Introducing ANCHOR: ACDC's Creative Placemaking Initiative

Thanks to those who made it out to see our first outdoor art projection on One Greenway With/Without Water. This projection was done as a part of our ANCHOR initiatives.

Chinatowns across America are disappearing. Families who have lived in Chinatown for generations can no longer afford the higher rents and costs of living in the area. These changes transform the Chinatown community until neighborhoods become unrecognizable. Like an eroding seashore, the "shores" or borders of Chinatown are most vulnerable to erosion. 

Our Solution: Anchoring our Borders

For over 30 years ACDC has been stabilizing Boston's Chinatown by building affordable housing and promoting community self-determination through arts, culture and activism.

In the 2010 Chinatown Master Plan, the community highlighted "anchor areas" - landmarks dedicated to preserving Chinatown residents, businesses, and cultural institutions. 

Together, ACDC's ANCHOR projects serve to influence the fate of some of the most valuable land in the city. Through our projects, we want to remind residents and visitors that Chinatown is a place of live, work, and play.

Each letter in ANCHOR represents a characteristic that describes our Anchor projects.

  • Activation

  • Needs

  • Community

  • Housing and

  • Open spaces

  • Residents

We look for spaces that are unused or underused and activate them, so that residents can enjoy the space and imagine the possibilities that the space could be. Our earliest example of this was when some residents took an abandoned parking lot, cleaned it up, and with the help of a simple projector and sheets, transformed the lot into an outdoor movie festival, free for everyone. This annual event has become our popular Films at the Gate.

Our projects address the needs of the neighborhood, leveraging Chinatown's greatest strength: the people. We are committed to designing solution with community. That means we want diverse voices at the decision making table.

Our work centers around housing and open spaces, which we believe are fundamental to healthy families. These are the places where families live and play. Our projects aim to advocate for more affordable housing and open spaces for all.

Finally, residents are central to our work. We not only want to hear their ideas, but we want them to be at the forefront of implementing and bringing to life their dreams of what they want to see in their communities. 

SaturPLAY represents one of our earliest ANCHOR projects that we launched in 2016. For one Saturday a month, A-VOYCE youth activate Chinatown’s Mary Soohoo park with books, sidewalk chalk, and games for the local children.

Follow our blog and our Facebook page for the next SaturPLAY and ways you can join in!

ACDC youth anchor’ing down Mary Soohoo Park at SaturPLAY.

ACDC youth anchor’ing down Mary Soohoo Park at SaturPLAY.

Yu-Wen Wu’s WITH/OUT WATER Installation Brings Interactive Art to Hudson Street

Yu-Wen Wu’s WITH/OUT WATER outdoor art installation glowed on Chinatown’s Hudson Street this past Saturday.Photo by A-VOYCE youth, Lee-Daniel.

Yu-Wen Wu’s WITH/OUT WATER outdoor art installation glowed on Chinatown’s Hudson Street this past Saturday.

Photo by A-VOYCE youth, Lee-Daniel.

Five tents, symbolic of the housing struggle in Boston’s Chinatown, served as the canvas for projected images and words, layering anecdotes and imagery of housing and environmental concerns, as well as other community issues.

Yu-Wen (far left) at one of the weekly meetings with our Chinatown residents and youth

Yu-Wen (far left) at one of the weekly meetings with our Chinatown residents and youth

The installation is the result of weekly meetings that artist Yu-Wen had with ACDC’s 66 Hudson residents and A-VOYCE youth program participants. Facilitated discussions had the youth and residents learn about the history of displacement in Chinatown while exploring patterns of displacement in their own lives. The group also brainstormed how to foster intergenerational and multi-lingual communities through storytelling, learned about the history of resistance though art and culture, and shared with Yu-Wen their ideas and visions for the project.

Many community members came out to view the installation, including longtime and new Chinatown residents and passers by who were compelled to stop and learn more. Yu-Wen’s piece invited guests to be part of the installation by writing reflections of the art and thoughts on climate change on flags posted around the tents.

This installation embodies why ACDC believes in placemaking or as we like to call it, “placekeeping”. We not only want to engage residents and community members in participating in creative projects that advocate for community needs, but more importantly, we encourage and support them in leading the discussions and activities. As a result, these public installations invite others to join the conversation. The goal is not just to emphasize the urgency of the challenges and struggles within a neighborhood, but to also highlight the strength and resilience of a community working towards positive changes for their family, friends and neighbors.

We are excited to be unveiling our brand new ANCHOR initiative soon, which focuses on advocacy and cultivating leadership within the community through resident and youth-led creative placemaking projects.

Thank you to Yu-Wen, for being such a great collaborator to work with, to our community partner, BCNC’s Pao Arts Center and to the Union of Concerned Scientists, who provided funding for the installation.

If you’re interested in getting involved with projects like this in the future, click the button below to fill out a volunteer form and check “placemaking” as one of the activities.

Yu-Wen Wu is a visual artist based in Boston. Born in Taipei Taiwan, her family immigrated to the United States soon after the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Arriving at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work in areas of migration--examining issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation and the shape of identity in a new country. Working in drawing, video, sculpture and installation she pulls together the natural world and social movement on both a personal and global scale. She approaches her own experiences of immigration and other culturally specific happenings by presenting them as a series of natural occurrences, not dissimilar from the migrating bird, passing cloud or ocean tide. (Bio excerpt from Yu-Wen’s website)

Wouldn’t it be cool if…?

I just finished a large reconstruction on my house where the entire second floor was gutted. No plaster, no ceilings, no walls, no nothing. I kept looking at the empty space, trying to re-imagine what the space could be. Should I put a closet here? A door entrance here? Could I fit a loft in the attic? My kids even asked for a small swimming pool and water slide in their room.

Have you ever looked at a wide open space and imagined “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?” For one night this fall, we are transforming the open park at One Greenway (the backyard of hundreds of residents at One Greenway) into an outdoor art display, called With/out Water. Through a series of light projections, we will be telling the story of displacement and how displacement has and might in the future affect residents of Chinatown.

Coming September 29, ACDC has partnered with local artist Yu-Wen Wu, BCNC’s Pao Art Center and residents from our 66 Hudson affordable rental homes to create these colorful projections. The projections will turn on around 7pm after sunset.

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Over this past summer, ACDC residents met weekly with Yu-Wen to describe their own stories of how they moved in Chinatown. Many of them faced displacement in the past, either in their home countries, or even when they moved to America. The reasons for displacement are many, including war, natural disasters, pollution, economics, to name a few.

With/out Water will focus on environmental displacement. While we often think of climate change as affecting the ozone layers in Antarctica or rising tides in Florida, Boston’s Chinatown faces the real threat of being flooded by rising oceans. Some estimates would project Chinatown to be underwater by 2050 if current environmental trends continue.

Along with the outdoor projection display, we will also be opening up our community room at 66 Hudson for spectators to meet with some of the residents whose stories are told in the artwork.

Come join us!

Vote and be heard!

Check out the video we made with one of our residents in 2016 about why voting matters.

(dates and deadlines at the end of the video were for 2016—please visit www.boston.gov for updated dates)

Vote today in the State primaries!!! Primary elections typically don't get as much attention as the general election in November. Nevertheless, they are an important part of our civic process and they determine which candidates represent each party in the general election which will take place on November 8.

If you are interested in becoming a civic engagement volunteer with ACDC, please contact us!

Click here to find your voting polling station.

For the past four years, ACDC has been involved in civic engagement efforts in Boston and Quincy. Partnering with Quincy Asian Resources, we have conducted two city council candidate forums in Quincy. This year, we are expanding our civic engagement efforts into Malden, where we recently launched a new office. We are currently recruiting youth and local residents to join us in our door knocking efforts which will begin later this month. We focus our civic engagement efforts to encourage low income Asian immigrant citizens to become registered voters. We conduct voter education workshops to ensure that voters understand the stances of the various candidates and understand what issues are being debated. Furthermore, we host gatherings between residents and elected officials where our residents can directly ask questions and tell their stories to those who represent them. It is important that candidates know the importance of reaching out to Asian American voters. According to AAPI Data, "[n]early 70% of Asian Americans have reported that neither party contacts them in regards to the election."

According to the Pew Research Center, while Asian Americans are the fastest growing ethnic group in America since 2000, Asian Americans voter turn-out percentage severely lags that of other ethnic groups at 47%. This compares to 66% for black voters and 64% for non-white Hispanic voters. Some of this is due to language barriers where immigrant voters have difficulty understanding the issues that candidates discuss. There are also cultural barriers where immigrants come from countries that do not have a strong democratic process. Since our civic engagement work began in Quincy, the Asian American voter turn-out in Quincy has tripled from 413 voters in 2013 to 1120 in 2017.

Our civic engagement efforts are funded through generous funding from the Coulter Foundation, the Boston Foundation, and the Asian Healthcare Foundation.

Welcome 51 families to Chinatown!

Last month, we welcomed 51 new families into our homeownership condo units at 88 Hudson St located in the heart of Chinatown. 88 Hudson represents the culmination of a decade long process of community organizing and advocacy by the Chinatown community. This completes the second and final phase of our One Greenway affordable housing development. The first phase which was completed in 2015 provided 95 rental units at 66 Hudson St. This second phase provided 51 condos for 102 people. Over 75% of the families were Boston residents.

All of our homeowners have recently completed the often-long and arduous homebuying process of applying for a mortgage, getting their finances in order, and moving from their former homes. Many of them took advantage of ACDC's first-time homebuyer workshop and 1-on-1 counseling where our housing counseling staff walked them through the process.

We spoke with one of the new homeowners:

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Phil, 88 Hudson Homeowner

I grew up in Allston and then moved with my family to Watertown. My parents are still in Watertown.

I found out about the affordable condo application for 88 Hudson through a family friend last May and applied because I like the neighborhood.  My grandma lives in Chinatown, and I’ve always admired how the community is really tight-knit. I wanted to be a part of that. 

Though the neighborhood has become more and more gentrified and is losing that close-knit feeling, I hope to strengthen the sense of community with my new neighbors.

Now that the families have all moved into their new homes, ACDC will continue to assist the new homeowners in managing their homes and to become engaged with their community. 

Congratulations to our 51 new home owners!