CAT Institute

Last year I had the good fortune to attend a conference, At the Crossroads, hosted the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. There I met or got re-acquainted with a number of people active in the community arts movement. I also had the opportunity to get some first-hand insight into a unique program, RAC’s Community Arts Training Institute. CAT, begun in 1997, provides participants intensive training over five long weekends in how to connect the arts and communities. The curriculum covers topics from resource development to partnership building to cultural competency and understanding of power and privilege.

I’ve been hard-pressed to decide whether CAT belongs in my category of Under the Radar (not widely known in the arts world, largely focused on community) or Winds of Change (established arts organizations actively engaged with community). Certainly, RAC is an establishment organization. It is a large institution on the national arts scene that through this program is deeply engaged with the St. Louis region. At the same time, CAT, while staff members of mainline St. Louis arts organizations are both students and instructors, has a strong emphasis on community. In my limited conversations in St. Louis, it appeared that most CAT students were either individual artists or staff members of (non-arts) community service organizations. Plus, it is not nearly well-enough known for its work. Therefore, I took the easy way out and call it both.

Among the many things I find attractive about CAT are the acknowledgement that substantive community engagement requires specialized training (workers in this area need to understand communities and their personal limitations); the fact that developing skills and putting them into practice takes time–there are no quick fixes; the program actively seeks out community participants; and RAC is committed to this work on a deep level. Even when external funding has not been found for the program, RAC has funded it out of institutional resources. Plus, there is a commitment of staff time and grant dollars from RAC for the work of (and that grows out of) CAT. For a good look into the program, see a recent blog post on art:21, an interview with Roseann Weiss. (Disclosure: Roseann is writing a chapter about CAT for Building Communities, Not Audiences.)

The only disappointment I feel in writing about CAT is that there are not more cities and towns in the U.S. that have picked up on the example. This is work that has been paying dividends in arts support and arts activity in St. Louis. Think on these things.

Engage!

Doug