and grant funding for the arts. It’s very unique for the state of Massachusetts, and they’re led by volunteers. Specifically for Boston, organizations like MassCreative can give you information.
But my mind immediately goes to advocacy. From a fundamental starting place, policy matters. How can you support the arts? How can you work with legislators to make sure that the arts are funded, and to make sure that we have affordable housing for people who are working in creative professions?
I also think that it’s important to just get out. There’s so much that people can do around the city of Boston that is free and available. The Museum of Fine Art on Wednesday nights and the Institute of Contemporary Art on Thursday nights are free – go off and see it and experience it, and take your friends. Go to a play at the Booth Theater, where you can go for free with your student ID. This is really about making space and time for pleasure.
Are there any other projects you are working on right now that you want to highlight?
I also do an arts internship course. I have 17 students who are going to be presenting about their experiences working in different organizations, mostly here in Boston, but some are from other cities where they worked during the summer. This is a really great course because I am constantly learning from the students about their experiences working in these organizations. And it’s also really important that our students are out in the city learning from the cultural institutions.
We also host an arts internship fair every year; this year I think we had 33 different arts organizations here. It’s open to the whole BU community, and organizations range from very small nonprofits to more established institutions like the American Repertory Theater, or the MFA.
But we’re integrating arts into settings that haven’t traditionally had arts and activating and infusing spaces within our city with the arts. We are running a new initiative in partnership with InnovateBU and offering seed grants for students who might have an idea about an initiative they’d like to start, like an arts intervention or another project. For example, one group started an afterschool program in music education, in Dorchester with the Bird Street Community Center. They have an afterschool program that they’re running, and they’re using the grant to buy instruments.
We also have something called Arts Lab, which offer arts interventions in hospital settings, on the Boston Medical Campus. There are a variety of different programs; within one program, the Presence Project, you sign up to be on an on-call list. If there’s a patient who doesn’t have family or visitors, a nurse could call an artist to talk with and listen to the patient. Our students will talk with the patient, and find something about them that resonates with them. They then go home and create a present for them, whether it’s a musical piece, or a poem, or an art work of some kind. Then they have a second follow up visit and they bring that as a gift. It’s not art therapy – art therapy is about finding the problem and trying to fix it. But the approach that we take is to find the strength and the beauty [in patients] and lift it.
One term I would love for you to expand on is arts intervention. What exactly is arts intervention?
It’s a term that is often used to reference broad reaching art. It could be putting up a installation; it could be a musical performance; it could take the form of a mural. I think that what makes it an “intervention” is that you’re not just arbitrarily plunking a piece of art without having any sort of understanding of that community and the needs of that community. It’s about a thoughtful integration.
For the Creative Economy class, our students were assigned to neighborhoods. They had to go and look at that neighborhood. They had to talk to people in that neighborhood. They had to research that neighborhood and get information about the demographics, the history, and the social dynamics at play. They had to do a research paper before deciding what they were going to offer in that space. So you can’t just go and just plop your stuff down and hope everybody loves it. You really have to think about what that community needs; you’re not just imposing your artistic project on someone else.
What’s your favorite thing about Boston?
I would say the Boston Public Library is one of my favorite things about Boston. The BPL is really special to me because it’s beautiful and a place of programming, but I also met both my mentor and my husband at the Boston Public Library. My mentor, Sidewalk Sam, was actually my husband’s father. So the Boston Public Library is really special to me for many reasons.
What’s your favorite city?
It’s a toss up between two. Of course, Paris is just fabulous. We’ve gone to Paris for years during the holidays, and it feels very much like home to me, but I think my all time favorite is Amsterdam. I lived in the Netherlands for a year. You know how you have a spirit animal? Amsterdam is my spirit city. I love the bikes and the food and the culture and everything. And the arts, of course.