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Artists & Communities
REFLECTIONS FROM A POLICY RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE
By Maria-Rosario Jackson, Ph.D.
My reflections here are, in large part, based on my experience
in leading two research initiatives at the Urban Institute, the
Arts and Culture Indicators in Community Building Project (ACIP)
and Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structure
for US Artists. These reflections are also based on my many years
of community planning and community development research in neighborhoods
around the United States.
When policy-makers and community leaders think of quality of life—how
to assess it adequately, what programs and policies need to be
in place to make things better— too often art, culture, and the
roles that artists play in shaping communities are not taken into
consideration. Mindful of this, several years ago, the Rockefeller
Foundation commissioned the Urban Institute to explore the possibility
of integrating an arts and culture focus into quality of life
measurement systems at the local level. To this end, over the
years, the Urban Institute has worked with people in the arts
and community development-related fields to figure out how such
integration might occur. We have asked, “How are arts and culture
manifest in communities?” “How are they valued?” “How are they
supported?” More recently, the Urban Institute was commissioned
by a consortium of 38 private and public funders to examine the
systems of support for artists working in various contexts, including
community settings. Here we seek to understand, among other issues,
“What inspires artists to do their work?” “What do artists do?”
and “What are the characteristics of a place that make it hospitable
or inhospitable for artists pursuing various kinds of careers?”
My work in both of these initiatives (and others) has afforded
me an opportunity to explore what artists do in communities and
how they contribute to them; begin to understand why what artists
do in communities is often ignored or not grasped in policy circles
(inside and outside of the cultural sector); and set the wheels
in motion for a more adequate and sustained inclusion of arts/artists
and culture in quality of life assessments and improvement strategies.
I am convinced that there are grave consequences connected with
not having a full understanding and appreciation of the artist’s
role and potential in society—their contributions to a community’s
sense of itself, to promoting critical thinking and humane reflection,
and to advancing various aspects of community and human development.
Without this, our concepts of community assets, deficits and dynamics
are inadequate, and people concerned with improving communities
(policy-makers, grant-makers, planners, community leaders and
people in community-building related professions) cannot do their
best work. Moreover, perceptions of the cultural sector as an
elitist, isolated, dispensable aspect of society are reinforced.
And last, as a nation, we are not fully aware of the breadth,
depth, power or value of our artistic assets.
Several years ago the ACIP produced a set of guiding principles
based on extended fieldwork in a number of moderate and low-income
communities in Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO;
Los Angeles, CA; Oakland, CA; Providence, RI; and Washington,
D.C. Fieldwork in these cities included interviews and focus group
discussions with artists, arts administrators and community building
professionals as well as direct and participant observation in
a number of community arts activities. The principles are as follows:
- Definitions of arts and cultural assets in a community
should be based on the cultural values, preferences, and
realities of residents and other stakeholders in a given
community. Arts and cultural assets in a community can
range from avocational to professional and include the
cultural expressions of diverse ethnic, racial, age and
special interest groups. Moreover, art and culture happen
not only in large mainstream explicitly cultural venues but
also in large and small arts and non-arts-specific places
such as parks, libraries, schools, community centers and
commercial establishments.
- Cultural participation is not limited only to the most
usual interpretation of participation—as audience or
consumer. Participation also includes a wide range of
ways in which people engage as creators, teachers,
students, and supporters.
- While art and culture are valuable on their own
terms, they should also be understood as both products
and processes that can carry multiple meanings and
purposes simultaneously. That is, while people may value
an artistic experience for aesthetic and technical
qualities, they may at the same time, also value the activity
because it contributes to something else about which they
are concerned (i.e. youth development, celebration of
group identity, community development, etc.).
- In line with the previous point, if art and culture can
carry multiple meanings and purposes simultaneously,
they can rely on both arts-specific and non-arts-specific
sources of support.
The principles stated above have important implications
for how we perceive artists in community contexts.
Following these principles, we must acknowledge that
artists are active in a wide array of places ranging from
traditional mainstream cultural venues to places such as
community centers, parks, schools, churches and other
settings. Artists are key factors in making possible many
broad forms of cultural participation. In creating
opportunities for cultural engagement, their leadership
as creators, interpreters, teachers, and judges, among
other roles, is imperative. Moreover, artists contribute
not only to the cultural sector, but to other sectors as
well. In recent years, fieldwork conducted through the
ACIP, and later confirmed through further research as
part of other Urban Institute studies, suggests that arts
and cultural participation, and by extension artists, often
contribute directly or indirectly to a number of
community building related outcomes including:
supporting civic participation and social capital;
promoting stewardship of place; improving the built
environment; augmenting public safety; and bridging
cultural, ethnic, racial, and generational divides. While
this body of research is just emerging, it certainly
underscores my previous point that without a better grasp
of community arts practices and the contributions of
artists, anyone interested in more adequately
understanding community dynamics and designing social
improvement programs is at a serious disadvantage.
The usual absence of arts, culture and artists in many
policy discussions is due to many factors, some of which
I will allude to here. First, “art” and “artist” are loaded
terms. When “arts” and “artists” are commonly associated
only with major downtown cultural institutions or
stereotypes of self-indulgent, isolated eccentrics it is
easy to discount these, especially when put alongside
community concerns like poverty, education, and
employment. Second, historically, the importance of
cultural participation has been cast in elitist-populist
terms: high/low, formal/informal, fine/folk,
classic/popular, pure/utilitarian, with the work of
community artists often viewed as less prestigious in
cultural contexts. (Our work suggests that artists, and the
public at large, are involved in a wide array of cultural
activity that is potentially valuable. As such, we take the
approach that there is a continuum of cultural activity that
should be considered.) Third, in policy research terms,
there is a poor body of theory and data about what artists
do and how they contribute to communities. There is no
consistently or reliably collected information about arts
and culture at the community level, and even less
information dealing specifically with the roles that artists
play. There are many anecdotes about community arts
programs and their impacts, rich (but too often isolated)
case studies of community arts activities, and some good
efforts to historically document community arts practice.
These are all useful in that they serve as good examples of
the various kinds of work out there and provide some
historical context for the field. However, there has been
no systematic or aggregate analysis of community arts
activity and the roles that artists play. The development of
grounded theory and analytical tools to arrive at some
analysis of such activity are just beginning.
Last, artists working at the intersection of the arts and
other policy areas, with few exceptions, rarely receive
adequate recognition for what they do, since neither the
arts nor the other policy areas affected are typically fully
invested in what the artist is doing. For example, an artist
working on neighborhood revitalization is unlikely to get
adequate recognition in either the arts or community
development worlds. The cultural sector will not fully
understand or recognize what the artist is doing or
contributing. The artist, perhaps based in a community
cultural center, may be working with urban planners,
developers, and community advocacy groups, but people
in the cultural sector may ask what these players have to
do with art? Likewise, in the community development
sector, traditional players may be puzzled as to why an
artist is involved in their processes. The language to
describe or explain what artists do at the intersection of
arts and other policy areas, the standards to judge the
work, and mechanisms for validating it, across sectors
or publicly, are all under-developed.
The responsibility for addressing this deficiency
belongs to many people inside and outside of the arts field.
Inside the arts field, artists and community arts
organization administrators have to be more self-conscious
and articulate about the premises or assumptions that may
have guided their work for years. They also have to be more
deliberate and pro-active about documentation of their
work and consider that the information they gather could
be helpful to people inside and outside of the arts field. As
such, artists and community organizations have to learn to
speak across sectors—communicating with people in various
fields such as youth development, economic development,
and public health, among others. Correspondingly, funders
have to make provisions for documentation, data
collection, and cross-sectoral interactions as components
of an arts practitioners’ workload. Outside of the arts field,
policy-makers, planners, community builders, and social
science researchers concerned with the well-being of
American communities have to consider arts and culture,
and the role of artists as integral to their broader concerns.
They have to be open to and inventive about ways of
integrating this into what they do and study, mindful that
they may have to stretch beyond their current practices.
We have a lot of work ahead of us to get to the point where what
artists do in communities is adequately understood, valued, and
supported by the various sectors to which they contribute. The thought
of the work ahead to achieve this can be daunting. But it is important
to remember that we are not starting from scratch. Practitioners
in the community arts field have decades of accumulated wisdom and
experience that, in many cases, has not yet been harvested. There
are significant efforts to document community arts practices and
history underway, and the creation of grounded theory and analytic
tools that can serve as the basis for a robust body of research
and data about the field are emerging. Among other promising efforts
in the field, this book documenting Artists & Communities: America
Creates for the Millennium, is an important contribution. Also,
in fields outside of the arts, to which community artists often
contribute, there is a need to shore up skills and more effectively
face community problems, thus creating openings for artists and
arts advocates to step up and speak up about what they have contributed
in the past and what they can offer in the future. Many people have
something to add to this process and if we are strategic, our various
efforts—as researchers, policymakers, community builders, artists,
and arts advocates—can add up and make a difference.
MARIA ROSARIO-JACKSON, Project Director
Cultural Indicators of Art and Community Building
The Urban Institute
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