Americans for the Arts

Joanna Chin

Community connections are being eroded on multiple sides. There are growing divisions amongst Americans on how to deal with our social, economic, and political problems. Technology is making it possible to never physically interact with another human being and warping the way we relate to one another. Small towns and cities alike are losing their sense of identity and facing crises involving lack of affordable housing and declining social services.

Perhaps in reaction to this erosion of community ties, there’s been an increased interest in cultivating civic engagement, placemaking, and change at a local level.

There is a growing body of evidence and examples of how communities have utilized local assets in order to begin to address this problem. We assert that the arts and culture have always had a place in this work of creating a sense of place, strengthening civic participation, and bolstering positive social change.

For this Blog Salon, we’ve dared our bloggers to answer big questions, like:

1. Where do you see breakthrough work at the intersection of art and community, civic, or social change? What makes it effective?
2. Looking to the future, what will it take to move and sustain arts and culture into its most potent role in community development, civic engagement, and social change?
3. What are the principles we have to hold onto and what are the shifts that need to occur?
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Maya Kumazawa

For the last two posts in a series on how the arts can foster community engagement, I interviewed Sara Potler, founder and CEO of Dance 4 Peace (D4P), a global peace education and civic engagement nonprofit that engages young people through dance and creative movement. Sara shared with me her perspectives on the arts, civic dialogue, and sparking social change through dance. You can read the first half of our interview on yesterday's post. Her are my final questions for her:

Q (Maya): How do you measure impact / what has been the impact so far?

A (Sara): At Dance 4 Peace, it has certainly been a fun challenge to measure how our program is creating peace in classrooms and communities. To measure our impact, we have thought long and hard about our vision of peace and broken this down into specific areas, such as anger management, physical violence, and appreciation of diversity. Using surveys and coded observations, we have been able to demonstrate real change as a result of our programming.

To date, our evaluations have shown that students who participate in Dance 4 Peace are less likely to choose physical or verbal violence when angry. On the flip side, they are 15% more likely to listen to others, 30% more likely to enjoy working in groups, and 25% more willing to try new things. In several schools, pre- and post- evaluations showed a dramatic decrease in tendencies toward physical and verbal violence. One school in DC, for instance, when given a case study of an NBA player punching a fan, 32% more students said this was not okay in the post-test than the pre-test.

For the last two posts in a series on how the arts can foster community engagement, I interviewed Sara Potler, founder and CEO of Dance 4 Peace (D4P), a global peace education and civic engagement nonprofit that engages young people through dance and creative movement.

D4P inspires a generation of leaders and peacemakers through an innovative curriculum that promotes empathy, mediation skills, anger management, and conflict resolution to instill social and emotional competencies for peace.

Sara shared with me her perspectives on the arts, civic dialogue, and sparking social change through dance.

Q (Maya): How can the arts create civic dialogue? And how does Dance 4 Peace serve as a leader for community engagement?

A: (Sara): The role of the arts in society has long been to start difficult, even disruptive conversations. Whether dance, or fine arts, or spoken word, these tools have been extremely valuable in bringing together communities around a single thought or idea and then inspiring them to take action.

Dance 4 Peace builds on this legacy of using the arts to spark social change. Our classroom activities involve students in civic dialogue, although we aim to use our bodies more than our words to express ourselves. As a leader in community engagement, we view our students and schools as active participants in shaping the curriculum and driving the choreography and creative movement in the classroom.

One of the "100 Faces of War" portraits by Matthew Mitchell

On September 11, 2001, the Animating Democracy team was on a conference call with New York-based colleagues when a faint newscast on one of their TVs emitted something about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

What started out as a call to fine tune preparations for a national convening of Animating Democracy grantees slated to be held two days later morphed inevitably into cancellation plans, then into disbelief and mourning with the rest of the country.

Two months later, we reconstituted our plan. More than 100 grantees and guests gathered in Chicago to resume our intended work of exploring the role of the arts in fostering meaningful and productive civic dialogue.

With 9/11’s still raw emotions beating in our hearts, we asked artists Marty Pottenger and Terry Dame to help us make sense of it all, particularly the questions that had begun to infiltrate the American psyche: What does it mean to be an American? What is your relationship to America right now? What course should the U.S. take?

Terry’s slow, distorted, eerie, yet beautiful rendition of "America the Beautiful," played on a homemade gamelon, created a different kind of space in which we moved ourselves physically, psychologically, and intellectually, guided by Marty’s creative facilitation around these questions.

This arts-based dialogue exemplified the potency of arts and culture to create a space, an invitation, and a spark for meaningful dialogue.

It was just what was needed as this collection of arts practitioners, leaders, and their community partners considered how they too could and would animate and strengthen democracy in their own communities around issues affecting people’s daily lives.

Maya Kumazawa

Having completed my internship at Americans for the Arts, I’m excited to take back what I’ve learned to my local community in Western Massachusetts.

Over 10 weeks, I worked on a wide range of projects that involved public art, local arts agencies, and emerging leaders. One topic, community engagement, is something I can be a direct advocate for even after the summer is over.

Through Net Impact’s Board Fellow program, I’ve served on Youth Action Coalition’s Board for the last year. The Arts for Change program at the Youth Action Coalition pairs intensive arts immersion with social justice education for youth. This program is free to any youth in the community interested in creating a change in the area through high quality arts programming.

How can the arts actually be used for social justice education and youth empowerment? YAC’s four primary programs engage different audiences through various media:

Candance Clement

In mid-June I flew from my tiny western Massachusetts town all the way to San Diego for the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention (click here for information on how to buy the Convention On-Demand). Though I have been to their annual advocacy day in D.C. before, this was my first AFTA event that wasn’t focused exclusively on policy. And though I may be able to slap the label “artist” on my life for all those hours I clock playing music in the DIY scene, I’m no “arts professional.”

That meant that I did a lot of listening for three days. As someone who tends to be a bit of a talker when I’m in my element, there’s something to be said for sitting quietly, absorbing, and identifying themes.

The conference brings together about 1,000 people from the arts world – most of them administrators from local and state arts councils, but many serving double duty in the world as artists, too.

Danielle Brazell

I run a local arts advocacy organization in a small fishing village on the west coast that’s home to 10 million people, 88 cities, and 81 school districts in a geography that spans thousands of square miles.

Yes, my little fishing village (aka Los Angeles) is massive!

Our advocacy approach has been high-tech/high-touch advocacy approach and is focused on three critical issue areas:

•    Arts Education
•    Cultural Economy
•    Civic Engagement

Within this context, I constantly ask the question: How can we connect more people to advocate for the arts in their community? I think the answer lies somewhere between community organizing and community development.

Sunoco volunteers helped paint three panels of a 42-panel mural as part of Philadelphia’s “This We Believe” city-wide mural project.

If I had to come up with a theme for the month of April, it would be the role of the arts in enhancing communities.

I spent time in Washington, DC, at our National Arts Advocacy Day on April 4-5, and then followed that with a trip to Philadelphia to attend the Council on Foundations annual conference and the U.S. Chamber’s Corporate Community Investment conference.

At all three of these events, arts and business leaders spoke about the important role the arts play in building strong and vibrant communities which leads to numerous benefits including attracting and retaining a strong workforce and enhanced civic engagement. 

Randy Cohen

Editor's Note: For a revised list of 10 REASONS TO SUPPORT THE ARTS IN 2012, head over to Randy's latest ARTSblog post!

I was recently asked by a major biz leader for “10 reasons to support the arts.”

He needed the points to help him pull an 8-figure inve$tment for a new arts center...Make it compelling to government and business leaders, he asked.

Oh, yeah, he’s a busy guy—didn’t want a lot to read:  “Keep it to one page, please.”

So, apart from the 10-1 flip (and with apologies to David Letterman), this is what I delivered:

10. True prosperity...The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, goodness, and beauty. They help us express our values, build bridges between cultures, and bring us together regardless of ethnicity, religion, or age. When times are tough, the arts are salve for the ache.

9. Stronger communities...University of Pennsylvania researchers have demonstrated that a high concentration of the arts in a city leads to higher civic engagement, more social cohesion, higher child welfare, and lower poverty rates. A vibrant arts community ensures that young people are not left to be raised solely in a pop culture and tabloid marketplace.  

Mara Walker

Last week I had the opportunity to see the arts at work in a few interesting ways.

I was invited by Frank Hodsoll to experience The Great Game: Afghanistan (a play that explores the history of the country and it's culture right up to present day) for an audience filled with military personnel at all levels, and representatives from the Department of Defense and Department of State. I heard from those federal leaders and Martin Davidson, head of the British Council, about how powerful the arts are as a mechanism for causing these key leaders to think about our involvement in Afghanistan in a new way.

On Friday, I heard Anna Deavere Smith talk at The Aspen Institute on "The Artist's Voice for Social Change" and her commitment to using characters and the arts to get people to engage in their communities. She combines her interviews with thousands of union leaders, political officials, members of the public, and so many others into powerful theater that begs us to think for ourselves and get involved.

According to the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers, giving circles are a growing trend in philanthropy that is rooted in tradition and here to stay. Also called donor circles, they are a relatively simple way for everyday people to pool their money and decide together where to give it away.  They have emerged over the last decade as a significant philanthropic trend among donors of all wealth levels and backgrounds. The Forum has identified more than 400 circles across the country engaging more than 12,000 donors, and giving close to $100 million over the course of their existence.

Giving circles, like the individuals who form them, are wide ranging—from a group of neighbors meeting around a kitchen table to loose networks to formal organizations.  A circle develops its resource by pooling funds from any combination of members’ own donations, fundraising events they produce, and/or solicitation of other individuals, businesses, or resources.

Animating Democracy has been learning about giving circles through research for our Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiative which has set out to identify and learn about who is funding work that employs art to advance social and civic change. Amidst traditional foundations and public sources where movement to fund this work is slowed by competing interests and a dire economy, giving circles offer a fresh alternative to consider.

How are funders—public and private sector alike—thinking about and supporting arts and culture as a strategy for civic engagement and social change? That’s what some funders and Animating Democracy want to find out as we launch a survey of local, state, and regional arts agencies, private and corporate foundations, and other funders as part of our Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiative. The survey for funders will be available online from December 1–18, 2009.

Some of our recent inquiries suggest a shift within the funding community to more support for the arts as a strategy to meet community change goals:

• The arts funding program officer within a community foundation is asked by trustees to make the case for sustaining an arts and civic engagement funding initiative only two years old. To help make her case, she wants to find out what peers have learned about impact of comparable grantmaking.
• A social justice funder is looking for examples of projects that employ arts and culture to address issues related to immigration. Learning about the role the arts can play will inform how to integrate arts and culture into grantmaking strategies.
• In line with a recent cultural plan, a local arts agency is revising guidelines and grant review criteria to encourage civic engagement through the arts. The agency wants to identify funders whose guidelines can inform their own.
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Earlier this week, I was able to attend the fall Cool Culture fair. Cool Culture is an organization that works with Head Start families to increase access to the arts. Founded by two dynamic educators, the organization has welcomed 50,000 underserved families in the New York City area to various cultural institutions. The organization uses a network of community liaisons to break down visitation barriers and provide free visits to New York’s cultural gems. This week’s fair was a chance for the Cool Culture stakeholders—child educators, community liaisons, and cultural organizations—to share best practices and highlights.

One of the highlights of the gathering was a panel describing partnerships between museums and early childhood programs throughout the city. A partnership between the Highbridge Nursery School in the Bronx and The Guggenheim Museum brought up some tactics that really reflect smart arts marketing. All of the panelists spoke wisely to the idea that entry barriers aren’t just for underserved children, they apply to all of us (and limit audience development for all of us).

written by Marc Pally

"Hey Dave!"
2009 Dave Clarke + team
photo: Marc Pally

All Night Long, not the Lionel Ritchie song but an art event called Nuit Blanche. First started in Paris in 2002 by a visionary mayor determined to bring contemporary art to the public’s attention and to integrate it into his agenda of re-energizing the French capital. The wild success of Paris’ Nuit Blanche prompted other cities to develop their own all-nighters, including Toronto, which just finished it’s fourth such event, called Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, in acknowledgement to the huge Canadian bank that provides core funding. The official tally is 130 projects including over 500 artists. This is a huge organizational effort undertaken by Toronto Special Events, a unit of the City of Toronto’s Economic Development, Culture & Tourism Division.

"Sounding Space"
2009, Karlen Chang, Dafydd Hughes, David McCallum
photo: Marc Pally

The projects ranged from the most humble, low-tech (no-tech) to the glittery display of hi-tech wizardry. The event (or “free all-night contemporary art thing” according to official marketing) was centered in three zones, all more-or-less downtown, though distances for some events were beyond comfortable walking. Bike riding was encouraged and seemed like a sensible way to handle the spread of the events between all three zones. Trolleys, buses and the subway ran all night. Within each of the three zones, it was very easy to walk from project to project. Good maps and a program guide were made available at four information centers. Great effort and success was achieved through www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca.

Five hundred miles northwest of nature’s scouring of the southern California landscape a planned burn is about to take place in the Black Rock desert of Nevada. At midnight August 31, the gates opened to hundreds of cars, RV’s and truckloads of people and arriving for the week-long Burning Man festival of art, self-expression, self-reliance, participation, and community.

Americans for the Arts featured Burning Man founder and director Larry Harvey at the 2007 Las Vegas Annual Convention. Harvey co-presented with artists Lady Bee, Louis Brill, and Leslie Pritchett discussing the interactive art of Black Rock City, the temporary experimental community of over 40,000 people that exists the week before Labor Day every year. Each year, participants bring art of all forms as well as materials to create more art during the week-long event. This year’s theme, Evolution, was posed to Burners, “What are we as human beings, where have we come from, and how may we adapt to meet an ever-changing world?”

What is Burning Man? According to their website, “Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.”

Six months ago, talk of the recession would have barely registered with 13-year-old QocTavia Shabazz of St. Paul. "When I think of the economy I relate that to politics, government," she says. "I think, 'That's not my problem. Why do I have to deal with it?' But it is my problem."

Her perspective changed after Twin Cities artists worked with QocTavia and three other teens to connect what's happening in the economy to what's happening in their personal lives, and then to express those experiences through song and video.

QocTavia, her sister Aunrika, Jalil Shabazz (no relation) and Tony Gonzalez met weekly with spoken word artist Desdamona and multi-media producer Patrick Pegg. The artists helped these young people to make sense of the economic downturn’s devastating impact on their lives through art.  The  project, called My First Recession, is a unique collaboration between Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that fosters civic engagement through arts and culture; American Public Media’s Public Insight Journalism initiative at Minnesota Public Radio, which cultivates diverse voices that deepen and enrich news coverage; and Neighborhood House, a multi-cultural center in Saint Paul. It was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

At the recent Americans for the Arts annual convention, Animating Democracy debuted a newly published essay by Ron Chew, former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle.  In “Community-based Arts Organizations: A New Center of Gravity,” Ron underscores the crucial contributions of small and mid-sized community-based arts organizations, often culturally specific, to the cultural ecosystem, to civic engagement, and toward achieving healthy communities and a healthy democracy.  He points out that these groups offer artistic excellence and innovation, astute leadership connected to community needs, and important institutional and engagement models for the arts field amid changing demographics, a new political climate, technological advances, and globalization.

We distributed the essay at several convention sessions, including two of the pre-conferences.  After only one day, we were amazed at how many people had already read it cover to cover (notable given jet lag, the convention’s juicy program, and Seattle’s enticing distractions) and gratified by the enthusiastic comments about the importance of what it has to say.

Tomorrow my eight-year old daughter will play Gretel in her summer camp production of "Fairy Tale Courtroom." She took an entire backpack of potential costume choices with her on the bus this morning. She figured out, additionally, that the bandana she was taking for her costume could serve double duty to keep her hair out of her face during her photography elective, in which she is—honest to God—using chemicals in a darkroom and developing actual black and white photographs.

Jon Hawkes, the writer, thinker, artist, and agitator from Melbourne, Australia attended the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention as the economic development innovator. Although he protested the categorization, I asked him to come under that mantle based on his great book of a few years ago called The Four Pillars of Sustainability, in which, trying to influence urban planners, he makes the case that cultural development is as important in a healthy community as social, economic and environmental factors.

How are these two paragraphs tied together? As part of Jon's path, he discovered that part of supporting a vibrant culture in any community is ensuring the ability for people to make art. To participate. That participation is not attending a concert or a museum, but making art. After writing the book, he spent ten years at the helm of a group called Community Music Victoria, an outfit dedicated to creating simple structures to bring people together to sing. Jon's leap from the conceptual to creating ways to support people making art was an inspiration.

I have a cat that is not quite one-year old. This seemingly has absolutely nothing at all to do with the subject of the state of public and cultural diplomacy in 2009, except that his habit of waking me pre sun-up when the birds start to sing by delivering a scratchy tongue to the nostrils, meant that on the morning when President Obama delivered his groundbreaking speech on Islam, I was in the kitchen making coffee, trying to remember why I like cats at all, and watching our President live, from Cairo, make history yet again.

Fortunately for my cat, I quickly became captivated by the seriousness of the message, and the profoundness of the moment. It seemed important to forget that it was five o’clock in the morning and the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, to listen to a speech that was premised on seeking a “…new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect…” No small task.

The Wing Luke Asian Museum is recognized within the field as a model of community arts programming and engagement for their long-term commitment to exploring issues related to the culture, art, and history of Asian-Pacific Americans. In this conversation with Cassie Chinn, Deputy Executive Director at The Wing Luke Asian Museum, get a taste of the story that staff from the museum, community members, and artists will share at the session in June. Cassie offers listeners perspective on the museum’s programming in June (definitely stop by and check out their new space if you’re able!), and gives listeners a good idea of the museum’s innovative model for partnership and programming through work with communities. Further, she offers listeners interested in replicating this work on the local level a few pointers on how to begin to think through philosophy and mind-set.

A recent article in the New York Times spoke about artists who were able to spend their time on creating art that they enjoyed rather than art that sold (Tight Times Loosen Creativity, 5/20/2009). A singer who didn’t have to perform the songs that others wanted to hear at their weddings, a painter who didn’t have to paint what was commissioned, a composer who had more time to be inspired, "It’s not paying the bills the way it did in the past, but there is more joy in it.”

It seems that the artists were suffering from a little bit of “mission creep” (to borrow a phrase from the non-profit sector). Yes, times are tougher - it is always better to earn a living and pay the rent. But, it seems that a few people are taking it as an opportunity to get back to what they enjoyed and what inspired them.

I woke up this morning all ready to come in and write about the recent NY Times article "Emancipated from the Shadows" (published April 17, 2009) --- as follow-up to my recent post about St. Augustine's Church, the slave galleries, and City of Memory's model to share story about place through technology. [The article is a short read and offers some great background (and a slide show), plus we find out the church will open the restored galleries for tour at the end of this month]. However, sitting down at my computer and looking through my email, I found a great posting from ArtsJournal on place-based public art in St. Helens (England), which I didn't want to lose!

A group of 14 miners - former workers at the Sutton Manor Colliery in St. Helens - working together with The Art Fund and the Arts Council of England, partnered with artist Jaume Plensa (well-known Spanish artist and sculptor --- his works inlcude Crown Fountain in Millenium Park in Chicago, and Blake in Gateshead atop the Baltic Center for Contemporary Arts in Gateshead, among many others) to create the new work, entitled Dream. Part of Channel 4's Big Art Project Initiative,  Dream is a 20-meter (or metre in this case?) high sculpture made from 90 panels of pre-cast concrete, precisely lowered into place (the last piece was added on April 21).

Gary Conley, a former miner says, "There'll never be another mine here and we didn't want the mine to die as a whole."

Plensa says, " When I first came to the site I immediately thought something coming out of the earth was needed. I decided to do a head of a nine-year-old girl which is representing this idea of the future. It's unique."  Check  out the brief article (and accompanying video) on BBC News UK.