Latest / Closer with Carol Coletta and Mark Wallace / Cathy Leff of Bakehouse Arts Complex in Miami

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Cathy Leff of Bakehouse Arts Complex in Miami · Closer with Carol Coletta and Mark Wallace

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I'm Carol Colletta.
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And I'm Mark Wallace.
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And this is Closer a conversation about the strategies that make cities
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social and why that's the smartest investment in the urban tool.
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Mark and I share a passion for public space and all that it can do for cities
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when it is imagined and managed well.
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We've lived it, fought for it, taken enormous heat for it, but
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we both agree it's been worth it because public space is worth it.
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Today we're talking with Cathy Leff, Director of
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Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami.
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The residency programs at Bakehouse provide more than 100 Miami artists
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with space to create experiment.
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And collaborate.
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is Director Emerita of the Wolfsonian, FIU, a seasoned cultural professional
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and creative entrepreneur with more than four decades experience
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working at the intersection of culture and community building.
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Cathy, I'm so glad in conversation with us today.
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the Bakehouse art complex is more than 40 years old.
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you've led the organization since.
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2018, which includes the COVID disaster of 2020 that put
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down many arts organizations.
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How has Bakehouse been able to navigate, change and thrive for so long.
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I think that generally artists are incredibly resourceful.
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And how they navigate cities, find spaces, make spaces, build community.
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So I think.
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The 40 years.
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I mean, part of it was not seeing the obstacles because they just,
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you know, found a way to survive.
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We just finished an exhibition looking at this 40 year history, and I'm
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thinking when so many organizations have come and gone, I mean, they had
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the real estate, they had the knowledge when they started in the mid eighties.
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But the founders were very, I would say.
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The Miami Cultural and Social Elite, the then, I mean, there wasn't the
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same art community we have now.
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And these were people who were well connected to the political power.
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They were well connected to their own social circles, and they
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also were incredibly aware of the power of an artist and an artist
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community could do to change a city.
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So they sought this land.
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This is the founders sought the land in a neighborhood that was.
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It just had been completely.
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gutted of its economy.
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we are in a former bakery.
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We're the second, we're the only other tenant beside the bakery.
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The bakery had abandoned the site and sold its main product,
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Marita Bread, to another bakery.
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the neighborhood lost its economy because the other part of Wynwood, what
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everybody knows is the Windwood Art district was a Garmin industry, and
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that moved offshore in the eighties.
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So the artists knew.
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They were smart enough to know that they got kicked outta Coconut
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Grove because they brought value.
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And all of a sudden Coconut Grove was changing, going through real development.
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People were following culture and artists and they got priced out and
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they weren't gonna be priced out again.
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So they were smart enough and connected enough to recognize what they could
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do to change the neighborhood in which we are, and they went to the
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city, they were close to the mayor.
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They were close to the philanthropic community and they were also connected
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to what was then a very small art community or art making community.
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So they had all those skills.
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They bought the land, they knew they had to own land for permanence
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and to be able to do anything.
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And then they bought.
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With support from the city, and they knew the only way they could get city
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support was to make a case for why they would be trying to help stabilize a
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neighborhood that was going into decline.
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So the city and the county gave 'em money.
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They had community development block grant funds.
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I mean, it wasn't like artists who were just worrying about themselves.
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They were really community builders and they understood, . So they managed to pull
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together the thing, it was scrappy, it addressed the needs of the art community.
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Then they had the idea to come in and really try to stabilize the
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neighborhood, but not by their coming here, but just because all the jobs
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were lost, everybody moved away.
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There was only 10% ownership.
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So while they survived the neighborhood and them went into decline.
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'cause they never, they weren't, they didn't know how to really raise money.
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The city was changing , the New World School, the arts, the magnet
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high schools were coming in, museums were being birthed around that time.
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So these were a group of artists who were mostly.
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Very high level craftspeople, fiber artists, glass artists, jewelry,
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ceramics, some photography, maybe some paintings, but not what
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people would define as visual arts.
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Today.
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It's so much broader.
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They somehow managed to survive because , it was too big to fail.
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It was too big to fail and the neighborhood was not doing well all
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those years and there was very little city investment because since everybody
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moved away, there were no people showing up for the community at the city level.
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So one, I think, I mean, it survived despite all the odds and somehow they
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kept getting the city to give them a loan or something else, or somebody
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come through and it just barely eeks by, which is what most culture.
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But then.
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In 2018, the city had so changed, Carol, as you know, and there was a much
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larger cultural ecosystem, and all the free space for artists had dried up.
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So between, I'd say when they opened and started to fail, bakehouse,
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they were failing because artists, a new generation of artists were
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being educated, finding Miami.
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Interesting.
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Going to the magnet schools, going away, coming back, needing space, and all the.
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You know, some of the developers who were trying to figure out what
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to do with real estate, they were aggregating, just gave it away to
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artists and cultural institutions.
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But then when the time was right, they moved the artists along
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and they were displaced and this was really the only place to go.
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But part of their survival was raising the rent on themselves.
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They did.
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They weren't busy savvy.
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They weren't savvy business people, but I would say in a way
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they were, because they survived.
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They were nimble, resilient, resourceful, and just somehow survived.
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And I think that's part of our DNA today.
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We're nimble, we're resilient, we're resourceful.
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And now, you know, through all these generations of artists and cultural
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displacement in a city and the challenges of affordability, we've realized
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that with a piece of real estate in practically the heart of the city,
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that there's a greater opportunity.
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Such a fascinating story and really inspiring your ambition
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for artists to bake house.
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To co-create a future for this city defined by creativity,
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inclusivity, and possibility.
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How do you bring that ambition to life?
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Especially in a city like Miami where development pressure is so great
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and the city's changing so fast.
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So the good part, and I don't know, I don't think it was by intent.
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It's just a matter of this was the circumstance.
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We are at the edge of a residential community.
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So, we are up against I 95 to the south of us is the Windward Art District,
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and that was the, you know, the Garmin industry and the job providers of the
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people who occupied the residential community, which is a big swath.
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It's not a huge swath, but I mean it, you know, it had, it then was a residential
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community of about 16,000 people.
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I mean, now a couple, you know, 4,000 maybe.
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I mean, don't quote me on those numbers.
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I'm just estimating ' but I mean, certainly it's a population that declined.
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And so I think what's allowed other developers to go in and aggregate,
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accumulate, land, develop, and become the city that we become
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because those were easy aggregations.
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Us, our neighborhood, which is so close to everything.
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I mean, north of us is the design district.
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East of us is midtown.
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South of us is the Wynwood Art District, which is the former Garmin industry.
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West of us is the whole hospital district, and then some emerging culture, but
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then it's also largely residential.
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A chunk of it is residential.
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So part of it is residential communities.
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Are hard to aggregate and assemble land because you have to deal
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with one property owner at a time.
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So what saved our neighborhood and gave us an opportunity to even
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plan a future that isn't just about bakehouse and artists, but is more
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about what role this institution and what we do can play in developing
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and benefiting The greater public.
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and the neighborhood in which we live.
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I mean, it might not be homeowners, but the eventual homeowners.
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And how do we not become one mega real estate development?
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So I think what allowed us to get here is just the challenge.
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This neighborhood was last, left to the end.
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, In the meantime, people were buying things that were easy to buy.
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Midtown was owned by the Florida East Coast Railroad, and that was sold.
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The design district were a bunch of, you know, wholesale, home design
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Showrooms that were closed to the public, but they were
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basically really good showrooms.
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And then in the eighties when Miami had a lot of crime.
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Drug trafficking, crime, all that stuff.
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You know, they abandoned that neighborhood.
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The city didn't address their issues.
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They didn't hear them.
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And they went and bought a building in which it was like a mall for showrooms.
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So that was basically stable.
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And then Craig Robbins super smart, came in and bought all that, quietly,
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aggregated the whole neighborhood, and then came up with a vision.
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So same thing with Tony Goldman in the Wynwood Art District, those were
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all mostly abandoned warehouses.
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And little by little he acquired them, put artists in there, cultural
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institutions, aggregated, assembled.
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And then when it got to the point where he could then monetize that
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assemblage, you know, the artists were displaced and moved on.
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So I think our neighborhood being predominantly residential, having all
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the components to serve a residential community, large public schools.
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An active park churches, social infrastructure, you
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know, it was hard to buy that.
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And a lot of it is.
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We have a lot of publicly owned land here, both for affordable housing,
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city parks and the Dade County schools.
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So the major owners of our neighborhood are public owners, , and us, we're
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like the fifth largest landowner in the neighborhood, to the county, to
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the city, and to the school board.
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So anyway, that made it harder to acquire.
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Cathy, that's
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Hence where we are.
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fascinating and I really appreciate you putting it in a context.
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Miami has gone through so many fascinating chapters and it's wonderful
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to hear how Big House is fitting into that story and that history.
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the big question that Carol and I are asking this podcast is.
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What strategies cities are deploying to make cities more social effectively,
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to bring people closer together?
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Creating art can be an incredibly isolating experience.
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Artists will make art virtually anywhere , they find themselves.
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What effect does working side by side at Bakehouse have on the
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artists who work there and on the work that they're creating?
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I lack the resources to do really quantitative research and even
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qualitative research, but just being here observing for eight years now.
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I mean, the first thing we did, , 'cause half the space was empty.
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Raise enough money to give away the other half to artists who had come
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outta Miami, diversifying the community because it was predominantly an older,
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predominantly white, mostly women.
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Who were retired teachers or artists whose spouses could support a you
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know, a hobby career or even, or they were, I would say they were serious.
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There wasn't even hobby careers.
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They were serious, but they could be here every day and they could
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sell, and then it was changing.
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So we were half empty in 2018.
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We put a bunch of artists who came outta the public schools, went off to the
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best art schools in the country, came back 'cause they felt more culturally.
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Relevant.
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I mean, they felt outta place there, or they had student debt.
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They couldn't afford to stay in New York, Chicago, Boston, wherever they was.
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LA and then they ran outta space.
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I mean, because for a while people were coming back because they had a,
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a home they could land in and then somebody gave 'em a free space in
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the neighborhood or a neighborhood.
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So they ran out of all that and they still came back.
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So , when we were trying to just buy time, I mean, part of it was just
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not even us, it wasn't even a plan.
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It was just like responding to urgency.
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In our own survival.
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I think when people go into survival, the best comes out of it.
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Or you hope maybe in this case the best I think came out of it.
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So , we saw no obstacles.
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And also I think part of it is everybody already thought we were failing and or
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were failed and there were some hostile takeovers occurring behind the scenes
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of the organization from the outside.
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And so we had nothing to lose.
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, We had absolutely nothing to lose.
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We figured we can't lose the property.
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It was zoned civics, so not anybody could buy it.
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And it came also with a debt of a big building violation, which
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were finally almost cleared, which was a $10 million renovation.
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So it wasn't like anybody could take over the real estate, but
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it had a lot of potential value.
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So I think we just put a bunch of diverse people under one roof.
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I had one other volunteer started with me , I gave her a job.
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You build community, everybody has to get along.
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We told the paying artists, you have to pay 'cause we need the
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income, or we'll not survive other artists, you're getting it for free.
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And they were recommended as being the most talented coming back to Miami.
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And when we let 'em in, it was like two questions.
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What would you give to a community and what would you derive from a community?
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And define community.
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And then if they had a good answer, you have a space, make the best of it.
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And then it was like, okay, you all get along.
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And we will, try to figure out our way forward.
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And I'm like sitting here looking at, like going to the
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artist, we gave you free studio.
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Where are you?
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You know, I mean, how is it possible that you're not here?
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The only ones who were here are the paying artists.
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And they're like, but we have like five jobs.
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We have to, you know, we pay for housing.
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And they were even living like with their families, they still had expenses,
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their car, the gas or whatever.
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And they had to have a number of jobs just to survive.
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So then we realized, okay, giving this free studio wasn't enough.
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And also , you needed housing
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Yeah.
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and that's when the affordability challenges were starting to surface.
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We were very lucky that we had on our board, who is now the
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chairwoman of the city commission.
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And the district commissioner of our area.
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Christine King, who's always been in public service.
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I mean, she was an attorney on the side, but always in service of community.
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Ran the Martin Luther King Economic Development Corporation.
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So she was on our board helping and always insisting, and we had a num, our artists,
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I mean, after every other neighborhood had gone through cultural gentrification, they
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were not gonna let us do the same thing.
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So they weren't gonna let us get away with it.
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They weren't gonna be gentrified from here, and we never wanted that.
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So I think having the right people on our board for the right motivation, having
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a community group of artists who said, we're not gonna, you know, the city
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can no longer do this to us anymore.
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Developers can no longer do this to anymore.
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So we all had this same agenda and we all came together.
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I think part of it was just recognizing the opportunity, the citywide
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opportunity, recognizing the patterns.
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That had happened.
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And also we knew, I mean, because my first 10 years of my professional career
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was working for the city of Miami as assistant director of the community
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development department, we knew that there's no way to get political support
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without having community support.
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And there was no way at this point in my career that I felt
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like doing a vanity project.
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It was like I had no inter, it was like I started working in
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this neighborhood 40 years ago.
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Coming back 40 years later, seeing it in worse condition was like really sad.
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It was like, how is it possible that there's been no public investment?
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There's, it's just deteriorating and everything around us is booming.
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So I think part of it was, that was my only motivation.
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I was willing to do it for free and then the Knight Foundation
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stepped in and said we wanna pay you to take this on seriously.
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And then , everybody who's worked with us has just gotten seduced and I think
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we've just, we listened to the artists and we listened to the community and all
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of that is with good business sense and.
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Spending resources really carefully building.
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It's been eight years of work, learning about housing, affordability, the issues,
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what the community needs and wants.
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, Every stakeholder has been really involved in our process.
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So I think it's the cumulative experience of our board.
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Our artists, even though they didn't have a lot of time, but they could
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see what was going on in the city for the arts community, and then.
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You know, having Chairwoman, who's now Chairwoman King, like
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a really major political leader, and the Knight Foundation, you
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know, really supporting the work.
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So it was like we were lining up the public, the philanthropic,
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and the government, which is what makes anything successful.
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You need all that behind you chair.
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I love the simplicity of the questions that you asked the artists who are
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coming into the affordable spaces.
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I find that, you know, you can spend a whole lot of time doing research
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and market studies and economic impact studies, but really what
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you're asking is a couple things.
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And the way people respond to those prompts, it tells you so much.
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It's gotta be a great source of pride that in a city that has the economic
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activity of Miami, you can say we are one of the greatest affordable spaces
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for artists anywhere in the country.
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It seems ironic that Miami would have that compared to any other place.
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And kudos to you for making that happen.
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Yeah, I mean, I don't know for a fact that we're the largest, but we
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definitely are in Miami and I think the city now, you know, because in
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order for us to even go forward, we had to . Literally rezone the neighborhood.
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, Because we had civic zoning, there was no way that we couldn't do anything
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other than our public cultural stuff.
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And unless we could figure out how to do something more with
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the land, one, it was wasted.
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And two, we needed to get some value out of it.
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Right.
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In service submission, always and in service of public good.
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It was never just to monetize.
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So a bunch of us just serendipitously came together.
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I mean, some, you know, some of the people on the city commission were,
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at the time, eight years ago were the former, the son of the former
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mayor of Miami who opened Bake House.
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One of the city commissioners was a city commissioner and I worked for the city.
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Another one was a member of a community board.
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I oversaw for the city and my, is my professional position with the
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city who is now a commissioner.
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And they just said, they guided me and they said, if you really want
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the city support, you need to build support from the neighborhoods.
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And that's what I was doing with the city 40 years ago, building
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support for what needed to be done.
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And the city then was actually listening to neighbors.
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So we, yeah, so we didn't have the zoning.
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Those commissioners led me to people who were interested in the neighborhood.
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'cause there was some speculation, go meet this one, go meet that one.
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And then there were still some old timers that were still here from 40 years ago.
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So we all got together and said, this neighborhood is failing.
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You know, do we wanna become the next.
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Big development, or do we really wanna , recognize the growth
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potential, but yet still preserve the , residential character, and the
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cultural and historical character of the neighborhood and its legacy as a
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light industrial area, as a group that was shaped by a bunch of people who
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were displaced, a certain type of labor.
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Shaped by a neighborhood who really cared about itself and its future.
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And then the whole neighborhood got displaced because of,
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you know, globalization.
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, So then we all got together.
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, We raised the resources to hire a planner and a land use attorney, and then.
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Those of us who had no money, we went around and organized the community.
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You have to be part of this.
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And it was very participatory.
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And what were the main things we had to preserve letting people
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know that , this could not sustain itself as a totally single family
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residential area, and nobody was gonna invest in houses that were condemn.
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But that, how would we slow down the process, try to be able to do it over
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time so it was more organic and it wasn't subject to one mass land acquisition.
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And so our attorney was brilliant, our planner was brilliant.
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Plus Serbia, Steve Warnick, and we all worked together for three years.
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I think the city was flabbergasted.
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They knew they needed to do a plan for the neighborhood.
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They just didn't have the bandwidth.
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So they were participants as well.
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I mean, we drove it.
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They participated.
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We had broad stakeholder involvement.
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We came up with a vision plan.
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We published it.
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We had a community meeting.
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I mean, it's all online.
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And then we invited all the city, you know, commissioner Hardiman, who's now
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county commissioner, , we invited him to a community meeting and he was flabbergasted
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that a neighborhood did this.
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So they codified it.
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They directed it to be codified.
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What allowed it to be codified was COVID.
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Because the planning department had all the time at home, no public meetings,
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everything stopped and they had a sliver of time where they actually could devote
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to working with our planners and our land use attorney to turn this vision
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into a land use plan and a zoning.
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And that got adopted by the city, driven by Commissioner Hardiman.
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And and what really drives it now?
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I mean, the thing we failed to do, we're still a bunch of volunteers.
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You know, there's still a lot of things that are legally eligible.
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We don't have a design review committee 'cause we have no
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really resources ourselves.
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And we should have done that 'cause I can see some things popping up.
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But we, you know, incentivized certain types of development and disincentivized.
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We made it we punish, we try to penalize people by fines for tearing down,
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naturally occurring affordability,
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Just to rebuild without a permit.
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So it's there to try to prevent speculators from coming in and buying
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land, tearing it down and paying no taxes.
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Then, you know, so you had to have a building permit
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or it really was in danger.
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And then we incentivized affordability in terms of the zoning code and density.
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You, we took maybe single family.
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We rezoned it to duplex.
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So, and then if you had the right to build two, two units, like an auxiliary
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dwelling unit and another main house, if you got higher density points or
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incentives, if you added two additional affordable housing units for artists for.
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Micro businesses 'cause they're no businesses here.
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They're all like, they've all been pushed out and I mean, not that they've been
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pushed out, there's just is no economy to sustain all the businesses that were here.
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So, I mean, a lot of that, you know, I can't say it's a hundred percent perfect,
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but I think it has sufficiently slowed down the process to main ensure that the
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main swath of the neighborhood remains predominantly residential and retains
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the cultural and social values of.
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A then very vibrant community.
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You are listening to Closer.
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We're talking about strategies that make cities social with Cathy.
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Leff Executive director of Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami.
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Cathy, I think the story you told about, and then there was the city commissioner,
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and then there was, you know, I worked with him and then there was the son.
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It's like making the case for closer,
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Yeah.
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Closer gets things done, and, you know, just again, a real tribute
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to your work and I think making the case for what's important here.
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I wanna jump to a question about neighborhood identity.
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I think it's interesting you tell the story of Wynwood and how
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Wynwood, priced out artist, but , the neighborhood identity that you've
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adopted , uses the word Wynwood, right?
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is, has that always been the case, or did you do that deliberately?
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did that deliberately.
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I just wanna just comment back on your last comment about closer.
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I think what we've all learned over the past several years, you know, at every
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level of government that just lack of engagement, that you get the consequences
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that you, I mean, it has consequence and I think the place where people can really
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make a difference is at the local level.
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, I can walk over to City Hall or I can talk my way into appointment as can any of our
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neighbors, like when something goes on in our neighborhood, we call Chairwoman
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King and say, could you defer acting on this till we learn more about it?
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So , our whole neighborhood has worked on fostering
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relationships with local government
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so every neighborhood meeting we have, every department head who works in our
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neighborhood, the city commissioners.
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County and city, the state representatives, the US representative,
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they all come to our meetings.
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It's not like we have a lot of power, but we have the power of a
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shared vision and a shared concern.
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And we're just not willing to step away from it even though, you know,
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we don't really have a professional staff dedicated to working on it.
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But the identity, so I think we called it Wynwood Norte one, to
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distinguish it from what everybody called the Wynwood Art District.
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I mean, there still is a lot of great art in the Wynwood Art District and
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there still is a lot of culture there.
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I mean, it's a different type of neighborhood that had to evolve.
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And I think they have tried to evolve in a way that was thoughtful.
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As well as preserving maybe a different type of culture.
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Maybe it wasn't grassroots artists, but they certainly had preserved culture
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at the, in the larger definition.
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And then they also made it realize the opportunity to get people living closer.
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They had a lot of retail and creative businesses and cool chefs who were, you
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know, but how would that survive if there were no people living in the neighborhood?
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So I think they've tried to grow strategically and, but obviously
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it's the next generation.
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And as they keep moving forward, I think the people who are stewarding that are.
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You know, there are private, you know, developer interests.
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I mean, I'm not denying that isn't there and they're, I don't think they would too,
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but I think they recognize the value of preserving something of what they were.
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But I'd say in our district for artists and cultural organization,
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it's just unaffordable there.
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But I think they still are, you know, in terms of the value of public art,
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like they're the biggest district of public art with these mural arts.
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So what more could be free and accessible than something on the
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walls that you don't have to pay for?
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So I think in the sense they preserved.
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A core thing, even though these spaces within are, might not be affordable
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to an artist for our neighborhood, we wanted to distinguish its roots.
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It was predominantly a Hispanic community, Cuban and Puerto Rican who built the
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neighborhood, who supplied the labor force for all the economic value and all
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the, I would say, the land value that is now the city and everybody have derived.
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So we wanted us to call it Norte.
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It was always part of just Wynwood, but we wanted to distinguish it as a
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way to nod, to know that we're moving forward, but not to erase the past, to
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celebrate the past and build on it and to sort of say that it's about people.
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, In Bakehouse we, I mean, well, you know, we're not a house for artists to work in.
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We're a home for artists and a home for the community.
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So I think it's what distinguishes a community from a real estate
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development we really have worked hard to build an attorney with,
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among the artists and within the art, and they do that naturally.
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We don't have to do much just to give them space and not get in their way.
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And make the right selection of artists who are here because they
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have other values other than making money and or elevating their work.
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And we still today continue to ask, what would you give and what would you take?
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And it would, not with any requirement, but we really curate the community.
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They have to have merit, first of all, they have to have some financial need.
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And then when it comes down to determining, it's like if you're just
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gonna go in your studio, close the door, and you have no interest outside the walls
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of this place or inside the walls of the people, you know, find another studio.
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And we do ask people to leave if they've contributed nothing to their
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peers and or to the greater community.
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And I think it's already built in this ethos.
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It's like, and because it started with that community and I think the founders
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and everybody along the way, despite the struggle, struggles, they had to survive.
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, The name was really a nod to how much we need to remember who built this community,
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and then also even as we move forward with our plans, I mean our physical plans
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are really to celebrate that this was a light industrial area that was eradicated.
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I mean, it was not just the garment industry, but the bread factory.
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There was a coffee bean roasting plant.
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There was a. A Coca-Cola bottling plant, and that all, you know,
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we're the only survivor physical survival of that industry.
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So is our physical plan celebrating that in a contemporary way?
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How do we celebrate light industry?
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So we went from bread production to cultural production.
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It is a light industry and maybe even a heavy industry or a soft industry.
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But I think that, you know, we want our building and our site to sort of celebrate
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this idea of labor and the worker.
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And whether it's a cultural worker or light industrial worker.
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So I think that, you know, I think I think that it's just all from this
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closeness, like you said, Carol, the what, the work that you're doing
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and how important you recognize this closeness and building a community.
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One can't do anything alone.
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I can't say that every decision in the city is made for the public good,
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but I can say that we have a really responsive commissioner who pays
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attention to us and we meet regularly and we have a neighborhood that really
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is aligned on vision and direction, where we're going in a group of
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artists and board who also are aligned.
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I think now that we're becoming known.
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That's gonna be the tricky part.
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How do we navigate maintaining that without being hijacked
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by any individual agenda.
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And that's, that gets tough.
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Cathy, it's fascinating to hear how the presence of the big house art complex
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in Miami has impacted so many things.
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And I love the idea that it's a, a convener for conversations
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with city departments.
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Preserving affordability.
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. Extending the historic culture that was present in the neighborhood
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before the artists started to move in, in what other ways has, um.
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the presence of those artists impacted the community.
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Could you talk about how it's impacted the flow of life for the
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residents of the neighborhood?
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So right now I'd say that we're in a neighborhood that is, you
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know, , still economically challenged.
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. When COVID came, this is an example of the artists when COVID came and
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nobody could find masks and most, I mean, I would even argue today we
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don't have fiber in our community.
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The only people who have fiber for internet access or high speed
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bandwidth is the public schools.
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But we can't tap for security reasons.
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We can't tap into that.
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I mean, we've invested a lot of money in bakehouse just to have wifi.
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So the infrastructure here is lacking for the community to really stay engaged.
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I mean, I started to try to work with our cable provider to try
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to see what they were doing.
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Eventually it'll come to the neighborhood, but that is a challenge.
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So we realized that there are a lot of people here, probably
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don't even know what COVID is.
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You know, they don't get, they don't subscribe to the newspapers.
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They're living their life to survive.
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The 10% that retained home ownership were elderly aging in place, or
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the children who inherited those properties who were working hard
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just to be able to stay there.
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So one of the things the artists did is, you know, let's all sew mass for
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the neighborhood and we sewed everybody.
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Driven by the artists.
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We sewed masks.
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We went door to door, distribute it.
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Then it was like, you know, then, and when we started this community vision
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plan, because we're in the middle of working on that, during COVID, we asked
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people, you know, what do you need?
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What do you want?
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What value do you think of a community of artists?
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They all recognize the value of having artists, but they all said the challenges,
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they don't really have time to come here.
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So then we looked at what could we do to go there?
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, It wasn't about art, but we as members of a community, artists as
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members of a, not just an artist community, a larger community,
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how do we serve the neighborhood?
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Because we take up a big part of real estate and you know, those
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dynamics are always shifting, so everybody has to serve somebody.
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So we recognize there's an opportunity for us to serve the neighborhood.
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So one was first the.
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The mass.
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Then we went on and people were so appreciative.
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It was like unbelievable crying when we delivered it and not even knowing
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and telling them they had to wear it.
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Then the next thing we did is, okay, this was a bread factory.
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They used to give away the bread after
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Last lo, the surplus.
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Zach, the baker, Zach, would you sell us really cheap bread?
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We got the best rustic bread you can imagine.
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We bought loaves and we went door to door.
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We made little tags.
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'cause we didn't want people to come in contact with people and just saying,
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Hey, this, you know, this is a small gift from Bake House to you just to, you
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know, express our interest for nourishing the neighborhood in a different way,
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but in the same way that the bakery nourished and we'd leave 'em on doorstep.
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And if people were outside, we gave it to them.
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And then again, they like cried.
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They couldn't believe anybody, just even notice them.
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And then we kept doing that and we still do that from time to time.
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Now we're getting sidetracked that it's like, oh my God, we
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have to do a bread distribution.
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You know?
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When do we find time to do that?
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Then we thought, okay.
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The artist was, you know, the neighborhood's so interesting.
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We were all working with them.
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How do we, they said, you know, we'd love to do a limited edition of art to give
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to the neighbors because they don't, they can't, they don't have time to come here.
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There's too much going on.
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You know, there's a lot of immigrants now being chased down and.
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You know the schools, we volunteer for the schools.
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What can we, I mean, even during COVID for the schools, we made phone calls to tutor
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kids because a lot of them were still learning English as their first language.
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They were learning how to use the computer that they got to do their work.
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And so we all volunteered to help the schools keep up with the kids and
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find out what challenges 'cause there or a lot of kids to keep up with.
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So we realized we need to step in and see what we can do to make
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sure this community stays together.
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And then the artists.
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All they, now, the neighborhood is much more multicultural
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than it was 40 years ago.
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So they said, let's, we wanna do a series of prints of cultural, of i of
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artwork that will resonate with the culturals that occupy the neighborhood.
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And so, you know, one picked the Puerto Rican community, one picked
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the Haitian community, one picked the African American community,
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and they just created these things.
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We ma we printed them in house, like screen prints.
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And then we went door to door and brought 'em to the school teachers, to the grocery
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stores, to the elderly residents in the housing here, door to door neighbors and
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said, listen, if you don't appreciate art.
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Give it to somebody, but this is what we do over there.
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We make art and we understand, you know, we all represent the cultures
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of the people who live here.
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So those, you know, it wasn't about art, it was art as a tool, but it
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wasn't about, you know, assuming that everybody in the neighborhood thinks that
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what we're doing is important to them.
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It's just so inspiring.
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Okay
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are.
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I'm wondering why I'm not in touch with you at least once a month for
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me, you.
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my dose of inspiration.
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Let me ask you one final question, Cathy.
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If you were charged with developing an arts and culture strategy for a
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midsize city, would you go narrow and niche or would you go broad?
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I'm just curious.
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I would start horizontal,
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I would We started with something that was already here, so I try to find
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where is the locust of this activity?
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I think you have to find something that is authentically already there.
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And that already exists.
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So you need to find where does that exist and what you know.
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Is it in a space, is it just a community of people?
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Does it have a building or whatever?
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I think the thing is we were existing, it had a DNA, so I
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could say it's been easier for us.
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I mean, we're just trying to be relevant to today's needs and you
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know, needs of artists and community.
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But I think if you're trying to talk, I think it's like.
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Artists are really giving artists a, the city to start to work with its
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creative community to begin to start conversations about how do we retain,
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attract, retain, and develop talent.
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They will tell you, you will see.
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So it's just starting those conversations.
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I don't, think we could have just created bakehouse outta nothing.
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It took 40 years to really understand its potential.
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And part of it is what is the readiness of a city?
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What are the other priorities?
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I mean, Miami wasn't ready for big house then was definitely serving a purpose of a
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working home for artists and that was it.
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If you talk to enough people and you stay engaged, you can find that starting point.
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So I think one, in order to do it, you need good public policy.
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You need an interested political infrastructure, you need
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strong community engagement.
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You need artists to take a bigger role than just worrying about their work.
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You need.
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You know, a community that recognized how artists really, you know, create these
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caring environments because they always feel, you know, like other communities
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within a community, they, you know, cluster together to build support systems.
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Artists do that.
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So there's lots of communities to learn from about building communities.
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So what do you, what does the city need you to do to foster it in an
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authentic way to who they are and what.
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Their talent pool is, and then what are the institutions and
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just to begin to build alignment and stronger support system.
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But I think just starting and saying, we're gonna buy a building,
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or we have a piece of land.
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How do we create an art center?
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I don't, I think that's maybe an end product that comes out of it.
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But the starting point is really represent understanding the opportunity and
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starting hyper-local, hyper neighborhood.
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And really, I mean, really at the micro level.
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Yeah.
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Who are the voices out there?
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Is it an artist group that's telling you something?
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Is it a city who's listening and losing population?
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I mean, I think every city has its thing.
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I don't know that I would be able to advise another city.
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I've just been here for 50 years, so it's sort of like
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having been here for 50 years.
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I know this city,
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Yeah.
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but I think you need all those players to be engaged with
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each other, to have success.
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I think you're a natural strategist.
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I think you can advise most, any city, Cathy, and most cities
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would be happy to have you.
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We could talk another hour and it would be a great conversation, thank you.
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Thank you for being part of this, conversation on Closer.
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, I think your story resonates so strongly with those of us
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who feel that closer matters.
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Cathy Leff is executive director of Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami we've been
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talking about strategies that make cities social, particularly in Cathy's case.
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Art strategies.
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I'm Carol Coletta.
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And I'm Mark Wallace.
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Find us@closerpod.com like and follow us on your favorite podcast platform
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and connect with us on social media so that we can build this community.
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Of people committed to making our cities more social.
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We post a new show every Thursday.
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Until then, please share your stories and tell us about things
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you are seeing in your communities that are bringing people closer.