Project Description
The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center (CMAC) presented the first year of The Arts and Dialogues on Race Series in 1998-99. The initiative evolved out of CMAC's long history of programs that tackle difficult issues of race and bigotry through the powerful language of the arts. CMAC recognized an unmet need within the local community for honest conversation about the cultural and ethnic differences that divide people. The Arts and Dialogues on Race Series responded to the need for safe, honest, public dialogue. Each of the programs in the series presents a thought-provoking topic introduced through a performance and a visual art exhibition that is then publicly discussed with a panel of scholars, artists, community leaders, and audience participants. The first programs included: "The Latina Woman Speaks," "Reality on the Big Screen," and "What is the Color of Beauty?"

Civic Engagement/Dialogue Activities
In 1997, CMAC convened a series of community dialogues, facilitated by a professional mediation group to identify and discuss pertinent racial issues in the community and how best to encourage people who do not consciously address racial issues to participate in the program. Community leaders, neighborhood residents, artists, students, and scholars met monthly.

While audience participation was strong in the first year, CMAC continues to challenge itself to reach out to new and diverse community participants, in large part through partnerships with other organizations as co-presenters. CMAC leaders have observed various obstacles to participation including discomfort talking about bigotries; overexposure of the issue and a related desire not to hear more; and lack of time based on the immediate struggles and demands of every day life.

Related to the actual dialogues, CMAC also observed that participants were often frustrated at not having the opportunity to ask all their questions, voice their opinions, or explore specific areas of the conversations more deeply. To address this, CMAC planned informal meetings for audience participants to have additional opportunity for dialogue. Perhaps the greatest challenge for the series has been going beyond the easily expressed "mantras" of diversity and racial equality to an honest expression of how racism and bigotry affect individuals. Throughout, CMAC has based its programs on the premise that the arts can describe and present ideas with greater poignancy and beauty than any other means of communication.

Information Sources
Interviews, Jim Field, former CMAC director; Judilee Reed, CMAC development director; CMAC program materials.