Community Arts

Culture in Crisis: Deploying Metaphor in Defense of Art

March 21, 2015 by admin

This article was adapted from an article originally published in Poetics in 2014.

March 21, 2015 by admin

March 2015, 44 pages. The Kresge Foundation, 3215 W. Big Beaver Road, Troy, Michigan 48084, (248) 643-9630, http://kresge.org

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October 20, 2014 by admin

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Redefining Expectations for Place-based Philanthropy (10.2 Mb)

This article discusses how The California Endowment has used a midcourse strategic review to refine Building Healthy Communities, aiming to provide insight for other place-based initiatives and to add to the body of knowledge about how to support transformative community change.

June 30, 2014 by admin

As they always have, artists are working in, with, and for communities. They are working as animators, cultural organizers, and teaching artists and in a myriad of other roles. They are making work in community settings by choice. For many, this work is their central creative practice, while for others, it is a dimension or portion of their work. Interest, opportunity, and training for community-based work are growing despite the fact that such work is often underfunded and the artists are poorly paid.

Disrupting the Status Quo

June 30, 2014 by admin

Marco Sanchez was in the third grade in 2010 when the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory (SDYS) launched the Community Opus Project in Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD). Participating in the after-school El Sistema–inspired music program, Marco went home from his Community Opus sessions two days a week and taught his younger brother Rodrigo what he was learning in class. This was not unusual for a Community Opus student, who has been immersed in a program that encourages peer teaching as a cornerstone of its pedagogy.

I Hate Classical Music

June 30, 2014 by admin

For several years my brother, Alex Laing, principal clarinetist for the Phoenix Symphony, and I, senior program officer at the Heinz Endowments, have been having often intense conversations, where my brother probed the thinking behind Heinz Endowments’ grantmaking that placed an emphasis on African and African diasporic culture, distressed neighborhoods, and teaching artists. Heinz Endowments, having taken the advice of Anasa Troutman of the consulting firm Lion and Butterfly, has begun to call this work transformative arts education.

Four Rural Poets for GIA

June 30, 2014 by admin

Writing is a solitary pursuit, and writers are often depicted as hermit-like figures. Rural writers, however, unlike their more urban counterparts, face an additional kind of isolation: they have few opportunities to rub shoulders with other writers and few, if any, chances to attend readings. For young writers, the isolation is particularly acute. Role models are absent, and even the idea of being a writer can be so foreign as to never enter their heads.

Small Is Beautiful

June 29, 2014 by admin

Even folks entirely unfamiliar with the concept of creative placemaking intuitively grasp the potential for artist spaces to catalyze revitalization, and mural projects to animate vacant walls. The usual mental backdrops, however, are down-and-out urban neighborhoods.

March 3, 2014 by admin

Stefan Ways, 2013, The Raven

September 16, 2013 by admin

Paul VanDeCarr. 2013, 42 pages, Working Narratives, http://workingnarratives.org/project/story-guide/.