Civic engagement

When governmental and civic entities employ the arts to engage people in public processes, they often find new and effective ways to motivate participation, make decisions, and solve problems.
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Cultural organizing exists at the intersection of art and activism This paper explores the power of cultural organizing with examples of groups and individuals placing art and culture at the center of organizing strategies: organizing from a...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In this paper, Lyz Crane draws on the work of practitioners and researchers to characterize the field of arts-based community development in which arts and culture can help achieve place based change related to the physical, social, and economic...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
The modern-day arts-based community development movement is founded on the belief that the arts can be a powerful agent of personal, institutional, and community change. Since its beginnings in the 1970s, the movement has grown from a very small and...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In this paper, long-time community arts chronicler Linda Frye Burnham offers snapshots of selected projects that help capture the range of community arts projects and programs happening today. They are led by veteran and up-and-coming artists and...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
From an environmental perspective, we are living in transitional times; the practices we engage in now have far-reaching implications for the survival of the earth and all its life forms. “Environmental Art” is an umbrella term for a wide range of...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
A growing number of colleges and universities are expanding and deepening the role that publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities, arts, and design can play in contributing to positive change in the communities and regions within which higher...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Musicians are powerful allies who leverage their activities in ways that amplify the messages and strategies of social justice movements and that draw the necessary resources—creativity, targeted audiences, press, funding—to make change possible;...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Open space documentary is an emerging framework for community-based media. Intentional participatory media experiments are proliferating across rapidly developing and evolving distribution platforms.
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Youth media is a diverse array of practices in which young people collaborate with artists and educators to express themselves creatively, communicate with peers across borders, and participate in community dialogue and problem solving. Social...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In towns all across the United States, young people are using music and art to make interesting, creative, and positive things happen in their communities. They are punks, rappers, educators, singer-songwriters, artists, and community organizers who...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Caron Atlas' essay on MicroFest: Appalachia focuses on the connections between civic capacity, imagination, and moral economy in Appalachia.
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Thousand Kites is an ongoing national storytelling project that uses performance, web, video, and radio to open a public space for incarcerated people, corrections officials, the formerly incarcerated, grassroots activists, and ordinary citizens to...
Last Updated: September 11, 2013
In April 2002, Holler to the Hood began a collaboration among traditional Appalachian musicians and hip-hop musicians. The purpose is to bring two traditions together for a unique exchange and artistic exploration of two distinctly rooted traditions...
Last Updated: September 11, 2013
The MFA in Community Arts (MFACA) prepares artists to use their artmaking as a means of civic, youth, and community development, or to teach at the post-secondary level. The curriculum provides students with a grounding in theory and practice, while...
Last Updated: September 13, 2013

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