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Newark: Brand, Place, and Context
I've been spending this week in Newark working at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. As usual, it's been a great week. I love working at NJPAC. It is an organization full of good, smart people and there is no end of opportunities to learn and grow. It's a tough place, too, and not for the faint-of-heart. Unlike most big arts organizations, NJPAC doesn't rest on its laurels. If it were a person I'd describe it as restless and driven like some character the Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy might have invented.
Earlier this week, when I was at lunch with NJPAC's Marketing VP, Catrina Boisson, I serendipitously met a Rutgers University history scholar and professor: Clement Alexander Price. Professor Price—an expert on the history of Newark—offered to spend some time with me giving me his perspective on Newark and on NJPAC's trajectory within its current context.
A couple of days later, as I was leaving my hotel to schlep over to the Rutgers campus, I asked myself, "Why I didn't arrange the appointment at NJPAC?" It would have been so much easier and I wouldn't have had to search for a place I'd never been. But, as I walked through the neighborhoods, looked around and explored, I was so glad Professor Price had suggested his campus office for our meeting.
I experienced a real sense of place, a sense of difference and uniqueness. I liked how I felt and what I saw. Newark's neighborhoods feel more real and less contrived than many Eastern cities that I've walked through. Unlike the trendier parts of New York, there is not the relentless onslaught of commerce-propelled hipness and come-hither coolness. Every hair is not in place. There are mom-and-pop pizza joints on the corners, leaves blowing around brownstone lime-slab steps, and assymetrical shrubs left to their own devices. There are also awe-inspiringly beautiful manses, stone-piled houses of worship, and art deco temples of commerce that whisper, "This was a great city, once — and it will be again."
Seeing this part of Newark is like encountering an old chorus girl. I could see and sense the bones, beauty and fire through the veil of age. You find yourself musing, "if only I could have met her in her prime." But, that's the great difference between cities and people; you can renew and restore a city and a place. People, you take them where and when they are.
I realized how seductive one's familiar environment can be and how familiarity and comfort are just prettier faces for insularity and laziness. Had I stayed in the reassuringly familiar environs of an NJPAC conference room or office, I'd have seen or sensed nothing new or different. A sense of place and history wouldn't have spiced the conversation to come and—in terms of meaning—I'd have supped on a pretty bland stew.
My meeting with Clement Price was simply quite incredible. Like most accomplished scholars, he can guide one over a dynamic and complex ideational landscape with clarity and brevity. He described, with penetrating insight, how Federal transportation and housing policy in the 1950s propelled Newark's decline and set the stage for Newark's infamous 1967 riots. I heard how racism, classism and a burgeoning love affair with suburbia and the automobile turned policy-makers' heads from keeping cities vital, and allowed them to reimagine some cities with large numbers of immigrants and populations of color—like Newark— as warehouses for the poor.
Further, Dr. Price explained how Newark's corrupt and inept leadership failed to safeguard the city against these external interventions. It would seem that venality and cluelessness can ruin with the equivalent effectiveness of the most pernicious intentions. (It should go without saying that any mistake or distortion in my representation of Dr. Price's very brief tutorial are mine, not his.)
Dr. Price also explained how the riots were not only a flashpoint in the city's history, but how, when the embers cooled, the ashes made their way into the Newark soil and refreshed Newark's ability to nurture growth, setting the stage for what is now Newark's inevitable comeback. The story reminded me of what I know about Wyoming's evergreen forests: fire renews and refreshes, restarting the cycle of life. Like all low points, Newark's riots were also a turning point — in Newark's case they were the beginning of a steep trek upward toward renewed community and vitality. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center is a lynchpin in Newark's journey toward renewal.
Price could be an avatar for what an urban historian and scholar should look, sound, and talk like. Articulate and urbane, language rides Clem Price's honeyed baritone like a world-class horseman. Even his laugh sounds like it is cask-aged. He is no rumpled, tweedy academic. He's a natty dresser with a warm, sensitive demeanor, a razor-sharp intellect, and a quick laugh. More to the point, he's generous.
As busy as Dr. Price is — and we had to promptly end our meeting so he could stay on schedule — Price offered to contribute to my work with NJPAC. Somehow he sensed that I needed his help, and he was right. The brand campaign that I'm working on for NJPAC must be ensconced in the long arc of Newark's historical context. Price wanted to make sure that I had a chance to understand the context from someone who both knows and cares about it.
Brand strategy, when it works, helps people decode identities, create meaning, and make sense of time, place, and players. Can you imagine how much I benefitted from listening and learning from a a leading Newark-history scholar? People wonder why I love my work so much. It's because opportunities to learn and grow come my way. I'm damn lucky.
Posted on December 8, 2006 06:20 AM | Permalink
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