Findings based on 228 grantmaker survey responses and 32 interviews suggest that arts and social change philanthropy is an emerging field and therefore still very much evolving. However, there is a wider range and a larger number of grantmakers supporting arts for change in some way than has been generally recognized. Focusing on grantmaking in the United States, the report characterizes the nature of support from both private and public sectors, examining how grantmakers think about social change in the context of agency goals and what outcomes they are looking for through their support.

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

Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a Skid Row-based theater organization, founded and directed by artist John Malpede. LAPD has distinguished itself by its longstanding commitment to making change in L.A.’s Skid Row community, particularly regarding the homeless, through theater-based civic engagement work. As part of Animating Democracy’s Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative, LAPD and Urban Institute senior researcher Maria Rosario Jackson engaged in research to develop a foundation to recurrently identify, monitor, and assess the cultural infrastructure of the

In recent years, county officials and residents of Ohio’s Allen County have been divided by issues of race, leadership, and water resources. Lima, the county’s largest city, suffered from the loss of industrial jobs and a declining tax base, shrinking population, and downtown and neighborhood decay. In the suburbs and rural farmlands, county residents have mistrusted city officials who have exercised control over needed water resources and have made moves toward annexing the county in order to revitalize the city. Issues of race have persisted over many years between the largely

This case study explores a year-long project in rural central Virginia and coordinated by Wintergreen Performing Arts, Inc. (WPAI), a music presenter primarily known for its summer classical music festival. In 2002, Preserving the Rural Soundscape linked together three separate elements. The first was the commission and world premiere of "Singing the Blue Ridge," a suite of songs by Dr. Judith Shatin, scored for electronic music, voice, and orchestra. The second element was a community dialogue process using a study circle to explore issues

The Poetry Dialogues project was a series of intergenerational workshops, presentations, and community dialogues that utilized contemporary and traditional poetry forms—including rap, spoken word, African jali (or griot) praise poetry, Muslim prayer-calling, and Filipino balagtasan—to engage audiences and communities in dialogue on self-defined issues. The Poetry Dialogues project was based on an exploration of dialogic poetry, the concept of poetry as dialogue and its potential to contribute to a broader civic dialogue. The project included: intergenerational dialogue

In her essay, “The Warhol: Museum as Artist: Creative, Dialogic and Civic Practice,” The Warhol Museum’s assistant director of education, Jessica Gogan, explores how museums can creatively operate in the cultural sphere as “civic engager.”  She does this through the lens of two projects: The Without Sanctuary Project and Andy Warhol’s Electric Chairs: Reflecting on Capital Punishment in America. The Without Sanctuary Project, conceived following two racially motivated killings in Pittsburgh, used historic photographic documentation of lynching

A growing number of colleges and universities are expanding and deepening the role that publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities, arts, and design can play in contributing to positive change in the communities and regions within which higher education institutions exist. This paper provides an overview of how this is happening, largely through mutually beneficial partnerships between campuses and communities. Such collaborations aim to leverage assets as well as tackle local problems through the unique capacities of humanities, arts, and design while enhancing faculty teaching and