Why does the South Bronx need cultural centers?

Girl studying photograph.JPG

BDC Student examining her work.

There is no single definition for a "cultural center." It would be wrong to claim that a local recreational park is not a center for a community's youth culture. It would be wrong to say that a Thursday-night book club is not a cultural hub for its participants. It would be wrong to say that a street corner is not representative and facilitating towards communities building and sustaining relationships. However, it would be correct to say that the lack of organization in the first, the lack of public access in the second, and the volatility of the third, all create the impression that these situations are not going to reconized for their general cultural value. 

The creation and sustainability of cultural centers -- that are well-funded, organized, and supportive of local values and expectations -- is crucial for neighborhoods like that of Melrose, in the South Bronx. To emphasize beyond the benefits that come from having a safe place to go in an urban district that has one of the country's highest crime-rates, the potential that these places offer the community -- to stimulate thought, discussion, and comraderie -- has no limit.

Michael Kamber, Melrose resident for over a decade, and founder of the local Bronx Documentary Center, believes that, "It really has to be about education." (It, of course, being the change that the area needs to see.) "You know, college prep. There's no college prep. A lot of [the Bronx Documentary Center's] best students ... go to a school wih a thousand students, and one guidance couselor." Kamber expressed in my interview with him that the problem's the area faces can be boiled down to only a few major concerns, the largest of which is the lack of access to worldly-education that residents recieve within those district lines.

And Kamber's concerns are far from baseless. The publical-educational facilities in the Melrose area are all but non-existent. The South Bronx is known for having some of the poorest-quality institutions in the greater New York City area, but Melrose School P.S./M.S 029 in particular, which has around 800 enrolled students, see's only 13% of them meeting the State's English testing-standards, and only 9% meeting the Math testing-standards (this is about 1/3 of the city's average). And those numbers only speak to core-learning: the arts are practically gone from city-funded locales. 

The potential that creating new places for children to gather at, in order to foster disccusion and stimulate intelligent inquiry, is both endless, and yet seemingly stunted. When Michael Kamber founded the Bronx Documentary Center in 2011, it was because he, "wanted to teach [in a place] where the community could come together." But currently, according to Kamber, "[the BDC is] the only program of [its] kind in the Bronx ... and I would say you need a program like the BDC on every block" [Emphasis added].

Why does the South Bronx need cultural centers?