Project Contact Info:

Caron Atlas, Project Director

718-965-1509   

caron@ccp.org

Staff:  

Caron Atlas, Project Director

Javiera Benavente, Cultural Organizer

R. Lena Richardson, Website and Writing Coordinator

The creative power of arts and culture—especially among those who have been traditionally disenfranchised—can be a catalyst for action. The Center for Civic Participation’s Arts & Democracy Project is supporting a developing movement that draws on a rich history of arts activism, social justice organizing, and cultural engagement. Building on the momentum of the 2004 and 2006 elections and the wave of art and civic participation work currently taking place, we are working to answer the following questions:

• How do arts and culture play an active role in our democracy?

• What forms of cultural expression move people to participate in decision-making at the local, state and national levels?

• How do arts and culture enhance representation in democracy?

• What forms of activism and organizing are best linked to arts and cultural work?

The project catalyzes and supports cross-pollination between sectors,cultures, and generations and the linking of practitioners, policymakers, educators, and activists.

Our work includes:

Website. www.ccp.org/organizing/groups/artsdem offers more than 85 descriptions of a diversity of approaches to linking art, democracy, and social justice from across the country; profiles of exemplary projects; reflective writing about the intersection between art and democracy and methodologies of cultural organizing; and other resources.

Cross-pollination. Gatherings across the country cosponsored with our partners bring artists, cultural organizers, educators, policymakers, and activists together to discuss cultural organizing, cross generational movement building, hip hop art and activism, progressive communication, framing, community cultural development, the power of language and imagination, and media justice, among other topics.

Capacity building. Briefings, presentations, and trainings focus on developing the cultural capacities of activists and organizing groups and the organizing capacities of artists and arts and cultural organizations.

Our partners include:

Alternate ROOTS, Center for Community Change, Center for Rural Strategies, Community Arts Network, Highlander Center, Main Street Project/Raíces, League of Young Voters, Michigan Voice, New WORLD Theater, Pratt Center for Community Development, Service Employee International Union, and Urban Bush Women, among others.

Projects linking arts with civic participation »

Bridge Conversations 

Over the past two years, the Arts & Democracy Project of the Center for Civic Participation has been engaged in an active planning project to learn what is need to support, connect and deepen work that connects art, culture and activism. One of the things we learned is that that some of the most creative strategies live in the intersections of disciplines, sectors, cultures and generations.

We also found that many of the most effective people we met were those who are building bridges and creating hybrid and integrated programs and strategies. This series of essays seeks to learn from a diverse group of these creative people who recognize and further deep connections between environment, education, community development, politics, social service, public health and anthropology, and art and culture. While we started out focusing primarily on people's work, we soon found that the journey to a holistic perspective includes people's personal lives -- how they grow up, how they connect cultures and world views and how they balance their personal life and their work.

With support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, CCP has joined with the Community Arts Network to commission 18 conversations between bridge people. Our intention is to create a forward-looking set of essays that emphasize new (and traditional) ways of working and being. We encouraged people to name the challenges of bridging and how they have overcome them. We asked one person in each conversation to document it, and left it to them to determine the format of this documentation. As a result, some of the conversations are presented in essay format, others in the form of the conversation, and still others as a mixture of these two approaches. Some are interviews, and others are dialogues. We have provided bios and pictures of the participants and information about their organizations to provide further context. All the conversations took place between November 2007 and March 2008.