Photo credits below
Last week, in Winds of Change, I began a series of posts sharing examples of established arts organizations committed to substantive community engagement. This week I am introducing another category for your consideration.
The arts began engaged with the communities they served. That’s the history of the field. The disconnect that is a foundational concern of this blog is 1) comparatively new, 2) a function of socio-economic evolution, and 3) largely limited to the not-for-profit arts industry and its cousins outside the U.S. The high visibility of the established arts community, at least among “movers and shakers” inside and outside the arts, has often eclipsed brilliant work being done at the grassroots (and higher) level by what I will call community arts practitioners. (My idiosyncratic operating definition of “community arts” is “arts-based projects intentionally designed to address community issues.”) Participants in this work, either historically or in the 1960’s and subsequent “revival,” know who they are. Those outside their world, especially those of us in the established arts community, often have no awareness of them. I plan to have a series of posts highlighting their work in order to widen awareness of their examples and, importantly, their “lessons learned” in how to link the arts with communities. I am going to call this series “Under the Radar,” not because the work is actually unknown, but because it existed (and to a certain extent still exists) outside the conscious awareness of the arts establishment.
I hesitate to name names because so many will be missed and because my own awareness of the field is limited. But a few come to mind to be sought out: Caron Atlas, Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Linda Frye Burnham, William Cleveland, Dudley Cocke, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Kathy deNobriega, Steve Durland, Maryo Gard Ewell, Arlene Goldbard, Pam Korza, John Malpede, Marty Pottenger. These are significant figures who have toiled for decades to make art meaningful in the lives of average citizens all over the U.S. and all over the world. Their work should be widely known by anyone hoping to make a life in the arts.
For this first foray “under the radar,” I want to highlight a recent series of interviews with William Cleveland that can be found on Barry’s Blog from last month. Bill directs the Center for the Study of Art and Community and is most recently the author/editor of Between Grace and Fear: The Role of the Arts in a Time of Change. [Disclosure: Bill has also contributed a revision of his article “Arts-based Community Development: Mapping the Terrain” to my book, Building Communities, Not Audiences.]
Bill is a deep thinker about the relationship between the arts and communities. I will paste below links to all three parts of the interview. As mere teasers, let me present a few of my favorite quotations. (I should also point out that in the interview Bill himself uses the phrase “under the radar” to describe some of this type of work over the last forty years.)
I would . . . argue that many arts organizations do not see themselves as active incubators for artistic or community cultural development. [Nevertheless,] [m]ore and more artists and arts organizations are recognizing that the ‘artist as genius-hobo-Martian narrative’ is a dysfunctional product of our community culture . . . . These creators see their work and their roles as part of a cultural ecosystem that can only thrive when it is woven into the broader fabric of community life.
I’m not just talking about community-based arts here. I’m talking about community-informed, community-responsive arts at every level. What do Willy Loman, King Hedley, and the Joad family have to say to job starved communities like Detroit and Fresno and Charlestown. What does a dance like Martha Graham’s, “Time is Money” or “Appalachian Spring” have to say about hard times and hard feelings in Des Moines or Tallahassee.
And who couldn’t love someone who not only knows but says the following:
Recession or no, this is still the only a place on earth where average annual expenditure for pink flamingo garden ornaments exceeds the budget of the national arts agency.
I invite you to spend the time necessary to consider this thought-provoking interview.
http://blog.westaf.org/2011/07/interview-with-bill-cleveland-part-i.html
http://blog.westaf.org/2011/07/bill-cleveland-interview-part-ii.html
http://blog.westaf.org/2011/07/bill-cleveland-interview-part-iii.html
Engage!
Doug
Interesting about the flamingos. I guess Americans understand what’s important… Though not so witty, I calculated an interesting statistic the other day. The New York City Opera has, in effect, gone bankrupt because it could not meet its recently lowered 22 million dollar budget. One percent of our 750 billion dollar military budget could fund 340 opera houses at 22 million a piece. Just one percent.
Doug,
You’re right there’s a great deal that exist “outside the conscious awareness of the arts establishment.” And to bring attention to this fact I applaud you. I also understand your hesitation about your examples, because of the bountiful community of cultural workers who are committed to equity and aesthetic in their practices. I’ve worked with the individuals you’ve mention and have a great deal of respect for them. Yet, your examples illuminate what is commonplace in the arts blog sphere – how the white racial frame operates in this sector with all its blindness. My list would include Maria Rosario Jackson, Maribel Alvarez, Josephine Ramirez, James Early, Jerry Yoshitomi, Jeff Chang, Jolene Rickard, Rha Goddess, Culture Clash, San San Wong – writers, artists and activists who not only engage with community issues but also engage with how race and racism operate in the sector. My concern is not so much the question about able being “under the radar” but the question of whose radar? Ultimately, community engagement is about looking deeply at the embedded racial framing at work in our society, with the elementary step being to unpack the white racial frame that operate in the cultural sector and the task of creating a counter-frame to this dominate and entrenched perceptive of our sector.
Roberto
Roberto,
First, simply, “Amen.”
As you graciously pointed out, I was not attempting to be thorough and confessed that I was primarily an outsider to this work. That said, as someone who spends a good bit of time trying to be aware of my own frames, this one slipped by. I was attempting to highlight an important category of work many do not know and stumbled into another issue. Community engagement must almost immediately address issues of race, ethnicity, and class. Cross-cultural awareness and an understanding of the legacy of privilege are vital. Thanks for assistance in creating a much richer list as well as for the lesson on how easy it is to forget the frames of reference in which we live and think.
For any who do not know it, let me recommend a recent article of Roberto’s: The Color Line and US Cultural Policy: An Essay with Dialogue (If the link does not work, here is the URL: http://namac.org/node/25774.)
You’re welcome. The white racial frame is the dominate ideology in our society…slippery to understand how it works especially in the politics of resources and positions at play in our field. And thanks for recommending the article it may provide your readers with some addition insight on how worldviews shape community and engagement.
Best
Roberto