NOTES FROM THE SEVENTH MEETING OF THE SAGUARO SEMINAR:

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN AMERICA AND THE ARTS
[List of related readings and links]

1. By "the arts" we mean visual, musical, dramatic, and literary endeavors by professionals or amateurs, in both institutional and informal settings. We're as interested in the church choir, the Friday night square-dance, and the retirement-community play as we are in the Chicago Symphony, the New York City Ballet, and the Broadway musical. Back to text

2. The British independent research group Comedia concludes, "Rather than the cherry on the policy cake to which they are so often compared, [the arts] should be seen as the yeast without which [social policy] fails to rise to expectation." ("Use or Ornament?: The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts", 1997). Back to text

3. Michael Argyle, "Subjective Well-Being" in In the Pursuit of the Quality of Life, edited by Avner Offer. Oxford, NY: Oxford U. Press, 1996, pp. 30-33. Back to text

4. For example, Imagination Workshop uses drama as therapy for psychiatric patients, abused children, geriatric patients, and the homeless. Weekly sessions of 12-15 participants at various hospitals and other facilities are more like improv classes than treatment. Yet, although the patients do not explore their own pathologies, the act of role-playing another can be liberating, and psychiatrists have reported excellent results. (See William Cleveland, "Between Me and the Giant,"; and Joy Horowitz, "A Dramatic Remedy: At State Hospitals, Homeless Shelters and Psychiatric Clinics, the Imagination Workshop Unleashes the Curative Power of Creativity," The Los Angeles Times Magazine, November 22, 1992, 40 ff..) Back to text

5. See for example the exemplary Gallery 37 model in Chicago, and the excellent description of its founder Lois Weisberg in Malcolm Gladwell’s "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg", New Yorker, (January 11, 1999). A thumbnail description is as follows… In 1991, the Department of Cultural Affairs converted a disused downtown block into a summer arts program to take kids off the streets and into the art studio. The student-apprentices collaborate with professional artists on performances presented before live audiences, visual artworks are sold to help support the program, and creative writing is published in annual anthologies. More a job program than an art class, Gallery 37 provides training and employment in the arts, mentoring for at-risk kids, and a catalyst for social integration as students form bridging friendships. And by hiring African-American and Latino artists who reflect the ethnic mix of the students, the program offers living proof that careers in the arts exist and are attainable. Since its founding, Gallery 37 has expanded across the city into more than 40 high schools and been replicated in nearly two dozen cities in the U.S., England and Australia. Back to text

6. See for example, HandMade in America (in North Carolina), Project Row House in Houston, or the Village of Arts and Humanities. Recent initiatives have emphasized the arts as tools for community development, rather than as vehicles for exploring more traditional art-related questions of identity, communication, and spirituality. Back to text

7. For example, choreographer Liz Lerman remarks that dance can free us of our customary social and spatial strictures and thus leave us freer to relate to others in novel and unexpected ways. Back to text

8. Although rates of arts attendance may be in decline, especially among the Baby Boomers, for events like classical music, jazz, ballet, etc. (See Judith Higgins Balfe and Rolf Myersohn, "Arts participation by the Baby Boomers.") Back to text

9. For example, Kenny Leon, a theater producer in Atlanta, deliberately schedules very different plays in his theaters and synchronizes the intermissions to encourage bridging social capital to occur between the divergent audiences. Back to text

10. See Shirley Brice Heath, "Living the Arts through Language and Learning." Other studies report an association between arts courses and SAT scores. But the arts-education Project Zero study at Harvard notes that "the widely cited finding of an association between arts courses in high school and higher SAT scores need not mean that it is the arts courses that led to the higher scores. It is equally possible that high-scoring students are more likely to take arts courses; or that students who elect to take arts courses come from families which value education and high achievement." Research will need to be refined to control for the demographics of the students and their families. Back to text

11. See Steven Durland, "Maintaining Humanity." Back to text

12. There are myriad examples of programs that engage the community. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has invited artists from targeted neighborhoods to make works related to the museum's collection, sponsored by The Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund's "Museum Collections Accessibility Initiative". The Mint Museum in Charlotte has a 15-member community advisory group that meets quarterly with the museum's curators to "bounce exhibit ideas around." The Speed Art Museum in Louisville established an "Art and Spirituality" lecture/discussion program integrating the teachings of local faith communities with artworks in the museum. The examples in the text are intended not as an exhaustive list, but merely as potentially useful illustrations. Back to text

13. See Engaging the Entire Community. Back to text

14. See Michelle Coffey, "Teen Programs." Back to text

15. For a description of Roadside Theater, see See Dudley Cocke, "Theater of Place." Two other interesting examples are Richard Owen Geer's "Swamp Gravy" and Cornerstone Theater. Swamp Gravy is another professionally produced amateur theater based on oral histories and folk traditions -- this one derived from African-Americans and European-Americans in Colquitt, Georgia. (See Richard Owen Geer, "Swamp Gravy," in High Performance, #63, Fall 1993.) "I don't know what it is in the Southern psyche that breeds storytellers," says Geer. "Northerners tell stories in private and call it ‘therapy’," he observes, and "Southerners tell stories in public and call it ‘swapping lies'." Some of their autobiographies, family sagas, recipes, and jokes went into a piece first performed in 1991 by about 70 locals, which has toured and served as a model for programs in other towns. Once again, the performance process is used to strengthen community understanding. "Members told me barriers of class and race had been brought down and Colquitt would never be the same," Geer says. Los Angeles-based Cornerstone Theater Company is yet another professional ensemble that settles into small towns for three or four months and collaborates with townsfolk on plays that reflect their lives. Their mission statement is a clarion call for social capital: "We believe society can flourish only when its members know and respect one another, and that we have a responsibility to make theater in this spirit." In the past ten years, Cornerstone has mounted roughly 500 performances of 30 productions in 60 sites in 13 states, and involved more than 1,000 participants. (See Alison Carey, "In the Company of Community: Cornerstone Theater Celebrates Ten Years", at http://arts.endow.gov/artforms/Theater/Corner.html). Back to text

16. See Linda Burnham, "The Cutting Edge is Enormous." Back to text

17. see Eleanor Heartney, "The Dematerialization of Public Art," Sculpture, March-April 1993, pp. 45-49. Back to text


Additional Resources and Readings:
Information on Arts and Civic Engagement