February 27, 2004

"Lily Yeh, Village of Arts & Humanities"

Welcome to this online interview with Lily Yeh of the Village of Arts & Humanities, and a 2003 Leadership for a Changing World awardee. Questions and answers will appear below starting at 1 pm EST on Friday, February 27. You may ask a question in advance by clicking on the "Submit a Question" button. Due to time constraints, not all questions will be answered. You may need to refresh your screen during the interview to read the most recent responses. Read background

Leadership for a Changing World
Welcome to Leadership Talks with Lily Yeh, Founder and Executive Director of the Village of Arts & Humanities, and a 2003 Leadership for a Changing World awardee.

Lily, can you tell us how you got involved in social justice work?

Lily Yeh
I was born in China and grew up in Taiwan. The study of Chinese philosophy in Taoism and Confucianism and the learning of traditional Chinese landscape painting during my formative years had a profound impact on how my life unfolded in later years. I came to the States in 1963 to study art at the University of Pennsylvania and have lived in Philadelphia ever since. I have taught art and art history at the University of the Arts for 27 years. My most important work emerged in 1980s when I started to build an art park on an abandoned lot in an African American neighborhood in inner city North Philadelphia. I got help from neighborhood residents, most of whom were children. Eventually the park project became the Village of Arts and Humanities, a non-profit arts organization with the purpose to build community through art, educational programs, construction, and economic development. I am in my 18th year working at the Village. What I have learned from doing this project, I have brought to many poor communities in developing countries in different parts of the world.

I came to do social justice work unintentionally. I am an artist. I saw a vision and felt a sense of possibility and I strived to realize the gifts I was given. Yet through the process of realizing the vision and the potentials and through working together with people, something powerful and profound was revealed to me. I experienced the power of art in connecting people and transforming environments; I was deeply moved by the meaning and significance of a group of people working together to pursue a shared vision and goals. In addition, I was enormously inspired by the lives and work of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. The courage they demonstrated in pursuit of social justice set examples for me. Eventually I changed my profession from teaching to hands-on building with people. That was how my journey in social justice work began.

Portland, ME
How do you balance being in artist while at the same time promoting social change?

Lily Yeh
I think in my case it worked out in an unusual way. How it began is that I had an idea, an inspired idea to convert an abandoned lot into an art park. And when I started working on it, I really focused on the project. I think it has to do with the unique way the project worked out. And children came in and later adults because I needed people helping me and people wanted to help me. And then through the process of working together we began to address social justice issues, which means providing people opportunities to express themselves according to who they think they are and giving people opportunities to express their creative ideas and participate in meaningful work. In this case it is that their effort, their creativity that contributes to people working together to change their environment for the better. And so in this case the process addressed social justice issues. The result is the art product. And that’s how art has such a transformative power in building people and transforming communities. So I think the problem of balancing artists and social justice issues, they need to be incorporated in one project and one process. The process becomes the product and then one can address both. But this can be done when the Village remains a certain size. I think in the last 2 years the Village has grown into an institution that needs a lot of management so it needs care in management, staff issues, and then sometimes it’s harder to maintain the balance.

washington, dc
Your project has grown into so many different areas since you first started with the park. How do you decide what areas The Village of Arts and Humanities will pursue?

Lily Yeh
I think there are guiding principles in making decisions and it actually is very simple. From the beginning when the project unfolded it already contained many aspects. It’s like a seed when it bursts open. It roots in the ground, it grows the stem towards the sky, and the leaves come and you have flowers and you have fruits. So everything unfolded at the same time. This is how it began. It’s not linear, it’s multidimensional.

So the first project when I came in, I wanted to do an art park, but it was on abandoned land and it was in the city. And children on the street came to help me and then people, adults, usually without jobs or without highly developed skills, came and helped me. So suddenly I was looking at many social issues without even addressing them. For example, converting an abandoned lot into a garden, so I was dealing with abandonment of land in the city. And then children came in, there are children wandering on the street, so I was doing a children’s program without intending to. Then adults came in and so I was looking at joblessness, job training, and food. People get hungry and most of the time they eat the processed food, potato chips and so forth. Suddenly I was looking at all those things.

So then the project grew and I began to address different issues. And I was thinking the Village has been growing for the past 17 years so we were able to support different projects that were formalized into different departments and so forth, but they are all interconnected. In lean times when we do have to make decisions on what to pursue, there are some guiding principles. The first principle is that our project must be rooted in the community. And the second principle is that everything we do must deliver our mission, which is, in short, doing justice to the people we serve. And doing justice is to me to honor, respect, and cherish in everything we do.

The way we carry out our mission is through innovative arts, innovative educational programs in art projects, construction, land transformation, and economic development. And so if we have those guiding principles then it’s easy to decide, we can do any one of those programs, innovative programs, as long as it’s rooted in the community with community participation and in that sense it’s with honor, respect, and cherish the people and their traditions, our sensitivity, and our cultural heritage, and meaningful work, and we can deliver our mission.

Then it depends on where the resources come from, the funding sources come from. Sometimes the funding sources are interested in educational programs, in theater production, in visual arts, in land transformation, in entrepreneurial development and youth leadership training, and in housing renovation. So we then can easily make decisions. I watch nature programs. There’s a frog that stays underground for years, but when it rains they all came up. And so sometimes when we don’t get enough resources to support all the programs that we’re doing, then we will “frog” some of the programs. We put them underground. That doesn’t mean they disappear, they just went underground in hibernation. So everything we have developed and learned, even though in some years we don’t do those programs, the resources are there, they’re just underground and taking a rest. And when we have the resources coming in, then they all pop up. That’s called frogging methodology.

Leadership for a Changing World
Lily, can you share a story about how your programs have affected individuals or groups?

Lily Yeh
The person immediately came to mind is James “Big Man” Maxton. He is 7’8” tall and 300 pounds. Yet people called him Big Man for a darker reason. He was a big figure in the North Philadelphia drug trade for over 20 years. When he came to the Village, he was looking for a temporary respite and an exit from his way of life, which brought despair and physical deterioration to his body. In 1988, he began helping me with mosaics. He liked the immediate result of the work and the positive feedback from by-passers. He promised himself that if Lily came back next summer, he would leave the drugs for good. He has been clean for 14 years. Because of his experience and leadership, the Village has been hosting four groups of Narcotic Anonymous meetings weekly for a decade. He is now our operations Director and a leading mosaic artist in Philadelphia. He has collaborated with me on many of the murals and sculptures in the Village, and he has recently established his own art business. His compassion gained through difficult experiences helped to comfort and nurture many people in the community in their trying life’s journeys.

One of my most profound experiences in community building through art took place in East Africa. I won an international arts fellowship in 1993 to visit Kenya and came upon a destitute community, Korogocho, on the outskirts of Nairobi. Surrounding a huge garbage dump, Korogocho hosts 100,000 residents living in homes constructed of recycled trash materials. In the past nine years, I visited the Korogocho community five times, conducted art and land transformation projects with children and adults in the community. Through the process, people were empowered and places transformed.

Detroit
How have you reached your community with such success when the barriers of language, age, race, even gender prevent us from communitcating certain goals in communities that easily shut their doors to the outside.
Lily and the Village of Arts & Humanities is such an inspiration to my work, art and life.
Peace,
Christa Perdue

Lily Yeh
I think it is actually so simple to do that. And I think to begin with we often get caught in the problems, like I’m an Asian-American and race is often a problem and so forth. So if we engage in the problem it will be hard to reach the area of a creative solution. From the beginning when I went into a situation I was very fearful of being an outsider, of being a woman, and of Asian background, entering into an African-American community. Then I responded to the vision and potential that was given to me. In other words, I responded to an inspired idea and pursued the project to realize the idea.

And so when I came and people told me why did you put money in the ground making gardens when there are drug problems, abandonment, poverty, and hunger? And I felt that with little resources I couldn’t solve any problems and if I engaged in the negative issues I will be completely absorbed by the negativity. So I went to the creative impulse. I followed my creative impulse in doing this project. Through this project I created a new sense of space where all people who are interested can join me and can create something new for the future. I think that is the beginning of creating a community, a new kind of community where people can give what they can, share their dreams, and come back when they want to again. And so this leaves a lot of openness.

And the other thing is that I think if we keep thinking of problems, wanting to solve problems, then when we come together we already put community in the deficit realm and we already put ourselves in a more superior situation as problem solvers. That would be very hard for a community to open up for people coming in with that kind of attitude. So when I came into the situation I had very little skill. I did not know how to do social justice. I was not a leader. I didn’t know how to build the park, but I had inspiration and I wanted to realize that. So I went in and I needed people to help me, and so people come together, bring in their creativity, their sense of joy, and their strength and we became a really wonderful team. So in a way we need to connect directly with another person’s humanity, cutting through race, gender, class, and ethnicity. We all are human and beloved by God and there is that sacred flame of creativity and imagination in each one of us. I went in to connect to that sacred flame in another person and we become a bigger flame.

Seattle
What are some of the changes you've seen in the communities you've worked in?

Lily Yeh
There are very obvious changes and very subtle changes. I remember when I came in in the early days there was a lot of anger and cursing and that kind of stuff going on on the street. And sometimes I got cursed out in the early days. But I think now the Village, the whole area, there’s a sense of joy, sense of calmness, and sense of pride. People are proud of what’s happening to the community and I think that’s the beginning of what can be possible. It’s self-esteem building not for one person, but the whole community. We changed the atmosphere and feeling in the place. Physically we transformed over 250 abandoned lots into 24 parks, gardens, green spaces, and so forth. So the whole area has a different kind of visual sense and it’s very lovely. You see in the face of decay the new energy and art announcing proudly what the community is about. Not only a lot of people in the community are proud of this and there’s family celebrations and events that happen in those spaces, but people from outside come to visit us. So that breaks the isolation of the community and makes the community welcome and open to oustiders.

There are people that their life has been transformed. There are children who went through our programs, especially the children intensive core leadership programs, their feeling of themselves, their outlook for the future changed to one with a purpose, with goals. Many teens succeeded in going into vocation training and colleges and many of the families become transformed. A family becomes reconnected and has a sense of purpose and goals towards the future. We have one family, the son is in the design school, won a scholarship, and the mother got her GED and nursing degree, and so on. And the most dramatic transformation is Big Man.

And then I think the other impact is that this is a different model. Artists can be at the center stage of social change. I think because of the 18 years’ work at the Village now we have gained the trust of the community. Right now we’re launching a very important planning project called Shared Prosperity. And the steering committee is composed of leaders and professionals in the community. And finally, North Philadelphia has been a very divided community, but now the communities are coming together trying to weld a shared vision and a common goal for the goodness of the whole community, and that is tremendously exciting.

Wilmington, DE
How do you evaluate your programs and measure your success in making change?

Lily Yeh
For me to be successful as an artist is not just about making art. It is a way of life. It is about delivering the vision one is given, about sharing one’s gifts freely, and about doing the right thing without sparing oneself. I feel successful when I have a sense of joy and deep fulfillment through my work. I feel successful when there is energy, and harmony among people who work together.

My work is about reconnecting what is broken, healing what is wounded and making visible the invisible. In this way the work cuts through racial, class, geographic, and ethnic separations to directly connect to the heart, mind, and emotion with people. When this happens, I feel successful.

Hampton, VA
How are you working to build the next generation of leaders in your organization?

Lily Yeh
My leadership style is inclusive, participatory, and collaborative. My method centers on creative exploration and team building, which nurtures people’s creative energy and brings a great deal of joy to the work environment. I provide vision and a sense of purpose to projects that benefit all participants. The process of doing the project is also about discovering new way of thinking, problem solving, resource finding, and building deeper and more meaningful human connections.

Understanding that the success of a founder of an organization lies not only in her work, but also her succession. Seeing my own departure in the near future, I set up a leadership team composed of three directors a year ago to co-manage the Village with me and to make decisions during my absence from the Village. They understand well my artistic vision for the Village, the guiding principles in my work, and the innovative methodology used in the Village projects. I know that in times of transition, they will provide wise and stable leadership for the organization.

Belchertown, MA
Lily:
Can you talk about how you have helped neighborhood residents influence local policy decisions through the work of the village

Lily Yeh
I think we have done a lot of preparatory work at the Village to make our advocacy successful. So for the many years of work through art, I think our society has a problem of thinking of art as social justice work. What we have done is a subtle kind of advocacy. And our work has authenticity and we get the support of the community and we have been successful.

So now through Shared Prosperity we are really doing advocacy work. We are organizing people in maybe 25 community groups who will come together through Shared Prosperity and decide what we’d like to see, with professional help. And we’re talking to merchants in the commercial corridor and different community leaders and now we’re talking to Temple University. We come together to request a meeting with Temple University authorities and with councilmen and state senators and state representatives, the city planning commission, and the mayor to negotiate with us and to adopt our proposal and to continue the development that will ensure the prosperity of the people in the area, residents and stakeholders.

I was just recently invited to be on the national advisory panel of Environmental Justice, and that has to do with policy making. And the reason I was invited was because of the work at the Village. We do environmental protection, environmental justice in a very different approach and it has been effective. And so our experience will contribute to policy making, I hope, in the future.

washington, dc
what kinds of differences or similarities have you found between doing this work in the U.S. vs. abroad?

Lily Yeh
I think the first similarity really has to do with why I choose to work in a certain area, the inner city or an at-risk environment and forgotten places. I think it’s because I personally have the need to connect to those places and to be more fuller a person. And I find in those places there is enormous creativity and imagination and humanity through difficult experiences that we don’t experience in normal situations. So I find the experience is always challenging and difficult, but profoundly moving and important and reaching.

The similarity, I am an artist and so I would go to a situation and invite people to create with me. And so however the current situation is, whether it’s HIV, whether it’s poverty, hunger, and despair, through creative action we’re able to create a new sense of space and the possibility and hope, and that brings joy and brings new energy. Even for a short moment it has sometimes a life-changing effect.

And also I find art is one of the most powerful and effective means to bring hope and to connect with the humanity of another community or another person or a group of people. So this is the similarity.

And the difference is between my work in this country and abroad is enormous. To begin with what I do in North Philadelphia I don’t do abroad, which is actually community building, take a broken community and through our project people come in and a new community develops that connection to existing family structures and existing groups and so forth. So community building is enormously time-consuming and an enormous effort. So that is why it took me so long to do my work in North Philadelphia to make it become something close to my dream, but it’s not there yet.

But when I travel abroad, for example, in Africa, I have done some projects in Kenya, in Ghana, and in Ivory Coast, my work is very different. I work with people who already have done community organizing. So when I go in I bring something very special. I bring in inspiration, joy, and imagination. So through the creative process we see people can function beyond their mundane activities. And also I did a project in transforming a very bleak situation into a place of joy and color. And it’s a totally different level of possibility being revealed through art and through people working together.

Leadership for a Changing World
Unfortunately, we only have time for one more question.

Lily, how do you sustain yourself and your staff to prevent burnout?

Lily Yeh
Many times we feel consumed and exhausted by the work. We renew ourselves by coming together to remember the good times we’ve shared and why we came to do this kind of work at the beginning. We try to remember our dreams and what inspires us. This helps to reenergize us.

We become renewed when we see our efforts come to fruition through the delivering of major projects like a theater production, the completion of a park, or the presentation of an exhibition or a publication. We become renewed when our efforts and results honor, respect, and cherish the people who work with us and the people whom we serve. We renew ourselves through rituals that bring us to come in contact with our inner selves, with each other, with the rhythm of time and the specialness of a place. When this happens, the separateness of a person becomes a part of the whole, which leads to regeneration and renewal.

Leadership for a Changing World
Thank you for joining our discussion today with Lily Yeh. For more information or to contact Lily:

Lily Yeh
Founder and Executive Director
The Village of Arts and Humanities
2544 Germantown Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19133
Phone: 215-225-9305
Fax: 215-225-4339
Email: Lily@villagearts.org
Web: www.villagearts.org

Leadership Talks will return in February. Please join us again.

Lily Yeh

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