PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY
Arts-based Civic Engagement [PDF coming soon!]
by Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon
Cultural Organizing: Experiences at the Intersection of Art and Activism [PDF coming soon!]
by Javiera Benavente with Rebecca Lena Richardson
Cultural organizing exists at the intersection of art and activism This paper explores the power of cultural organizing with examples of groups and individuals placing art and culture at the center of organizing strategies: organizing from a particular cultural identity, community of place, or worldview. Third World Majority collaborates with grassroots organizations in communities of color and indigenous communities to provide new media training that enables people to create media that speaks to their lived experiences and reflects their visions for their world. Raices activates the power of cultural identity to engage rural Latinos in forging solutions to the challenges their communities face. M.U.G.A.B.E.E. offers the transformative power of art to community-based initiatives rooted in struggles for justice and social change. Ricardo Levins Morales uses the power of visual symbols to magnify currents of power and possibility in community and social movement contexts.
COMMUNITY CENTERED ARTS & CULTURE
Folk and Traditional Arts and Social Change
by Betsy Peterson
Folk arts include a constellation of artistic activities and cultural expressions in community life that are informal, often popular in orientation, amateur, voluntary, and occurring in myriad social contexts. As expressions of deep cultural knowledge, creative expression, activism, cultural durability, and community values, folk and traditional arts can be tools for community empowerment and social change.
In this paper, author Betsy Peterson captures a range of cultural activity beyond familiar forms such as protest songs that use cultural tradition to explicitly address or mobilize public opinion on political or social issues. She characterizes subtle but potent ways that cultural workers, activists, and others intentionally draw upon folk and traditional arts and culture to name and interpret their own experience, to test their own boundaries, and to affirm a cultural continuity in the face of social concerns. Preservation in the form of cultural engagement and participation can be a form of place-based advocacy as well as an act of naming, resistance, and critical affirmation for communities whose cultural values, languages, and art forms find little support or recognition mainstream systems. Increasingly, individuals and organizations are employing ethnographic field methods of listening and observation and the tools of documentation in community development and planning processes, for cultural and creative capacity building, and in arenas of education, social justice, and mental health and healing. Folk and traditional arts can also create space for dialogue that enables full and authentic engagement with others. Examples highlight how folk arts organizations and their programs, through dialogue, foster intergenerational connection and understanding; broker conversation, opportunity, and access to resources; and link history to contemporary issues toward deeper understanding.
Building Worlds Together: The Many Functions and Forms of Arts and Community Development
by Lyz Crane
In this paper, Lyz Crane draws on the work of practitioners and researchers to characterize the field of arts-based community development in which arts and culture can help achieve place based change related to the physical, social, and economic dimensions of place. From the premise that the existence of arts is considered a powerful end in itself, Crane then outlines the variety of ways that the actors and activities involved in arts and community development work can relate to and interact with each other to create sustainable communities. Looking at the cultural ecology of place, creative economy development focuses on fostering local creative businesses and supporting creative workers both in the arts and in supporting industries while cultural development may focus on preserving cultural assets—traditions, language, stories—or on building on them to create stronger, more connected communities. There is also a complex community development ecosystem of organizations, interests, and tools. Stakeholders may involve arts in their agendas, create arts programming, provide or develop arts spaces, employ artists, and/or partner with arts organizations. Indeed, both the arts and community development are part of the same ecosystem and all of these interactions fall into the category of arts and community development.
Crane places different types of intersections on a passive-active continuum of presence, participation, and application. Prominent nodes of intersection between the arts and community development are identified: animating public spaces; activating public spaces; serving as an anchor or focal point; and serving as a planning engagement tool. Crane points out that, in terms of outcomes, there may not be much difference between an arts organization with a community-based program and a community organization with an arts-based program. Oftentimes, the choice of language has to do with their founders or how they are being funded. The difference in effectiveness between these two methods and even a third that is an equal arts organization–community organization partnership is only recently beginning to be explored.
Arts-based Community Development: Mapping the Terrain
by William Cleveland
The modern-day arts-based community development movement is founded on the belief that the arts can be a powerful agent of personal, institutional, and community change. Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the movement has grown from a very small and contained universe of intent and definition to become a widespread approach to both art making and community building. Many of the ideas considered radical in 1977 can now be found in the guidelines and policies of agencies and funders that serve communities. To effectively assess the current impact of these ideas, it is useful to look at the movement’s components, its shared assumptions, and the vocabulary used to describe the work.
This essay is a refreshed version of “Mapping the Field: Arts-based Community Development,” originally published in 2002 by the Community Arts Network. Included here, the essay holds up well in today’s context. It can be read in relation to another essay in this series titled, “Community Arts at Work across the U.S., 2010,” by Linda Frye Burnham, which offers current examples of exciting community arts projects, programs, and organizations.
Community Arts at Work Across the U.S.
by Linda Frye Burnham
In this paper, long-time community arts chronicler Linda Frye Burnham offers snapshots of selected projects that help capture the range of community arts projects and programs happening today. They are led by veteran and up-and-coming artists and cultural organizations; new forms of interdisciplinary collectives; and arts and community agencies working in collaboration. Examples demonstrate how single projects, repeated community events, and ongoing programmatic and organizational efforts can effect community, civic, or social change.
This paper may be read in tandem with “Arts-based Community Development: Mapping the Terrain” by William Cleveland, refreshed and reprised from his time-tested characterization of community-based arts, published in 2002 by the Community Arts Network. Cleveland offers a “map” that defines four neighborhoods of intention—to build and improve, to educate and inform, to inspire and mobilize, to nurture and heal. Animating Democracy has included the map in Frye Burnham's paper and located the community arts endeavors she describes on it by their corresponding number. The map gives a sense of the spectrum of community arts endeavors and the multiple ways in which such creative activity works to make change.
CONTEMPORARY ART
Socially Engaged Contemporary Art
by Nato Thompson
Artists who are committed to social justice through their work must navigate a complex contemporary art world characterized by numerous political positions and aesthetic expectations. In this paper, Nato Thompson observes two overarching approaches taken by artists—strategic and tactical—that operate against a political and economical infrastructure. Thompson describes successful examples in both categories, including sustained place-based work; culturally engaged radical pedagogy; engaged museums; engaged academic institutions; and a variety of work that raises questions rather than resolving them. Among the organizations highlighted as doing strategic socially engaged art are the Center for Urban Pedagogy and the Queens Museum; their efforts are infrastructural and sustained in a place over time. Artists highlighted as working through tactical and often guerrilla-style forms of intervention include Critical Art Ensemble and its Free Range Grain project and Paul Ramirez Jonas’ Key to the City implemented in partnership with Creative Time.
ISSUES & SETTINGS
Environmental Art
by Sam Bower
From an environmental perspective, we are living in transitional times; the practices we engage in now have far-reaching implications for the survival of the earth and all its life forms. “Environmental Art” is an umbrella term for a wide range of work that helps improve our relationship with the natural world. Art provides a lens through which to explore aspects of society--from urban food production, climate policy, watershed management, and transportation infrastructure to childhood education and clothing design--from an ecological perspective. This paper provides a brief history and salient examples of projects and practices in this field over the last several decades. Although primarily meant to provide a U.S. perspective of the Environmental Art movement, all of the work cited exists within a networked global system characterized by the rapid exchange of ideas.
Immigration: Arts, Culture and Media 2010 / A Creative Change Report
by The Opportunity Agenda
In fall 2009, The Opportunity Agenda launched an Immigration Arts and Culture Initiative with the goal of fostering arts, culture, and media activities that promote the inclusion, integration, and human rights of immigrants in the United States. As part of the initiative, this research study was conducted to identify examples of arts, culture, and media projects that effectively move hearts and minds, break down prejudice, inspire community engagement, and, in the long term, encourage public support for the fair treatment and inclusion of immigrants in American society. The study draws out theories of change with respect to cultural strategies, notions of best practices, challenges in arts and immigration work, and offers recommendations for those working at the intersection of immigration advocacy and the arts.
In contrast to some other social justice fields—health care reform or green jobs for example—immigration may be more inherently culturally based. By virtue of the immigrant’s path in life—moving from one culture to another, experiencing displacement—there is a compelling motivation to preserve, celebrate, and express one’s story and heritage. From films to theater to online video, from campaign-driven activist art to work that is more personally expressive or culturally celebratory; from high art to pop culture, commercial media to community-based arts, there is a rich and robust trove of creativity, diverse in form, content, audience, and intention.
Arts in Corrections
by Grady Hillman
Largely led by community artists and arts organizations with long-standing commitments to applied arts practice with diverse marginalized populations, arts in corrections assume varied forms and intentions. Arts programs provide expressive and reflective opportunities that enable the incarcerated to examine the trajectory of their lives. Arts and restorative justice programs are taking root in many states and communities, particularly with juvenile justice, providing offenders an opportunity to make restitution to those they have injured while learning the positive values and history of the places they reside, and then being accepted back into the community. There are promising practices that employ arts programming with adjudicated youth, some based in a philosophy of Positive Youth Development, others in a continuum of care philosophy including an array of prevention, intervention and after-care programs. Many juvenile justice programs operate in correctional education venues. Hillman points to a growing trend within universities in which partnerships between community arts training and schools of social work, sociology, and criminal justice are preparing artists and others for arts in corrections work while directly offering programs in prisons.
The paper provides historical background regarding organized arts programming in prisons and charts changes in the prison system that have resulted in diminished arts programs for adult males, sustained programs for women inmates, and expanded programs for juvenile offenders. He also notes documented impact of arts in corrections programs in reducing recidivism, the incidence rate of misbehavior within correctional institutions, anti-social behaviors in youth, enhancing educational achievement, and producing many other positive economic, social, and personally transformative outcomes.
Arts in Healthcare: 2009 State of the Field Report
by The Society for the Arts in Healthcare
Arts in healthcare is a diverse, multidisciplinary field dedicated to transforming the experience of healthcare by integrating the arts into a wide variety of healthcare and community settings. This report outlines the various ways that arts have contributed to improved quality of care for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to mental health to chronic disease as well as the well being of an increasingly aging population. It also describes the role of arts in fostering a positive environment for caregivers that can reduce stress and improve satisfaction and employee retention. Arts in healthcare are also discussed for their benefits to communities by engaging people in arts programs aimed at promoting prevention and wellness activities and communicating health information to improve knowledge. The report points to growing evidence of economic benefits. Arts in Healthcare provides an update to a 2003 report that was based on a gathering of 40 experts in medicine, the arts, social services, media, business, and government convened by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Society for the Arts in Healthcare.
History Organizations and Engagement [PDF coming soon!]
by Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon with the Heritage Philadelphia Program
The past is indeed always with us, and historic sites, history exhibitions and programs, anniversaries and commemorations, and heritage tourism efforts offer great potential for examination of contemporary civic and social concerns with history as a catalyst. This paper adapts a report developed in 2007 and 2008 for the Heritage Philadelphia Program (HPP), a think tank and funding organization that supports excellence and imagination in public history practice in the Philadelphia region. The paper provides a snapshot of the state of history organizations nationally at the time; looking at leading edge interpretive public programming models and directions that engage publics and communities in meaningful ways. Multiple Appendices include profiles of history organizations and projects that reflect exemplary interpretive and program practice in the field.
Exemplary engagement practices include: building relationships and situating history organizations genuinely as civic and community institutions by relating history to personal experience and contemporary issues; including multiple “truths” and viewpoints; and sharing authority with community members as advisors, informants, and co-developers of exhibitions. Vital intersections between history and community and civic engagement are especially evident in: youth and teen programs; in programs and projects that link the power of arts with history; the integral use of story and narrative; the explicituse of collections, exhibitions, and public programs to foster civic engagement or dialogue; and tapping popular culture and technology.
POPULAR CULTURE
Popular Musicians as Allies in Social Change
by Erin Potts
Musicians are powerful allies who leverage their activities in ways that amplify the messages and strategies of social justice movements and that draw the necessary resources—creativity, targeted audiences, press, funding—to make change possible; they do this best when they have support, strategy, and tools.
Inspired by a desire to work on social change and to help raise money for the causes and issues they care about, musicians are contributing publicly in powerful and concrete ways: They lend their celebrity to movements and issues. Their creativity inspires people to think differently about the world, and they have a level of influence and reach in society to convene and activate people. Some examples: will.i.am’s song and video “Yes We Can,” released during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign; Farm Aid’s concert-based and online advocacy efforts on behalf of family farmers; Airborne Toxic Event’s song, “Neda,” important to the democracy revolution in Iran; the education of fans about using carpool and public-transit to reduce band-tour carbon emissions footprints; and the use of mobile technologies to engage concertgoers in activism.
Musicians need smart partners, resources, strategy, and support to reach their full potential as artist-activist allies in social justice movements. Activism needs to be integrated into the music business, and opportunities to support musicians in the record cycle need to be pursued.
Media for Creative Change: The Role of Popular Media in Advancing Social Change
by Sarah Ingersoll
Popular media—film, television, celebrity, online games, and online videos—is a powerful way for the creative community to depict critical social issues and engage people in contributing to social change. This paper focuses primarily on popular media examples that combine social message, narrative, and outreach tactics into intentional strategies to influence behavior and support broader-systems reform. Emphasis is on for-profit media in partnership with nonprofits. Examples include: Bono’s (U2) Product Red fundraising effort to benefit the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Participant Media’s and Active Voice’s partnership on a social action campaign around immigrant detention issues related to the film, The Visitor; and online games and video such as Darfur is Dying and The Meatrix.
Common current issues addressed in popular media are the environment, voting, education, children, health (especially cancer), war, and emergency relief, with the goal of “doing well and doing good;” in other words, earning money and having a social impact. Popular media’s potential for huge reach creates opportunities to provide information and education, resulting in increased awareness and knowledge of, and discourse around issues. The most common strategy is through a message: what actors or celebrity spokespeople say about an issue. Another way popular media can address social issues is through narrative, how the story—fictional or documentary—frames the issue. Tactics implemented in relation to creative media, such as use of social media, fundraising for causes, or strategic outreach campaigns, can effectively influence action.
MEDIA ARTS
Open Space Documentary
by Helen De Michiel
Open space documentary is an emerging framework for community-based media. Intentional participatory media experiments are proliferating across rapidly developing and evolving distribution platforms. New technology and social media have quickly created biodiverse habitats where artists are able to test how media can communicate stories, imagine social change, and function as a dynamically evolving participatory “open space.” Instead of national or global definitions, the open space documentary model frames hyperlocal and community-based media practices as key to bringing people with diverse interests together.
Three examples of media projects exemplify the spirit of open space documentary; they are intentional media arts projects seeking to influence other areas of social change, from local to national. Saving the Sierra is a transmedia regional documentary project of rural responses to urban development pressures. The Precious Places Community History Project is a video-based history of Philadelphia and the surrounding region. Open Minds Open Mouth is an evolving open space documentary project in Berkeley that encourages a social media community to grow around Lunch Love Community; its intentional organizing principle is to set up and encourage ongoing dialogue and connection on a local human scale.
YOUTH
A Youth Media Agenda for Social Justice
by Diana Coryat
Youth media is a diverse array of practices in which young people collaborate with artists and educators to express themselves creatively, communicate with peers across borders, and participate in community dialogue and problem solving. Social justice-focused youth media facilitates a root-cause analysis of “why things are the way they are,” has a vision of a more just and equitable society, and uses media to contest dominant narratives and to support systemic change.
The process of creating and presenting media can be transformative for youth, educators, communities, and audiences. Pressing issues of our times are addressed, such as the uncertainty faced by undocumented youth, discrimination against transgender youth, and the daily harassment of youth by police. In response to these conditions, young people lead processes of analysis, research, and community dialogue. They articulate their perspectives and join in national, even global dialogues. Moreover, the media they produce contribute to a more pluralistic, democratic media environment. Youth media projects can be found in urban, rural, and suburban neighborhoods; most are deeply rooted in their communities. Youth media is most likely to impact people, communities, and policies when it achieves a mix of several factors: It is well crafted aesthetically, tells a compelling story, has a strong social justice component, is produced to coincide with a specific campaign, and cultivates relationships with partners who can use the media widely.
The All-Ages Music Movement: How It Impacts Culture, Civic Engagement, and Leadership
by Shannon Stewart
In towns all across the United States, young people are using music and art to make interesting, creative, and positive things happen in their communities. They are punks, rappers, educators, singer-songwriters, artists, and community organizers who carve out safe creative spaces for people to come together. This paper by Shannon Stewart characterizes youth-based music organizations that are fostering civic engagement through music. Stewart provides a current view of these groups as preface to the 2007 All-Ages Movement Project Project Report.
The All-ages Movement Project (AMP), a network of organizations that connect young people through independent music and art, is focused on personal and community transformation facilitated by youth-driven cultural organizations engaged in popular music and art. These community-based organizations connect youth through cultural creation and production. Their cultural influence is examined in three areas of interest: cultural products, civic impact, and alternative leadership development opportunities. These organizations contribute to cultural and social change through producing independent culture, nurturing an ethic of civic engagement, and incubating strong youth leaders.
