educate in the urban arts instead of criminalizing
Dear Edmonton Journal Editor
Urban arts education is essential. Empty classrooms litter the city even as the Edmonton Police Service holds a conference about the “dangers” of one of the urban arts, graffiti. I am concerned about the coverage of last week’s TAGS (the anti-graffiti symposium) received in the local media. I am concerned because of the way the conversation about graffiti was framed, as an a-historic social problem. All too familiar moral panic claims were being made as if verifiable and they were reported uncritically. By now we should be able to see through moral panics– of the dangerous insanity caused by marijuana (Reefer Madness) or heavy metal as the cause of teen suicide. I’ve grown up with these claims which a decade later becomes a joke. Last weeks uncritical coverage of TAGS stoked the fire of this most recent moral panic propaganda.
To be clear, the graffiti in Edmonton is bad and should be stopped. Not because it is a crime but because the taggers out there need an education in graffiti history and technique. As a lecturer in popular music at the University of Alberta I find myself often saying that the main components of hiphop culture are MC’ing, Breakdancing, DJ’ing, and Graffiti. But this spring I was stopped dead when a student shot up her hand and said, “A friend of mine was arrested recently by the Edmonton police for graffiti.” She went on to explain that he was found guilty of nearly 50 counts of mischief for spraying his tag around town. He is now apparently not allowed near Whyte Avenue nor is he able to own paint, or markers, or even sidewalk chalk. Why take a creatively motivated young person and sentence them like this? Why not send the offender to art school?
How is it that graffiti is both an important element of the global phenomena of hiphop culture and yet remains illegal to practice? How do we balance the contradiction between graffiti as high art, global urban marketing style, and illegal activity? American President Obama is even in the game and used the work of a graffiti artist Shepard Fairey for his now famous Hope poster. Is there a more recognizable example of contemporary art? And unfortunately for the EPS, it’s graffiti art. How can TAGS, the EPS, the city council of Edmonton, and the Edmonton School Board all ignore this? Why not educate instead of legislate and enforce. Have we decided to turn our collective backs on our creative youth?
Here’s a solution. Instead of spending money on a police service conference criminalizing a 40 year old art tradition–recognized world wide as high art–let’s put that money into urban arts education and provide our young talented artists (yes artists – not criminals) an opportunity for free night-time classes to learn the history and aesthetic practice of the urban arts. Let’s make a commitment to our youth and provide them with the creative skills they need to have a productive future in the arts instead of wasting money and time turning our backs on a productive solution to empty classrooms and disengaged youth, the real crime.
endnote:
See Henry Giroux’s very important Disposable Youth in a Suspect Society
