In the Funder Companion to Animating Democracy’s framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change, author Chris Dwyer of RMC Research offers ideas and insights to help funders apply the framework to address their needs and interests. Aesthetic Perspectives aims to enhance understanding and evaluation of creative work at the intersection of arts and community/civic engagement, community development, and justice. It offers 11 artistic attributes that elevate aesthetics in civically and socially engaged art, expand the

In the Funder Companion to Animating Democracy’s framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change, author Chris Dwyer of RMC Research offers ideas and insights to help funders apply the framework to address their needs and interests. Aesthetic Perspectives aims to enhance understanding and evaluation of creative work at the intersection of arts and community/civic engagement, community development, and justice. It offers 11 artistic attributes that elevate aesthetics in civically and socially engaged art, expand the

The Educator Companion to Animating Democracy’s framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change, offers ideas and insights to help educators and students apply the framework in curriculum development, faculty/student critique and review, planning community-based projects, assessing Arts for Change work using criteria aligned with the values of community-engaged scholarship, and more.

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

Since it was founded in 1979, Perseverance Theatre in Juneau has been committed to exploring classic plays and new works through a unique “Alaskan lens.” For their Animating Democracy project, Perseverance began a statewide dialogue about some of Alaska’s most divisive cultural, political, and social issues, using an Alaskan adaptation of Herman Melville’s classic work, Moby Dick, as the artistic catalyst. How could theater effectively contribute to discourse about Alaskan issues of subsistence rights and the urban/rural divide in disparate places across the state?

In 2003, the world premiere of Nuevo California at the San Diego REPertory Theater marked the culmination of an intensive, three-year project that brought together citizens on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border in an effort to imagine their region’s binational future. The International Border Fence, a 14-mile metal wall that divides San Diego and neighboring city Tijuana, served as the project’s springboard for both a cross-border dialogue on critical regional issues as well as the new play’s theme. San Diego REPertory Theater—together with project partners San

In 2003, Understanding Neighbors brought together nearly 100 citizens in Anchorage, AK, in a month-long series of dialogues to address one of the community’s most contentious civic questions: “What is the social, moral, and legal place of same-sex couples in our society?” Understanding Neighbors, a collaborative project sponsored by Out North Contemporary Art House, in partnership with the Interfaith Council of Anchorage and Alaska Common Ground, aimed to foster respectful dialogue and mutual understanding among community members holding divergent views on this question.

In its Faith-Based Theater Cycle, Cornerstone Theater Company created original, community-based plays in collaboration with specific faith-based institutions and inter-faith communities to explore how faith both unites and divides American society. The project provided an opportunity for Cornerstone—in partnership with the National Conference for Community and Justice, Los Angeles region—to engage multiple communities around this powerful and often challenging theme, as well as to work in depth, over time, and with cumulative impact. The four and a half year Cycle includes

Dell’ Arte International conceived The Dentalium Project in 2001, when the Blue Lake Rancheria—a sovereign native nation that abuts the small northern California town of Blue Lake—built a casino to secure its financial future. Although the Rancheria pledged significant support to the surrounding community, many Blue Lake residents took a dim view of the proposed casino, fearing an increase in traffic, crime, and noise—and, most critically, a loss of power and control over their own destiny. Dell’ Arte believed that, through its distinct aesthetic and by giving

The 1999 Columbine High School shooting and its aftermath motivated Bill Ward—Artistic Director of Flint Youth Theatre (FYT) in Flint, MI—to think about developing a play that would explore the issue of school violence. Over several months, the theater began to discuss just how it would translate this topic to the stage. Then, the unspeakable occurred—a fatal school shooting at a Flint Elementary School. This tragedy lent gravity to Ward’s original idea and presented further challenges to the company's efforts to treat the subject responsibly. The play, ...My