Creative Placemaking Project

Alleyway Concerts

Reading, Pennsylvania

Every summer in Reading, Pennsylvania, Barrio Alegria engages community musicians and vocal artists to perform in their Alleyway Concerts series. Barrio Alegria (Barrio) is “a community engagement organization that uses the arts to create transformations in individuals to help them transform their communities.”

The Alleyway Concerts were born out of the desire to activate underappreciated spaces while also gathering community members through music. Concert locations have ranged from abandoned lots to bodega fronts to inside a laundromat. Using simple portable speakers and microphones the program engages local artists and businesses to see the beauty of their community through a new lens. Barrio believes in the democratization of creative spaces. They encourage neighborhood artists to use their own cultural knowledge and skills to co-create activities to share that knowledge with the community. For Barrio, an artist is anyone who is a vehicle for creativity, someone who can imagine something that doesn’t exist yet, or preserving something that is in danger of being lost. Barrio also engages neighbors to promote, coordinate, and find new talent every year.

Reading is the fourth largest city in Pennsylvania with a population of 95,122 people. After decades of disinvestment, 35% of Reading residents now live below the poverty line. According to a Barrio survey, 80% of Reading youth want to move to another city. But where others see challenges, Barrio sees opportunities.

Barrio programs deal with social justice issues, and use art as a vehicle for personal transformation and community building. Barrio is intentional about making programs free so their message is accessible to everyone. The concerts carry more than music: they empower individuals by providing them with opportunities to participate in the creation of the program. To ensure this, the organization constantly meets with neighbors to ensure their presence in the program creation. The organization also works with neighbors to offer training opportunities for teaching, engaging, and following up with community members.

Impacts

Inspiration for neighbors. In 2020, a group of musicians from the neighborhood collaborated to form a band and began their own version of alleyway concerts called Porch Concerts. They hold weekly performances in the neighborhood.

Safer and cleaner streets. Neighbors have expressed a renewed sense of safety attributed in part to the presence of art programs in their neighborhood. Barrio collaborated with city government to introduce neighbors to an app that they could use to report trash. This has helped keep the neighborhood cleaner.

Neighborhood engagement. Barrio’s consistent presence in the neighborhood has built trust. Neighbors know that they can count on the organization and that makes the community more willing to be part of and participate in the organization’s work.

Lessons Learned

Community building takes time. In the first six months of programming, neighbors did not believe Barrio would show up for the next event. It took Barrio a year and a half of programming for neighbors to trust that scheduled events would happen. Once the trust was gained, they began looking for opportunities to volunteer.

Empowering goes hand in hand with training. It didn’t take Barrio long to learn that artistic talent and teaching talent are two different skills. Training programs were added as part of their community empowerment initiative to help artists teach other members of the community to create art of their own.

There is power on the streets. Every community has gatekeepers, protectors, and oral historians. Decades of disinvestment and broken promises have created understandable mistrust. However, resident leaders exist in every community and can help spark impactful change.

Property Type: Commercial Structure
Project Type/ New Use: Art – Small Scale (e.g. painting; performance; visual)
Project Purpose: Community engagement; Decrease commercial vacancy
Duration: Once / Single Day

Initial Cost: Under $10,000
Funding Source: In kind services; Philanthropy

Organization Type: Nonprofit - Arts and Culture
Implementation Partners: Artist(s); Local businesses
City: Reading
State: Pennsylvania
Community Type: Urban

Organization Website: Barrio Alegria >
Social: Facebook >

Contributions By: Daniel Egusquiza

Project Photos

Last updated: October 2021 – Do you have additional information about this project? Please use the share your placemaking project form » to share that information.

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