Arts Integration as Pathway to Unity in the Community: The (Ongoing) Journey of Pillsbury House + Theatre tells the story of how a nonprofit theater and a social service agency rediscovered their shared history and unified operations to become a Center for Creativity and Community. The report cites continual assessment as one factor of success for the merged organization and includes information on its evaluation efforts.
The study documents what happens as the staff attempts to embed the arts in almost every aspect of the organization including: comprehensive and authentic...
Battery Dance employed a pre and post program participant survey to assess its program, Dancing to Connect - Iraq. In doing so, the dance company and the program participants explored areas of self-expression, attitude and perception changes, and conflict resolution. Three attached documents provide more detail of these evaluation tools: 1) a final program report, 2) an executive summary of an evaluative report with survey questions and results, and a graphical representation of survey results. Working collaboratively with American and local partners, Battery Dance Company of New York used...
Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans' changing behavior, the author shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures -- whether they be PTA, church, or political parties -- have disintegrated.
This extensive online guide and Powerpoint presentation is a comprehensive yet basic manual written for trainers and facilitators. Presented in user friendly language, the guide is almost like an encyclopedia for evaluation. It is also a teaching and facilitating resource for community-based programs and organizations. The graphics and language used are slightly dated, but the ideas are well presented. It provides 93 activities and materials for practitioners working in and with community-based programs and can be used in building the capacity of individuals, groups, and organizations to...
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This reflective essay documents the context, content, and unique circumstances of go_HOME, an international artist residency intended to generate dialogue about issues of exile and displacement. The project was centered in conceptual art, operated globally as well as locally, and experimented with real and virtual dialogue. In her role as Animating Democracy's project liaison to go_HOME, Pearlman observed the project as it unfolded. She engaged with organizers and artists in joint inquiry to draw insights and deepen understanding about the work of arts-based civic dialogue along a...
This case study documents the pilot phase of Junebug Productions’ Color Line Project, a long-term national endeavor that combines performance and community story-collecting in an effort to revitalize Civil Rights Movement history as a valued and illuminating context for current issues of race. Using story circles methodology as a dialogue form, artist John O’Neal and a national organizing team worked over several months with local scholars, activists, and partner organizations to collect stories of local people's involvement in and understanding of the movement. Local...
Throughout the Animating Democracy program, we have seen multiple approaches in exploring the meaning of civic dialogue. Dance Exchange’s project—analyzing the kinds of dialogue in which the company engages as they develop work in a community setting—gave us a deep insight into art itself as a form of dialogue. The following report offers an outstanding example of a highly respected group that looked deeply into their practices, then found ways to reflect and share those practices in the context of the Animating Democracy construct. It is rich with sidebars, and offers a...
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Written for Animating Democracy's Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative Working Group, this 14- page paper presents a conceptual framework (or logic model) for arts-based engagement. It offers a discussion of the components of the framework, and a list of questions to guide research explorations. It defines and gives examples of each element: programmatic initiative in terms of the core arts element and related civic/social purpose; context; implementation choices and actions; intermediate effects (individual, collective, and community capacity building); and social and/or civic...
In his essay, Erik Takeshita, Program Officer for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) in the Twin Cities, explores the experience of MicroFest: New Orleans and observes that art requires four characteristics to have a positive, sustainable impact on community: Residents and communities are the agents of change, not the targets of change….Art is at the center….Place matters….Art works across sectors and is collaborative. Based on a panel held in the St. Claude neighborhood, he examines common issues in community development: the role of race in community...
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...
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Social Change
Social change is a broad umbrella to encompass a range of typical social and civic outcomes from increased awareness and understanding, to attitudinal change, to increased civic participation, the building of public will, to policy change that corrects injustice. Acknowledging that social change must start with the individual, the term emphasizes impact that happens at a broader institutional, group, or community level.