Characteristics Breakout Sessions

Characteristic #7
The arts are integral to civic dialogue and community building.

Definitions:
Civic Dialogue - is when citizens participate in public discussion and deliberation to inform and be informed about issues, policies and decisions that affect their lives, communities and society.
Community Building is an approach to improving conditions, expanding opportunities and sustaining positive change within communities by developing, enhancing and sustaining the relationships and social networks of those who make up the community.

Description:
This session is designed as a participatory exploration of the arts in community building and civic dialogue. Co-facilitators Richard Geer* and Bliss Browne* will engage participants in storytelling as a means to consider the nature of activity in this arena, barriers to achieving excellence and impact, and strategies for improving or increasing such activity. Bliss Browne of Imagine Chicago, Richard Harwood* of the Harwood Institute and artist/educator/activist Alice Lovelace* will respond to ideas and principles that arise from the stories and challenge the group with ideas and observations trends from their own experience. Participants will then have the opportunity to reflect with their peers and the full assembly. (* = see bios below)

Questions for consideration:
To develop this session, curators Maryo Ewell* and Barbara Schaffer Bacon* surveyed a national sample of generous and forthcoming community arts practitioners. The following are questions related to the role of the arts in civic dialogue and community building which they found worthy of reflection and discussion. Thee questions are presented here to stimulate thinking about this characteristic of a livable community -- The arts are integral to civic dialogue and community building.

Mission
What is the unique contribution the arts make to civic dialogue and community building, to the practice of democracy, and why is it critically important now?

What do community building and the work of arts orgs have in common? What distinguishes them? Where might they be in opposition?

What happens if the goals of dialogue or community building conflict with artistic goals? Can involvement in community building subordinate the arts to social goals, even if an arts organization does not believe that it is subordinating the arts?

Aesthetics
How should creative work developed in a community-building context be considered in a critical context? And by whom?

Who sets the expectations for what is art, what is "good" and "bad" in art?

What ethical issues arise from working in a community-building context? How is it different for artists than working in the studio? How is it different for cultural institutions? What changes? Should aesthetic standards be altered for work done in a community context?

Effectiveness
How should the value and impact of creative work developed in a community building context be assessed and measured?

How does the community building work of artists and cultural institutions build arts participation? arts accessibility? audiences?

What is the responsibility of arts leaders/organizations to follow through with the civic dialogue/community building initiatives they start or join?

Facilitators and Featured Speakers:
Dr. Richard Geer, Artistic Director and Founder, Scrap Mettle SOUL, is pioneering a new cultural category: community performance as community development and theater in the service of social justice. High Performance Magazine says Geer's work allows us "to draw nearer to the vital meaning of the presence of art in life." Founder of projects as different as Swamp Gravy in Colquitt, Georgia and Scrap Mettle SOUL, Geer has created over thirty original community based works in the past decade and moved audiences at the Olympics, the Kennedy Center and in neighborhoods around the country. Geer's work with Swamp Gravy was recognized as a prototype of arts-based civic dialogue in the essay "Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue." Geer received the Dorothy Norton Humanitarian Award for his work in Uptown and holds a PhD in performance studies from Northwestern.

Bliss W. Browne is the founder and president of Imagine Chicago. She is an ordained Episcopal priest, and was formerly a corporate banker and Division Head of the First National Bank of Chicago where she worked for 16 years. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, a Northwestern MM in Finance and a BA from Yale University. She is a former Director and Chairman of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, an Advisory Board member and past Chairman of the MidAmerica Leadership Foundation, Trustee of the Council for A Parliament of the World's Religions, Trustee of the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, and Advisory Board Member of Public Allies. She serves on the Chicago Historical Society's Community Advisory Board, the Illinois Fatherhood Initiative Advisory Board and the Voices for Illinois Children Committee of 100. Bliss has been a participant in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America. Bliss lives in Uptown and is the mother of three teenage children.

Richard C. Harwood is founder and president of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, a nonprofit institution whose mission is to be a catalyst for charting a different course for America's public life and politics. The Harwood Institute locates itself in a long-tradition of public-spirited organizations in American history that believed the nation and our people can do better. The Harwood Institute is about finding ways to strengthen public life and politics. Mr. Harwood has been listening to our national story and seeking to better understand the essence of changes in public realm and our public challenges. Through a series of innovative projects, Mr. Harwood has been a catalyst for change in how we understand what it means to engage Americans at this moment in history; what it takes to grow community strength; and how we see the connection between communities and schools. He has led the charge in rethinking the public conduct of political leaders, news media and citizens. Mr. Harwood is a frequent commentator and contributor on national and syndicated television, newspapers, radio and websites most recently including MSNBC, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN's Inside Politics, The Jim Bohannon Show, Special Report with Brit Hume, and C-SPAN. Harwood is also a faculty member of the Public Affairs Institute. Mr. Harwood's past experience includes service on the policy staffs of US presidential and congressional election campaigns and as director of issues research for Public Agenda. Mr. Harwood received his BA in Political Economy from Skidmore College. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and was a Harry S. Truman Scholar. He received his MA in Public Affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Alice Lovelace is a writer, educator, arts activist and performer. She is a candidate for a M.A. in Conflict Resolution from Antioch University. Awards include the 1997 Torchbearer Award from the Fund for Southern Communities for long-term commitment to social justice, and the 1996 Mayor's Fellowship in the Arts from the City of Atlanta. Her career as an artist-in-education began in 1975. Her work as a community-arts administrator began in 1978 when she organized the first (and subsequent) regional writers conference for the Southern Collective of African American Writers. Early outreach work with agencies like Grady Hospital, the Georgia and Alabama Arts Councils, Fulton County and Atlanta Boards of Education, and the Southeast Center for the Teaching of Writing at Georgia State University exposed her to a variety of rural and urban communities. This allowed her to work with teachers and with challenged and challenging students of all ages and races--including adults, the incarcerated and the disabled.

Curators:
Maryo Ewell is Associate Director at the Colorado Council on the Arts where she has been employed since 1982. Her responsibilities include providing information and assistance to any constituent residing in Greater Colorado (ie, the 57 non-Metro Denver counties), and managing grants and programs for the Greater Colorado half of the agency’s budget. Her specialty is in community development and the arts - the linking of the arts to the furthering of broader community ends. She has created the Neighborhood Cultures of Denver, now a self-sustaining organization in which artists are paired with community organizations in low-income areas of Denver; the Arts Education Equity Network, in which teams of educators and citizens devised ways for the arts to become increasingly prominent in their local schools; and a regionalized folk arts program in which the state’s four folklorists work, in part, in a community development capacity. She currently serves on the Colorado Rural Development Council and on the Multi-Cultural Advisory Committee for Western State College in Gunnison, where she lives. She has been a board member and Vice-President of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (now Americans for the Arts), a board member and officer of the Colorado Alliance for Arts Education, and on local committees.

Barbara Schaffer Bacon currently directs the Animating Democracy Initiative (ADI), a program of Americans for the Arts, Institute for Community Development and the Arts, funded by the Ford Foundation. Launched in fall 1999, ADI’s purpose is to foster artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. Barbara has worked as a consultant since 1990 and prior to that served as executive director of the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts. Her work, with partner Pam Korza, includes program design and evaluation for state and local arts agencies and private foundations nationally. She is an arts management educator, serving as a primary instructor for the Fundamentals and Advanced Management seminars, guest lecturer for the New York University Graduate Program in Arts Management, and as a senior faculty member for the Empire State Partnerships Summer Institute in arts education. Barbara has served as a panelist and adviser for many state and national arts agencies. Barbara has written, edited, and contributed to several publications including the revised edition of Fundamentals of Local Arts Management and The Cultural Planning Work Kit, published by the Arts Extension Service. Barbara is president of the Arts Extension Institute, Inc., a board member of the Fund for Women and an elected member of her local school committee.

Recommended Reading:
Coming Soon

Recommended Web links*:
Alternate ROOTS - Service organization composed of artists and organizations in the Southeast U.S. committed to the developing art with and inside communities (ROOTS = Regional Organization of Theaters South).
American Festival Project - AFP enables artistic collaborations together with communities that encourage the imagination of change and promote creative expression as a means to fight injustice in all its forms.
Americans for the Arts - Advocacy organization supporting more money for the arts, arts education for every child and community development through the arts; includes online research and policy database. Part of the Urban Institute's National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership.
Animating Democracy Initiative - Fosters artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue. This is a four-year initiative of Americans for the Arts with support from the Ford Foundation. This Civic Dialogue Resources section includes: Civic Dialogue Publications, Civic Dialogue Organizations, Democracy and Citizenship Organizations, Community Building/Renewal Organizations, Civic Education Organizations, Resources About Online Dialogue, Considerations Regarding Online Dialogue.
Arts and Cultural Indicators in Community Building Project - The Arts and culture indicators for use in local planning, policy making and community building-a projects of the Urban Institute (UI).
Art in the Public Interest (API) is a nonprofit organization that supports the belief that the arts are an integral part of a healthy culture, and that community-based arts provide significant value both to communities and artists. APInews is their monthly newsletter covering the field of community-based art.
Center for the Study of Art & Community - Association of business, government and arts leaders building arts partnerships in educational, community and social institutions. Founded by Bill Cleveland, author of "Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America¹s Community and Social Institutions."
Community Arts Network (CAN) - Promotes information exchange, research and critical dialogue within the field of community-based arts, that is, art made as a voice and a force within a specific community of place, spirit or tradition. The CAN project is designed and managed by a partnership of Art in the Public Interest and The Virginia Tech Department of Theatre Arts' Consortium for the Study of Theatre and Community.
Community Performance, Inc. - Production team that creates community-based, site-specific theatrical productions that re-build and re-discover community through the power of storytelling, led by Richard Owen Geer, founding director of Swamp Gravy.
Continental Harmony Project - A guide to American Composers Forum Millennium Project, commissioning new compositions in 58 communities in all 50 states.
The Harwood Institute - A nonprofit institution whose mission is to be a catalyst for charting a different course for America's public life and politics.
In Motion Magazine - A multicultural, online U.S. publication about democracy. Includes Art Changes: From Where I Stand. a column is co-edited by poet, writer and educator Alice Lovelace
Pathfinder - An online information resource for civil society organizations.
Swamp Gravy - Georgia's official "folklife play," based on the small town of Colquitt's oral history and performed by the people who live there; outstanding example of new community theater.
Webster's World of Cultural Democracy - Virtual think-tank to encourage activist study and exchange of ideas about cultural policy and development; operated by cultural-policy consultants Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard.

*Thanks to Art in the Public Interest - many of these links were drawn from their excellent collection.