program tracks
Civic Engagement
From volunteering to voting, community building to community healing, issue awareness to social action—the arts engage people in civic life. The Civic Engagement Track will explore how the arts can offer welcoming invitations, needed spaces, and new forms for civic participation. Case-based sessions, skill-building workshops, and research and policy sessions will illuminate the many ways the arts are providing platforms for civic engagement and will build participant skills for designing and delivering arts-based civic engagement opportunities in their own communities. Innovator keynote speaker Rob “Biko” Baker—a nationally recognized hip-hop organizer, journalist, activist, and scholar—will shine a light on how hip-hop is being used as a catalyst for voter registration and youth engagement. Participants will have the opportunity to learn how to build their civic engagement muscle during a special half-day preconference workshop presented by Animating Democracy.
Animating Democracy Workshop: Ready…Set…Engage: Basics and Best Practices of Arts and Civic Engagement
Knowing how to create meaningful civic engagement is becoming a required skill set—as important as fundraising, planning, and marketing. Build your civic engagement muscle at this interactive workshop featuring key concepts, principles, and practices of arts-based civic engagement as demonstrated via project examples, video, and lively exchange. Learn to maximize engagement opportunities through program design and community partnerships and how to facilitate meaningful civic dialogue opportunities. Participants will have the opportunity to share projects in progress or that have potential in their communities, as well as to troubleshoot planning and project roadblocks with colleagues.
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Innovator: Rob “Biko” Baker
Rob “Biko” Baker is a nationally recognized hip-hop organizer, journalist, activist, and scholar. In his home community of Milwaukee, he has organized hip-hop town hall meetings and used the power and agency of hip-hop to inform, mobilize, and motivate young people to participate in civic life. Baker has served as the deputy publicity coordinator and young voter organizer for the Brown and Black Presidential Forum, a nationally televised presidential debate that aired on MSNBC. He was also lead organizer for Slam Bush, a nationwide voter mobilization project using rap and poetry and featuring hip-hop heavy-hitter Chuck D. In 2006, Baker developed, and continues to oversee, the League of Young Voters training program, which prepares the next generation of young activists to make long-term commitments to local organizing. Baker is a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, a frequent contributor to The Source, and serves on WireTap's editorial board.
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Where’s the Evidence? The Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative
Can we better position the arts as a valid civic engagement strategy and contributor to social change? Anecdotal evidence is commonly given to substantiate the impact of arts-based civic engagement, but many believe that quantifiable data is necessary. Without more concrete evidence, the full contribution of the arts may be undervalued if not missed entirely. Do we have the will and the resources to track our results and analyze and learn from them? What evidence really matters to funders and policymakers? With leading practitioners, researchers, evaluators, and funders, Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy, supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, is working to shape and advance a shared learning agenda. The goals of this learning agenda are to assess and communicate social impact and equip the field with practical knowledge and usable models and tools for assessment. Hear reports from researchers and practitioners who are advancing understanding of the impact of the arts as a civic engagement strategy and contributor to social change.
Presenters:
- Chris Dwyer, Senior Vice President, RMC Research Corporation
- Pam Korza, Co-Director, Animating Democracy, Americans for the Arts
- Roseann Weiss, Director of Community Art Programs & Public Art Initiatives, Regional Arts Commission
- Mark Stern , Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania
- Susan Seifert , Social Impact of the Arts Project, University of Pennsylvania
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Authentic & Effective Group Facilitation
Authentic and Effective Group Facilitation is back (and expanded) by popular demand! As our society becomes increasingly diverse, our ability to engage fellow citizens in authentic dialogue becomes even more important. The Technology of Participation (ToP) techniques—developed during the last 40 years by the Institute of Cultural Affairs—offer a rational and natural approach to facilitation. This approach engages individuals with different thinking styles and modes of expression for dialoguing authentically about an issue or concern and developing concensus-based decisions. This two-part workshop introduces the concepts and methods of ToP by engaging participants in the process itself. These outstanding facilitator/trainers teach by modeling and deconstructing good facilitation practice and relating it to frequently encountered arts settings. This session is a good lead into the 4:00 p.m. session on strategic planning, but it is not necessary to participate in both.
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Creating a Shared Organizational Vision Using the Technology of Participation
Civic engagement begins with inclusive planning. Authentically engaging both stakeholders and the general public in vision setting and planning can ensure your organization’s relevance and vitality. In this second session exploring the Technology of Participation (ToP) techniques, experience the ToP Participative Strategic Planning model and learn what makes it this effective facilitation model unique from other approaches. Presenters will demonstrate how the ToP methods can be used to engage participants and share examples of how this model has been used to develop a shared vision with community meetings, art organizations, boards, and other frequently encountered arts settings. Note: This is a standalone session: while participation in the first ToP session (Authentic & Effective Group Facilitation) may deepen your understanding of the model; it is not required to gain insight and information from this session.
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Un/Settled/Pre/Occupied
Un/Settled/Pre/Occupied is an arts-based civic engagement project that creates spaces for Arab Americans and American Jews to examine how conflicts, both between their communities and within them, affect their identities, cultural lives, and political engagement in American life. Beginning as a community performance project in Israel, the project morphed into the professional theater piece Six Actors in Search of a Plot. This play, in turn, catalyzed a community performance project in Philadelphia. During this case-based session, attendees will view excerpts from the piece and hear how the community partnership developed in Philadelphia between an Arab-American cultural agency and Jewish-American civic dialogue group. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about oral history methodology and to discuss how to facilitate Arab-American/Jewish-American dialogues in their own communities.
Presenters:
- Nahid Abunama-Elgadi , Temple University Arts in Community Program Sudanese American Young Adults Project
- Hazami Sayed , Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture
- Billy Yalowitz, Co-Director & Assistant Professor, Arts in Community Program, Tyler School of Art
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Arts, Culture, and Resettlement: Engaging New Immigrant Communities 
Arts and culture can play a powerful role in fostering civic participation and leadership among refugee and immigrant communities. Paying attention to culture and creativity can help to nurture newcomers’ self-confidence, productivity, and participation in community life. Learn how to identify and work with newcomer artists and tradition-bearers in order to enhance the cultural integration process. Learn how to build programs that enable cultural expression and exchange to connect newcomers to the community at large. The Institute for Cultural Partnerships will share case studies of collaborative, community-based projects and practical ideas for developing programs and services in your community.
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Living News: Exploring Civic Issues with Youth through Theater
In 2006, when faced with the question “How can young adults engage with the Constitution?” the National Constitution Center (NCC) developed Living News, a theater piece that dramatizes current and national civic issues, with particular focus on their impact on youth. In this session, NCC and Philadelphia theater artists who helped create the piece will show you the techniques they used to develop Living News—in particular techniques that focus on stimulating civic engagement the community and making space for boundary-crossing collaborations. View scenes from Living News; participate in the town-hall style dialogue; and engage in peer exchange about ways artists, educators, activists, and other community and cultural leaders can spur individual connections with political issues and create new forms for the imaginative exploration of civic ideas.
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The Politics of Compromise: Public Art Controversy in San Francisco
When a mural intended as an expression of unity is construed as offensive and threatening, should a public agency take a pro-active role to mediate the controversy? What does freedom of expression mean relative to publicly funded artwork? In summer 2007, controversy broke out over a section of Solidarity: Breaking Down Barriers, a mural in San Francisco’s Mission District that conceived to convey bridge-building and working across borders with regard to the Palestinian Israeli Conflict. Faced with issues regarding deviation from the mandated approval process, censorship, and freedom of speech, the San Francisco Arts Commission found itself in the position of mediating social conflict and staying impartial—and at the same time, following the established process for revising the mural design and implementing the required changes. Through this case-based session, learn how the San Francisco Arts Commission mediated multiple perspectives and navigated contractual issues in resolving this conflict.
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For more information about this program or any Americans
for the Arts programs and services, please contact us by e-mail
or call us at 202.371.2830
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