Photography by @Kelly Pratt Photography
Saint Louis Story Stitchers
“The Delmar Divide will not stop a bullet. Violence won’t stop at your door or your neighborhood. And you shouldn’t wait until it affects your friends or family to care about changing the public health crisis of violence in our city.”
That’s what Paige Walden-Johnson says at the end of a far-ranging conversation about many of the positive ideas and events coming up from the nonprofit CommUNITY Arts Festival, which she co-founded. But it’s a hard truth that deserves acknowledging, that tragedy hitting in the midst of her own group of friends is what brought her to this work.
In early 2017, her Webster University dance classmate Rain Stippec was shot eight times while sitting in a car with a friend in Soulard. Months in the hospital were followed by more months of intensive therapy and rehab; Stippec eventually fought her way back from a long stay in critical condition and now dances, walks, eats, and moves in ways that few thought would be possible again.
In the shooting’s immediate aftermath, Stippec’s friends and other artists in St. Louis channeled their anxieties and desire to help her by organizing what became the first CommUNITY Arts Festival. The two-day event combined therapeutic workshops and arts sessions with a showcase performance, all to raise money for Stippec’s recovery and awareness of violence prevention and trauma response programs in the community. The reaction was overwhelming. “In fact,” says Walden-Johnson, “we had to scramble to find larger spaces than we originally planned for and ended up filling both the Marcelle and Grandel theatres.”
While the inaugural event's success was encouraging, it also felt insufficient. “A festival that mobilizes these passionate arts professionals is nice,” says Walden-Johnson. "Yet 363 other days of the year, there’s still so much need."
Photography by @Kelly Pratt Photography
Her work to highlight violence prevention efforts propelled her into a whole new world. "As a dancer who’s only learned how to get my leg up high, I’m now learning how to become a nonprofit executive director and how to listen to what people dealing with violence and surviving trauma are saying we need, to change our city,” she says.
Today, the organization provides services for survivors of violence and trauma. The Expressive Arts Anonymous program hosts arts workshops to emergency responders (including social workers, surgeons, EMTs, teachers, and more) and their families, giving them tools for processing the effects of their daily work. And the Community Arts Bus, or CAB, connects young people affected by violence with the therapeutic possibilities of art by providing transpiration to such arts programs as Ignite Theater, Gentlemen of Vision, and St. Louis Artworks.
Photography by @Kelly Pratt Photography
On Saturday, September 7, the CommUNITY Arts Festival will include a full slate of working artist demonstrations, community workshops, and a resource fair at the Intersect Arts Center (3636 Texas). There will be performances from URB Arts and Pianos for the People, mandala sand painting, trauma first aid training from Stop the Bleed STL, and a conversation on community policing. In the afternoon, the festival will screen the Midwest premiere of the documentary The Sweetest Land, a film about violence response and prevention in Hartford, Connecticut, with director Jeffrey Teitler joining a panel of local leaders to discuss lessons that might be useful in St. Louis. And PotBangerz/Feed the Body Mission will provide barbecue for a pay-what-you-can lunch.
Then, on Sunday, September 8, the CommUNITY Arts Festival will host a multidisciplinary concert of dance, spoken word, music, and painting at the .ZACK Theater (3224 Locust). The concert will include the premiere of a young artist dance piece set to John Legend’s “Preach,” a nod to Legend's Can’t Just Preach project, highlighting change-making activists in local communities. (Walden-Johnson was nominated for the award by Stippec earlier this year, and received the recognition in mid-August.)
As Walden-Johnson says, “Every art form is a skill, and a skill gives you something to focus on outside anything toxic in your life and your community. And surrounding these arts organizations are communities striving to support you to foster your own growth, and resilience, and empathy.”
Visit CommUNITY Arts Festival's website for tickets and additional details.
