WonderRoot art lock-in for displaced youth, Atlanta artists

It’s easy enough to imagine that when a group of young creative folks get together and open a gallery / music venue / community space that the actual “community” being considered may likely consist of no greater a demographic than the immediate social and artistic networks of the people running the space. This wouldn’t be entirely wrong of you to consider; it’s commonly true. In fact, when I’m traveling and someone tells me I “totally have to check out” some “amazing community center / something else / something else” in an unfamiliar city, my mind immediately goes to the dark place, where “community space” means “a relatively closed circle of half-assed creative types perpetrating half-baked projects while getting fully-drunk, with little or no regard for the community-at-large at all”.

This is why we should all blow little air kisses to WonderRoot when we drive by their Memorial Drive space. In the past few years, they’ve done wonders (accidental pun, but it stays) to chip away at some of my “community space” cynicism and replace it with a renewed comforting, warm, energizing belief that there might be endless pockets of positive community activism astir all over. While their basement is one of the more cramped, sweaty places to watch live music in the city (not that it stops me from going), and I’m constantly feeling too close to tall, bearded hipsters in their narrow hallway during art openings (okay, maybe that’s part of why I go), they reliably go above and beyond when it comes to backing up that ubiquitous mission statement standard, community.