No Place Like Home kicks off free Poetry and Art classes for VIVA site residents
No Place Like Home, Borderlands Theater’s innovative collaboration with the City of Tucson’s holistic crime reduction program, VIVA (Violence Interruption and Vitalization Action), is back for its second season. No Place Like Home uses the tools of theater and art to increase wellbeing, trust, and belonging among residents from VIVA’s four project sites.
Beginning this year, Borderlands Theater will place two artists in residence at the Wings of Freedom apartments, a city owned apartment complex that offers low-cost housing. Tucson poet and UA Poetry Center teaching artists, Eva Sierra; along with muralist, tattoo & aerosol artist, Julian Argote, will teach the classes in poetry and visual art.
Research shows that arts participation can have a significant impact on mental and physical wellbeing. When people make art together, they deepen relationships, build trust, and increase feelings of belonging. All vital ingredients to community organizing and development.
About No Place Like Home
Borderlands Theater is part of a growing movement of artmakers and culture bearers using art and culture to bring communities together, increase feelings of trust and attachment to place. This process, known as “social cohesion” improves mental and physical health, feelings of belonging, and overall safety. Borderlands Theater is immensely grateful to be working closely with the city’s Community Safety, Health and Wellness program on this groundbreaking project. It is our hope that its success will better illuminate the untapped potential of collaborations between municipal government and artists around community development.
No Place Like Home began in 2025, with a play based on interviews from residents living in the VIVA sites. Borderlands Theater artists also attend and present learning sessions about arts and wellbeing as part of the Community Leadership program put on by the Community Safety Health and Wellness program which oversees the VIVA project.
The Community Safety, Health and Wellness Program was created in response to the tragic death of Carlos Ingram Lopez while in police custody in 2020. Recognizing the need for a holistic approach to public safety, Tucson’s Mayor, Regina Romero, and council developed the program to address the community’s wellbeing from multiple angles, beyond just law enforcement and first responders. Violence Interruption and Vitalization Actions, or VIVA, is a holistic, data driven, and evidence -informed approach to address gun violence at discrete locations across the city that have experienced high levels of gun violence.
