Keep up-to-date on Animating Democracy activities, arts-based civic dialogue programs around the country, and related news. Also check out and register for the monthly Animating Democracy E-News.
At the Crossroads: A Community Arts and Development Convening March 25, 2010— Join approximately 150 practitioners and their partners in arts-based community development programs and collaborations for At the Crossroads: A Community Arts and Development Convening. Hosted by The Community Arts Training Institute at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, this dynamic conference is designed to examine new paths and crossways for the arts in these changing times. To register, visit www.regonline.com/checkin.asp?eventid=786585.
In addition, join Animating Democracy for a Special Pre-Convening Workshop, What Difference Are We Making? Assessing Social Impact of Arts for Community Change on Thursday, March 25. This creative interactive workshop will feature artist Marty Pottenger and evaluator Chris Dwyer of RMC Research who teamed up on a joint learning and evaluation design adventure around Marty's work with the Arts & Equity Initiative in Portland, ME.
Learn lessons from the Arts & Equity case study and how to use this framework in your arts for change work. This workshop will help you focus on measuring what matters, turn anecdotes into credible qualitative evidence, and determine reasonable data collection methods. You'll also see how the framework, used over time, can help you make the case for the role of the arts in making social change in your community. Animating Democracy Co-Directors Barbara Schaffer Bacon and Pam Korza will introduce resources and other findings from the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative.
For more information about At the Crossroads, contact convening@stlrac.org or visit www.art-stl.com/convene.
Joyce Foundation Renews Support for Americans for the Arts' Professional Development Fund for Emerging Arts Leaders of Color from the Great Lakes Region June 16, 2009— Applications are now available. The deadline for submission is August 14, 2009. Click here forapplication materials and eligibility information.For more information, contact Stephanie Evans via e-mail at leadership@artsusa.orgor by phone at 202-371-2830 ext 2036.
Writings from the Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative is supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Watch in the coming months for additional writings and Arts Impact Online, a new online resource center.
“Shifting Expectations: An Urban Planner’s Reflections on Evaluating Community-based Arts” by Maria Rosario Jackson, senior researcher, Urban Institute Based on 13 years of national research on integrating arts and culture into concepts of healthy communities, Jackson observes how sound and worthy community arts programs with social and civic intention are often saddled with unrealistic expectations about the impacts that they might have on a community and the ways in which such impacts might be proved. In this paper, Jackson argues for a shift toward more realistic expectations of social impact and evaluation of arts-based civic engagement both on the part of practitioners and funders. The paper also provides recommendations for practical ways of moving towards and operationalizing that paradigmatic shift.
“Civic Engagement and the Arts: Issues of Conceptualization and Measurement” by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert, Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania Based on a literature review drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and public policy, Stern and Seifert suggests documentation and evaluation strategies that artists, cultural and community organizations, philanthropists, and public agencies could take to improve the quality of knowledge about the social impact of arts-based civic engagement work. Their paper offers practical considerations for evaluation in areas of methodological issues and data collection strategies. Stern and Seifert offer recommendations for evaluating effects of arts-based civic engagement at the program, regional, and initiative scales.
“Arts and Civic Engagement: Briefing Paper for the Working Group of the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative” by M. Christine Dwyer, RMC Research The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative is informed and guided by a Working Group of arts practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and funders with keen interest in understanding the social and civic impact of arts-based civic engagement work. This briefing paper, prepared by Chris Dwyer, offered the Working Group a “springboard” for discussion at the outset of the initiative. The conceptual framework depicts a systematic way to examine how arts-based civic engagement endeavors actually influence or produce important effects and impacts—a working theory of social efficacy. The model guided examination of the “lived” experiences of Working Group members. For the purposes of the Initiative, the paper helped establish common terminology; surface core questions and interests in areas of social impact evaluation and case making for arts-based civic engagement work; fine tune purpose and focus; and prioritize the research agenda.
In addition two new essays from the Ford Foundation supported Exemplar Program have been posted for review.
“Community-based Arts Organizations: A New Center of Gravity” by Ron Chew, principal, Chew Communications Amid changing demographics, a new political climate, technological advances, and globalization, small and mid-sized community-based arts organizations offer artistic excellence and innovation, astute leadership connected to community needs, and important institutional and engagement models for the arts field. This essay by Ron Chew, former long-time director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, makes the case for greater support of this important segment of cultural organizations. Chew underscores their crucial contributions to the cultural ecosystem, to civic culture, and toward achieving healthy communities and a healthy democracy. This essay was developed for and supported by the Exemplar Program, a program of Animating Democracy in collaboration with the LarsonAllen LLC, with funding from The Ford Foundation.
“A Time of Crisis, A Moment for Art: Sojourn Theatre and the Lima Senior High Dialogue Project” by Judith E. Gilbert, Martha S. MacDonell, and Mary F. Weis This case study documents Sojourn Theatre Company’s intervention at Lima (OH) Senior High School following a tragic shooting in 2008 that resurfaced racial tensions in the community. Lima City Schools enlisted Allen County Common Threads, a locally based volunteer group promoting arts-based civic dialogue and Sojourn Theatre Company to implement an immediate arts-based project to help students process the tragedy. Sojourn interviewed students, and wrote, performed, and recorded theatrical monologues expressing student perspectives on the incident and the racial tensions exposed by it. The recorded monologues became the centerpoint for school-wide dialogue facilitated by Common Threads volunteers. The case study describes the role artists can play in a crisis as well as the challenges of the fast pace dictated by crisis. It also underscores the continued value of arts-based civic engagement in this one community over time, and the importance of artistic and financial resource for immediate crisis response.
Renewable Resources: Arts in Sustainable Communities will convene arts and cultural professionals from across the country in Seattle to network and participate in over 75 field-crafted sessions—including the Civic Engagement track, curated by Animating Democracy.
Sessions in the Civic Engagement Track will present innovative practices, new research, and evolving models to help position artists and arts organizations as leaders and partners in advancing civic participation and a culture of engagement. Featured Innovator Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder and artistic director of Urban Bush Women, will offer an inside look on this ground-breaking dance company’s investment in fostering civic and community engagement in its own community of Brooklyn through programs and its summer institute. Check out the Convention website for more details on sessions to be presented and registration deadlines!
New from Animating Democracy: The Arts & Civic Engagement Tool Kit Order Your Copy Today! November 21, 2008—Developed for and from the Arts & Civic Engagement workshops offered by Animating Democracy, this new resource includes customizable worksheets and tools to help users plan, design, and partner to create meaningful engagement activities.
Animating Democracy is pleased to announce the release of a new field resource: The Arts and Civic Engagement Tool Kit: Planning Tools and Resources for Animating Democracy in Your Community. The CD features customizable worksheets containing thoughtful questions, clarifying sidebars, and examples to help users plan, design, and partner to create meaningful engagement activities. Resources on the CD include:
A context for understanding the possibilities at the intersection of art and civic life;
Definitions of common terms and diagrams to situate arts-based civic engagement work in a broader context of arts and community engagement;
Imagine, Define, Design—a series of worksheets designed to help users define a project’s core artistic elements and civic or social concern;
Worksheets on forging effective partnerships;
A framework to create meaningful dialogue at arts events; and
A compilation of civic engagement resources including organizations, websites, and publications.
Through December 31, 2008, order a copy of the Arts and Civic Engagement Tool Kit and a copy of Civic Dialogue, Arts and Culture: Findings from Animating Democracy together, and receive 15 percent off your complete order. To order a copy of this extraordinary resource, contact the Americans for the Arts store at 800.321.4510.
Arts and Civic Engagement Audio Blogs Posted Online Arts and Civic Engagement Track Audio Blogs May 27, 2008—As part of the Civic Engagement Track at the 2008 Americans for the Arts Convention, Animating Democracy is offering a series of audio conversations with practitioners and professionals who will convene sessions at the event. Posted audio blogs include:
an exchange with Nora Berger Green, theater programs producer at the National Constitution Center and David Bradley, living news director exploring their innovative use of theater to engage local youth around questions of citizenship and civic participation through the lens of the Constitution; and
a discussion with Amy Skillman, Institute for Cultural Partnership’s vice president and director of arts and heritage programs, and Laura Marcus, independent consultant and folklorist, which addresses ways in which arts and cultural professionals can partner with social service agencies to assist recent immigrants in the resettlement process towards building local community, while maintaining connections to their countries of origin.
More information about the Civic Engagement track, as well as other tracks and sessions at the 2008 Convention can be found online at www.AmericansForTheArts.org/Convention.
Report from the Joint Convening of the Exemplar and Artography Programs Posted Online Artography / Exemplar Programs Joint Convening Report October 17, 2007—From May 14–16, 2007, grantees from the Artography and Animating Democracy/Working Capital Fund Exemplar programs, both supported by The Ford Foundation, met together in Chicago to share their experiences and consider ways they might draw on the collective power of their work.
The resulting report, Shaping a Critical Discourse, written by Caron Atlas, explores the topics of aesthetics, new ways of working, and leadership taken up at the cohort-designed gathering. The convening revealed and embraced the creative tensions and contradictions of working in the context of changing demographics, engaging generational shifts and new approaches to collaborative community practices, having diverse value-based structures, and being a cultural agent of change. Session-by-session summaries and resources from the meetings are posted along with the report.
Animating Democracy Seeks Examples of Evaluation Measuring Social Impact August 15, 2007—Animating Democracy is seeking examples of completed or in-progress evaluation efforts focused on measuring and understanding the social or civic impact of arts projects or programs.
Arts-based civic engagement projects or programs that engage people through the arts in dialogue, participation, and/or action related to clearly defined social or civic issues in the community are of particular interest. Further, we would like to know about organizations whose past arts-based programs or projects have useful documentation and/or evaluation that allow examination of single project impact and/or the cumulative impact of an organization’s project efforts over time. Animating Democracy is especially looking to identify evaluation approaches that apply metrics in order to quantify evidence of social change.
This effort relates to a two-year Animating Democracy initiative supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, designed to advance understanding of the social and civic impact of arts-based civic engagement work. The initiative responds to the expressed need for quantifiable, as well as anecdotal, evidence that the arts can have potent social change effects. The ultimate goal is to enable arts practitioners, funders, and public- and private-sector cultural policy makers to better make the case for the arts’ value and contribution in civic engagement.
Arts organizations, consultants, and funders are invited to share reports or a brief note indicating relevant resources or interest in being contacted by September 28. To contribute to this scan, contact Pam Korza, Animating Democracy project director at pkorza@artsusa.org or 413.256.1260.
