Asian Arts Initiative's Pearl Street PopUp Place Receives ArtPlace America Grant

Alison Vayne, for GPA -- This year, the Asian Arts Initiative (AAI) and the Philadelphia Center for Architecture (CFA) had their Pearl Street and DesignPhiladelphia PopUp Place project named a recipient of one of ArtPlace America’s (ArtPlace) 55 grants distributed across the U.S.

The grant will fund the PopUp Place project, which will create an art and culture destination in the Chinatown North and Callowhill neighborhoods.

ArtPlace is an organization that distributes grants each year to creative projects across the country, in which art and culture will help shape communities’ social, physical and economic futures. Since 2012, they have distributed grants for a total of 189 creative space projects with $56.8 million in funding.

“Once a year, we do a call for proposals,” said Jamie Bennett, Executive Director of ArtPlace. “This year, we received 1,300 proposals from around the country. We considered 97 of them and ended up awarding grants to 55.”

To start, DesignPhiladelphia partnered with Friends of the Rail Park to put a proposal together.

“We had initially put in a grant with Friends of the Rail Park to create a PopUp Place, which is what we call our opening event for DesignPhiladelphia every year,” said Hilary Jay, the CFA’s director.

As it happened, AAI and the Chinatown Community Development Center were also grant contenders.

“We decided it was time to put a proposal together for ArtPlace,” said Jay. “We did and we won the grant.”

Each organization has its particular role in the creation of the project. Friends of the Rail Park will be renovating three blocks in the North Chinatown area. AAI has been working with landscape architect Walter Hood to focus on the Pearl Street Alleyway. The Pearl Street Corridor will work as a connecting point between AAI and other community organizations and residences along four blocks, passing beneath the Rail Park.

According to ArtPlace’s website, “AAI will produce a series of physical interventions, weekly micro events, a series of monthly First Friday events, and an annual Block Party aimed at increasing the everyday interactions along and attention on the Pearl Street Corridor.”

The activities lead up to DesignPhiladelphia’s Festival in 2015, which will launch the PopUp Place project.

“This particular PopUp Place is going to take place in shipping containers,” said Jay.

The PopUp Place exhibition will be located at the intersection of the Reading Viaduct Rail Park and the Pearl Street Corridor. Jay believes it is essential for the community to understand why design is so important in life.

“Design is shown through everything,” said Jay. “You wake up in the morning and you do your hair, that’s a design.”

ArtPlace gave its biggest grant in the country to AAI and CFA for their project. Bennett explained that he really liked the partnership between the organizations and what they are bringing to the community.

“We liked the concept of bringing design in the community,” said Bennett. “We look forward to coming back to Philadelphia.”

“We are thrilled,” said Jay. “ArtPlace understood that the three groups are coming together to create a monumental central place.”

The PopUp Place project will help spread the word about how design affects one’s daily life to communities that might never have had the opportunity to take a look at art in that way.

“This is really a great way to branch out to a whole new community that we haven’t been able to reach out to before,” said Jay.

Photo courtesy of ArtPlace America.