LISC Phoenix artist-in-residence takes creative placemaking to next level

Carolina Aranibar-Fernández is an artist who thinks like a sociologist and acts like an anthropologist. She’s also a teacher, adviser and collaborator in a creative practice centered on telling stories that need to be told.

Her total package of thought leadership, empathy and creativity is what makes her an ideal artist-in-residence for LISC Phoenix. Documenting stories about people and places through art are components of LISC-style community development work.

“I’m fascinated by the possibilities that exist in one place, but also when we listen and when we pay attention in other spaces, similar things are happening,” Aranibar-Fernández said.

Since 2018 when she received a Projecting All Voices Fellowship from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University, Aranibar-Fernández has immersed herself into understanding Arizona’s people and places. After the Herberger fellowship, there was the Binational Arts Residency where she delved into borderland issues and then a fellowship at the ASU Center for the Study of Race, Arts and Democracy. 

Aranibar-Fernández’s artwork has been on exhibit in Bolivia, New York, Qatar and Nepal. A current work is in the “Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration” exhibit at the ASU Art Museum.

“I’m very curious,” Aranibar-Fernández said. “When I do my personal art, I’m also interested in not just stepping into spaces. I think it’s really important to hear the history of a place, but also what is currently happened. What has changed? Why has that changed?”

Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC Phoenix, said she feels fortunate to have someone with the creative experiences and multimedia expertise of Aranibar-Fernández to help small, local organizations preserve and share their stories. 

“I feel so honored that we get to be a part of what she’s doing,” Benelli said. “I’m just super excited.” 

Benelli said the new position is a LISC Phoenix next-level push into creative placemaking, which is a tool to preserve the cultural integrity of underserved communities and to help prevent displacement. No other LISC office in the nation has an artist-in-residence.

Although Aranibar-Fernández, hadn’t used the term much before moving to Arizona, creative placemaking is what she’s been doing for about 10 years. It began with the collaborative work she did in a Bolivian community with indigenous weavers whose practice was disappearing. That community’s stories were narrated by weaving, which was becoming a lost art. That meant the community’s stories were disappearing.

Aranibar-Fernández’s work as LISC Phoenix artist-in-resident, supported in part through a grant from Harkins Theatres, involves co-creating stories about the origins and legacies of some of the Valley’s grassiest of grassroots organizations. One task is to help Funds to Feed (FTF) grantees tell their stories in whatever form of expression makes sense to them in both digital and physical form. 

Funds to Feed is an innovative and wildly successful pandemic relief program for delivering healthy food assistance in especially hard-hit areas of Phoenix. With FTF, created with federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act dollars, the city of Phoenix leveraged its relationships with LISC Phoenix and a community of practice focused on food in south and west Phoenix neighborhoods. The work created an organic ecosystem of hyperlocal groups addressing food insecurity in healthy, affordable and culturally relevant ways.

Aranibar-Fernández, describes her work as doing a sort of cartography, is fascinated by the work of Funds to Feed grantees. Her work with LISC Phoenix will chart the work FTF grantees are doing in specific neighborhoods and across the greater Phoenix metropolitan area. The project will answer questions important to them: Why are you doing this? What’s your process of doing things? What’s the space in which you’re doing it? What about the water? What about the land — its history and the food it produces? 

The intent, Aranibar-Fernández said, is to use the power of storytelling, which builds bridges and preserves history, to create conversations that will lead to doing more and to inspire others to do similar things. 

“Storytelling feels very inclusive,” Aranibar-Fernández said. “The history of storytelling is that it’s passed generationally. We can tell stories that remain and be passed.”

In addition to guarding against erasure and displacement, holistic storytelling creates strong narratives that often are missing from standard documentation of projects and organizations. In practical terms, documentation is important to secure grants that enable the organizations to remain sustainable and grow. 

Aranibar-Fernández said she’s excited about what will come from the co-creation process with the FTF grantees, who in early conversations already have shown their creative sides. 

“They have so many ideas,” Aranibar-Fernández said. “I think it’s just about, ‘OK, how can we make this happen?’”