Based on a literature review drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and public policy, Stern and Seifert of the Social Impact of the Arts Project at the University of Pennsylvania suggest documentation and evaluation strategies that artists, cultural and community organizations, philanthropists, and public agencies could take to improve the quality of knowledge about the social impact of arts-based civic engagement work.
Part 1 of the paper explores definitions, key concepts, and theories about civic engagement, the arts and culture, and the relationship between...
In this case study, Bill Cleveland offers an engaging in-depth excavation of the genesis, planning, and implementation of Creative CityMaking, a collaboration between the City of Minneapolis and Intermedia Arts aimed at integrating creative thinking, strategies, and processes into the operations of city departments. Detailed stories of the five collaborative projects at the heart of Creative CityMaking along with outcomes and learning from the first phase provide an illuminating and instructive look at how collaboration between artists and municipal government can achieve...
Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art and Civic Dialogue is a collection of essays that explore art, civic dialogue, and reflective critical writing. Twelve essays focus on three compelling and very different projects supported by Animating Democracy that employed the unique capacities of theater, visual art, and historic preservation to stimulate people to talk together in new ways about issues that matter in their communities: Dell’Arte theater’s Dentalium Project, about the impact of a Native American casino on the small town of Blue Lake, CA; MACLA’...
The Curator Companion to Animating Democracy’s framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change, offers ideas and insights to help curators working in/with visual arts and time- and performance-based projects to enhance understanding, description, and evaluation of such work at the intersection of artistic creation and civic engagement, community development, and social justice. The framework offers 11 artistic attributes that elevate aesthetics in civically and socially engaged art, expand the criteria for considering aesthetics, and promote...
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Coming to America: Immigrant Sounds/Immigrant Voices was a project of the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), exploring civic dialogue within the field of classical orchestral music. Spanning ACO’s 2000–2001 season, the project centered around chamber music concerts and informances at schools and cultural centers in New York City, bringing immigrant and refugee composers and their music into communities, and immigrant and refugee communities into concert settings. Through dialogue, the project sought to link the music of four immigrant or...
Arte es Vida is an ongoing program of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio. Supported by Animating Democracy from 2001 to 2003, Arte es Vida addresses issues of cultural equity and democracy, examining “the role of artistic and cultural expression in a society that inherits the deep wounds, economic and political disparities, and continuing practices of injustice that are the legacy of cultural domination in the United States.” It explores cultural grounding—the concept that a strong sense of selfhood and identity, as rooted in creative expression and...
The Poetry Dialogues project was a series of intergenerational workshops, presentations, and community dialogues that utilized contemporary and traditional poetry forms—including rap, spoken word, African jali (or griot) praise poetry, Muslim prayer-calling, and Filipino balagtasan—to engage audiences and communities in dialogue on self-defined issues. The Poetry Dialogues project was based on an exploration of dialogic poetry, the concept of poetry as dialogue and its potential to contribute to a broader civic dialogue. The project included: intergenerational dialogue...
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The role that American orchestras play in community life has been steadily expanding over the last several decades. Fresh approaches to community involvement both in the musical offerings of in- and after-school programs as well as engaging traditionally underserved populations have paved the way as orchestras grow in their civic and social roles. This paper by Polly Kahn of the League of American Orchestras illuminates how orchestras are responding to changing demographics, helping people come together in ways that cut across their differences. Innovative participatory models show how...
Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a wave of returning veterans suffering from both physical and emotional traumas as well as families, communities, and a society in need of ways to understand, adjust, and heal. Writer and “former military kid” Maranatha Bivens characterizes ways that art is raising awareness of the issues facing service members, bridging gaps in knowledge and communication between veterans and civilians, and offering veterans paths to healing and reintegration in family and community life. Artists are creating work that enriches the public...
Written for Animating Democracy's Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative Working Group, this 14- page paper presents a conceptual framework (or logic model) for arts-based engagement. It offers a discussion of the components of the framework, and a list of questions to guide research explorations. It defines and gives examples of each element: programmatic initiative in terms of the core arts element and related civic/social purpose; context; implementation choices and actions; intermediate effects (individual, collective, and community capacity building); and social and/or civic...
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Social Change
Social change is a broad umbrella to encompass a range of typical social and civic outcomes from increased awareness and understanding, to attitudinal change, to increased civic participation, the building of public will, to policy change that corrects injustice. Acknowledging that social change must start with the individual, the term emphasizes impact that happens at a broader institutional, group, or community level.