Cultural Resources, Mayo Street Arts, and the Importance of Supporting Multigenerational Traditional Arts

Portland’s East Bayside neighborhood is one of the most culturally diverse areas in Maine. Located in the center of the peninsula, the neighborhood has become a safe settlement for many immigrant communities, and thanks to organizations like Mayo Street Arts, it offers valuable resources for cultural connection.

A vibrant haven for visual, performing, and literary arts, Mayo Street Arts serves immigrants who’ve traveled to Maine from all around the world. The opportunity the center provides people to embrace their cultural traditions is exactly why Cultural Resources — a Maine nonprofit that supports tribal cultures — sought Mayo Street out for a powerful partnership nearly five years ago.

With support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Maine Community Foundation, Mayo Street Arts formed the Traditional Arts Network (TAN), a consortium designed to help artists preserve and share their cultural practices. Since its founding, TAN — an Onion Foundation grantee — has reached dozens of New Mainers in East Bayside and beyond, helping uplift and pass unique cultural traditions onto the next generation.

Born Out of Community Need

“Since 1993, our primary mission at Cultural Resources has been to work and collaborate with communities to identify and sustain their cultural traditions,” says Kathleen Mundell, Director of Cultural Resources. As Mundell explains, the nonprofit has developed exhibits, hosted artist convenings, and supported apprenticeship programs for more than 30 years.

Mundell chose Mayo Street Arts as a partner for TAN not only because of the center’s proximity to East Bayside, but because it had a proven reputation as an inclusive space for New Mainers. “Mayo Street was known as a welcoming place for immigrants,” Mundell says. “It’s a true community arts center.”

The TAN program started with a process of coming together. Cultural Resources, Mayo Street Arts, and 18 Albanian, Burundian, Congolese, French, Guinean, and Rwandan artists met for a cultural sharing session. The artists danced, drummed, and sang — and many became initial members of the TAN Advisory Council.

Listening and Learning

After that initial session, Mundell and the Mayo Street Arts team solidified the TAN program, modeling it on Cultural Resources’ Maine Indian Basket Makers Alliance, a successful initiative that emphasized listening and relationship-building as central tenets of program development.

“You go to those communities, ask who knows about a particular art form, and get to know them,” says Mundell. “It’s not just about getting names and addresses. It’s really about forming relationships.”

Building on this initial work, the TAN team later hired professional folklorist Laura Marcus Green to conduct significant field work. Green led three intensive sessions through which she immersed herself in Afghani, Cambodian, Ukrainian, and Congolese communities, hearing from community leaders and artists alike. Through these sessions, Green met with musicians, dancers, folklorists, calligraphers, hair stylists, and other traditional artists.

More importantly, however, she learned that these communities were in need of financial resources, materials, and ways to share their arts with their youth. To meet these needs, TAN offers three kinds of support:

The TAN Fund

The TAN Fund provides grants of up to $1,000 to help support traditional artists. A Burundi drumming company, for example, received $600 grant to ship a drum to Portland. Somali Bantu weavers used their grant to send specific materials from Somalia to the U.S.

Part of what makes the fund work is the simplicity of its application process. Applicants don’t need to submit the many supporting materials required by so many artist grant opportunities. “I find that, with a lot of traditional artists, if they go to the trouble of writing a big grant application, but they don’t get the funding, they don’t come back,” says Mundell. “You lose a lot of trust, so this is a way for us to make grants more accessible and further our relationships with the artists.”

Apprenticeships

“The biggest thing that surfaced in our conversations with the artists was that they wanted to be able to pass on their arts to their kids,” Mundell explains. “They were afraid of losing their language and cultural traditions. “

The apprenticeship program was created to help alleviate that fear. Mentor artists — who are always from the same community as their mentees — receive up to $3,000 to engage their apprentices in hands-on art making. By giving artists these resources, as well as time and space, the program fosters cultural pride and helps pass art practices along to the next generation. “These artists are proud of their culture, and they don’t want to lose it. They’re inspirational,” says Mundell.

Artist Gatherings

Annual gatherings are where artists share their traditions with individuals from other immigrant communities. Participants each get 10 minutes to discuss or perform their art form, and the group shares more about what they need from community resources like TAN. It’s a vital time to learn from and connect with others.

Supporting Immigrants When They Need It Most

For Mundell, discovering and connecting with traditional artists is the best part of the work: “I love the developmental end of this work because I get to know the artists and work directly with them.”

But shining a light on artists who aren’t always in the mainstream cultural landscape is equally as important to Mundell and the TAN team. “A lot of people have walked away from immigrant artists because of the current climate,” she says. “But I think it’s all the more important that we support them. These arts are central to their identities, and it’s important that we recognize the connection to their culture.”

As Cultural Resources and Mayo Street Arts grow the TAN program, the organizations remain committed to supporting immigrant communities. Eventually, Mundell and the team hope to hand over ownership to Mayo Street Arts and the traditional artists themselves, though the near future requires the team to focus on funding: “This is a tough time to ask for funding to support immigrant arts,” says Mundell.

Despite this challenge, Mundell says that TAN remains strong, largely due to support from Maine-based funders like the Onion Foundation and connections with organizations with shared values. “Mayo Street Arts is a great partner. Cultural Resources never could have done this without it,” says Mundell. “It just shows that, when people come together, you get more done.”