In this episode we speak with Roberto Bedoya. Roberto is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland in California. He developed the City’s Cultural Plan, titled, Belonging in Oakland. Throughout his career Roberto has consistently advocated for inclusion and belonging in the cultural sector. In our conversation, Roberto shares how he’s utilized belonging in his city planning work through intentional grant giving, and encouraging city departments to re-think how Oakland residents interact with each other and with physical spaces around the city.
This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.
Transcript:
Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Today we will be speaking with Roberto Bedoya. Roberto is a cultural affairs manager for the city of Oakland in California. He developed the city's cultural plan titled 'Belonging in Oakland' through his career. Roberto has consistently advocated for inclusion and belonging in the cultural sector. In our conversation, Roberto will tell us how he's utilized belonging in his city planning work. Roberto, thank you so much for joining this conversation. You've been leading an effort in Oakland to ensure that the belonging framework is at the forefront of cultural and civic work. To begin, can you explain what belonging means to you in this context?Roberto Bedoya:
Belonging is such a sticky word. Let me tell you a couple different stories. One, when I came to the city of Oakland and developed the culture plan belonging in Oakland, I had been working in the field of creative placemaking and written an essay about a decade ago, called 'Creative Placemaking', the politics of belonging and disbelonging, very mindful of sort of this developing field around creative place making and and not and also being very aware that the field was being defined by a lot of urbanness who were really preoccupied with buildings and structures and how they occupy a city and not the inhabitants in the local and I am pretty much about folks.Roberto Bedoya:
The other part my story is Mom. It's a Mom story. Mom lived 90 years old. She had a good life. She was living towards the end of her life. About five five years ago she died. She was lived with my sister here in the East Bay and I was visiting. She was bedridden so I walked away from her room you know after my visit and she called me back and she goes "Mijito, mijoto, I know why you're so social." I kind of said, Okey doke, why? You know she said, "well I was pregnant with you when I was trying to get all the Mexican Americans in my little Bario of DeCota here in the East Bay to vote. So you've been to a hundred doors before you even born."Roberto Bedoya:
So in some sense, belonging started before I was even born. You have to I came from a family that asserted to me and my siblings that you had a a search of belonging, you had a a say, I'm a citizen. Cause you were constantly sort of encountering the politics of disbelonging, whether through its gentrification or you're poor or you're brow so belonging has been kind of a north star for me throughout my whole life.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
You briefly mentioned that in your work, you've come in contact with Urban planners who are more focused on space and not the people. Can you talk about? Why is that so important and how you've incorporated people and people's experiences into the way that you are pursuing City Planning?Roberto Bedoya:
I know a lot of urban planners that think about people a lot and so I'm not damning the architect and the developer but I am very mindful that in kind of the, the wide spatial imaginary it's buildings that have agency and not the people. So creative a placemaking which is kind of the the road I travel down has been very mindful of that. And further to this point, how a person of color or people of color are seeing inside that frame at the beginning of the development of the field of creative placemaking is that it creative a placement creative a placement failed to articulate whether there was a property rights movement or human rights movement, and creative placemaking as a property rights, privileges, development and buildings in the built environment. And the kind of that's kind of, because that's cities are built on property taxes.Roberto Bedoya:
So as a 'person of color' and the America's races legacy of seeing the bodies of brown people or black people or yellow people as property that you don't have rights. So I I saw this complicity being unfolding that the discourse around creative placemaking was all around property rights. And of course, when you look at the pushback around this field and the language of gentrification, you also are hearing the story of BIPOC folks saying I'm a renter and I have no rights. And now you're moving out of moving me out of my house. So in some ways that's a politic.Roberto Bedoya:
So, I love belonging, but I'm also very mindful of disbelonging. What are the policies that are implemented that say you don't belong? So when I talk about belonging and also I'm very mindful of not the psychology but the sociology. I understand that they're interrelated. I don't feel like I belong but maybe you don't feel like you belong because some system created that feeling and not your brother or your sister or your neighbor.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
No, that's a really good framing. And and I think that it's important for us to keep in mind because I think it is really common to feel that you blame other people or other groups of people for your feeling of not belonging and not acknowledged, like you mentioned. These very explicitly developed systems that have othered and have made some communities feel like they don't belong. Can you talk a little bit more about the breaking points that you've seen, that you are trying to address, like you talked a little bit about the way that you're thinking about it, but what is motivating you to continue to do this work? What are you seeing in the community of Oakland that needs to be addressed?Roberto Bedoya:
Oakland is wonderfully complex and feisty. And its diversity is phenomenal but we also deal with an under-resourced cultural sector. And so I'm constantly trying to figure out how I contribute to a a sense of civic wellbeing with the resources that I deploy on behalf of the city. And whether it's, you know all the tensions that are in civic life, they don't go away just because you have some a little bit of coin you have to sort of invest in from my position kind and strengthening the social fabric of a city, Of the social cohesion of a city. And so I'm, I do that being of my, the cultural affairs division and the resources that I have, but in particular, when I created the cultural plan called, "Belonging in Oakland" I also was really intentional about creating a north star for my city.Roberto Bedoya:
I could have done it, cultural plan that would've been a what they call a SWOT analysis, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threat, and look at all the things that are working and not working. Which I did a little bit but I also wanted to put something out there as a vision and why not put belonging out there and my city and my mayor, my elected officials all totally embrace that. So I hear at my elected officials talk about belonging when they're speaking on at at public gatherings on occasion.Roberto Bedoya:
So it's been good to put this notion out there in the public sphere and I have people then sort of, sit with it and figure out what does that look like? And for me, I was I'll continue on this path a little bit further. I was talking to some artists and some who's about belonging and and one artist says to me, belonging is about feeling safe. It's great. And and another person said to me, belonging is about justice. The other person said to me, and the other side of justice is belonging. And the other side of safety is belonging. So you move that's, that's kind of the north star. You need kind of back, well, what do you need to get belonging? You need to feel safe. You need to feel that it's a just society and then that becomes kind of a little more, how you operationalize it.Roberto Bedoya:
So it's two-fold. We created a kind of north star goal vision and now I have to operationalize it and it's not always easy. What is sort of apparent is that art space, social engage, projects build belonging that's an outcome. They build social networks and so in some ways at this particular moment in Oakland where the the cries for just city and the cries for an examination of how the police department works, how our housing crisis, the homelessness situation all these difficulties.Roberto Bedoya:
We're trying to address them through holding to this value of creating belonging.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
When I read your report, I liked the guiding vision that you outlined equity as a driving force, culture is the frame. Belonging is the goal.Roberto Bedoya:
Right.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
In your plan, you outlined that you want people of Oakland to not only feel a sense of belonging in the city but also to each other. Can you talk a little bit more about what what you mean by that?Roberto Bedoya:
It goes back to what I was talking about, feeling that you're connected that you know, your neighborhood. So I am one of the outcomes of the plan was to create a new initiative called neighborhood voice. We're going to set up a mechanism, which we can support artists that choose to work with NGOs so I'm an artist and I work with the senior center. I'm an artist and I work with an after school program. To build those social networks, or I'm a chamber of commerce that produces a neighborhood festival.Roberto Bedoya:
Why can't you come to the culture affairs department and, and ask for resource to do that? So expanding that frame of how previously my cultural affairs division has been supporting artist projects to sort of say, we want to support artist projects. They're about neighborhood vibrancy and neighborhood belonging. And it's up to the neighborhood folks who apply to me to articulate and present what they want to do and then it gets funding or didn't. I'm happy to say that as a result, a result of the cultural plan, I formed a partnership with the East Bay Community Foundation and the Akonadi Foundation with support from the Foundation in New York who supported an initiative called the 'Just City Fund' very intentionally trying to look at BIPOC artists and what they need.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Yeah. It it sounds like one of the ways that you created a city of belonging is through community grants that fund community led art and neighborhood empowerment projects. Can you share a project that you are proud of that came out of this grant making?Roberto Bedoya:
An artist is working with young women that are caught up in sex trafficking and how do we create a sense of belonging and worthiness? What do you do in terms of healing? What do you do in terms of acknowledging their voices? So this group of artists, women artists working with young sex trafficking girls are involved in a bunch of sort of ritual performances and storytelling as a reform of dealing with this activity. It's also about creating a safe space for women you know and I know that the arts can really address some significant hurts in our society.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
How is culture impacting belonging in Oakland, or how are you using culture to promote belonging?Roberto Bedoya:
I got a platform, I've got a grants program. I got a metaphor that people use. So elected officials and people any kind of civic leader, eventually talks about belonging. So that's really good that it it it has this, that is part of this civic discourse about what you want in your city.Roberto Bedoya:
Now, what does that look like? I have to get hyper-local. I don't, it looks different in you know, East Oakland and in Fruitvale and West Oakland and North Oakland and any part of my city, it belonging could look like a pocket park, could look like a street festival. It could look like a neighborhood oral history project. It could look like anti-violence police work could look, could look like dealing with sex trafficking. It could look like a land heritage practices, it could do. And keep thinking about like [Unity Council 00:15:09] which is in Fruitvale is working with undocumented workers who did a theater piece around what it means to be undocumented and live in Oakland, giving voice to kind of their own sense of place and their own sense of agency and how they feel they belong. Okay. That's one, that's one story.Roberto Bedoya:
And sometimes maybe it's just giving voice and validating it. That's an easy sort of thing. And then how do we learn to respect and listen to these voices? The cultural plan kind of articulated what the community wanted. We did an extensive sort of outreach and heard. So what does belonging look like in the department of transportation? What does belonging look like in the housing department? What does belonging look like in economic workforce development? I said, well I don't know but what I can do and what I was able to do was with some money I had a while back is to have an artist in residence but they weren't an artist in work there were cultural strategists in residence. So example for example, and the department of transportation, the artist was really the thinking about how, if you're how do you move from one neighborhood to another neighborhood if you're taking the bus. So like a poetic sort of musing about movement and transportation. How do we create belonging through transportation?Roberto Bedoya:
My cultural strategies in government program had an artist in residence, the Department of Race and Equity. So how do you deal with anti-black biases that may operate in the school districts and you're trying to address that, that's what the department of race and equity took on re-imagining the town hall, so that the town hall's not just people sort of letting off steam and maybe leading to an action agenda but re-imagine it to a story circle type. You hear the story. You move. You respond to the story, you try to create empathy and understanding. First step is for me to find out which of my city departments are interested in having a strategist, get that, get a sense of what they're looking for.Roberto Bedoya:
But again I foreground when I send them an invitation, belonging, belonging is our we have a cultural plan about belonging. You're all engaged. Let's.. Let's try to operationalize that in the department of transportation. I'm not like a transportational walk so I don't know what that means, but there are people you know and I mean you know, just the pivot over COVID and the development of flex streets and slow streets. People are re-imagining the sidewalk as a new kind of public space. Let's have artists and cultural strategists be part of that re-imagining. So it can be more sight of belonging.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
It's really amazing that you've started of this movement where you've introduced this concept of belonging and developed this plan as you described it as your ultimate goal, that what what Oakland can be and it seems like you're still in the process of working with different departments to get a culture, strategist, and an artist to re-imagine how belonging can look like in Oakland, in each of these departments. I.. I'm curious to follow up about you know in your report you did acknowledge how gathering spaces such as churches, barbershops, playgrounds, carry people's heritage, memories, shared feelings, and these places contribute to place identity and and belonging doing. It's such a great justification to to why belonging needs to be incorporated in city planning and and re-thinking how the city should operate. Can you share how these, this belonging framework has shifted the way that city leaders approach housing, transportation, and urban planning issues?Roberto Bedoya:
Council Member Taylor, which is in East Oakland has been working with the Black cultural zone. It's a fun very good group who created an artisan African, American artisan market. Now, all of a sudden that becomes a gathering space for Black cultural expression in East Oakland, which is primarily African American. So all of a sudden belonging is embedded in that development of that site.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
Now, we've talked a little bit about, have you incorporated belonging through your grant making and and through culture strategies rethinking the way that different spaces function, what are you moving towards, what is your ideal?Roberto Bedoya:
Okay, let's first thing there's no end game for belonging, it's always unfolding, it's an emergent field. We people will constantly re-reassert what they want. It's part of life. So I don't so there's no future for this work it's always ongoing. It's always unfolding, it's always emerging. So I'm not going to be this is a bit of a problem for me because the technocrats want to have a plan and have a beginning in the middle and an end and culture plan. And in some cultural planning it's a really weird training to operate. Cause planning is about fixing through procedures and rules and regulations and culture is fluid.Roberto Bedoya:
So I need I need to work in these two energies that I'm not going to, so I keep a very porous frame alive. That's what belonging, the belonging in the neighborhood voice, belonging strategy. Because today it could be about a just city and tomorrow it maybe a real estate. I don't know but you need to be as a civic agency need to be willing to adapt. Now let me back up a little bit further, government itself is risk averse, doesn't take risks, not the business, not in their job. It's not part of the DNA government.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
I imagine that there might be people who will be listening to this podcast who may be in a similar role as you in a city or in an organization where they have power and ability to incorporate belonging the belonging framework in their work. I am wondering if you can give a brief summary of how can how how can someone get started on this?Roberto Bedoya:
Well, you have to be 70 years old first of all, and a deep personal connection but it's also being very very very intentionally looking at the politics of disbelonging. I'm a brown man. I'm a queer man. I'm a you know, I, you know people give me attitude because I'm 'the man' because I work in government you know so it's just like understanding all those factors that come out in terms of disbelonging so that I can address those structural situations that created that feeling of disbelonging. So maybe I could have a little more belonging. I mean you know being in elementary school and being even though my school was integrated you know the the brown kids were in one classroom and the white kids were in the other one. We were separated by classrooms. So, you know I figured out how I can get into that white space when I got it and then I said, oh man! This there are like send me back to my peeps.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
It it's tough having to navigate so many spaces and so then I guess now that I think about it it sounds like you know you do have to really acknowledge how many systems are creating this feeling of disbelonging and really wanting to make a change whether it's for yourself or for your neighbors. And I thank you so much for or you know outlining the work that you've done in Oakland by initiating this cultural plan that incorporates belonging and you've done it through your grant making and you've done it by including cultural strategists in departments such as transportation to really rethink about how the city of Oakland is functioning and how it's you know the ultimate goal of supporting belonging. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with listeners before we close out?Roberto Bedoya:
I feel that the cultural affairs division here in the city and government is given that agency to put forward a civic narrative. So this civic narrative of belonging needs to, I'm happy to have my elected officials of my department heads kind of listen to me and figure out okay that's cultural affairs department, they got a belonging strategy. What's ours, so anyway I think, yes I'm I'm you know I have my belonging platform and my belonging strategies and I feel profoundly lucky that I have a Mayor and Council that really supports my work.Miriam Magaña Lopez:
That was Roberto Bedoya thank you so much for your time and to our listeners. Please check out our other podcasts where we discuss belonging and bridging in more detail for more resources and curriculums on belonging and bridging. Please go to belonging.berkeley.edu/b for B that is /B4B until next time.
