Arts Intranet

For the last two posts in a series on how the arts can foster community engagement, I interviewed Sara Potler, founder and CEO of Dance 4 Peace (D4P), a global peace education and civic engagement nonprofit that engages young people through dance and creative movement.

D4P inspires a generation of leaders and peacemakers through an innovative curriculum that promotes empathy, mediation skills, anger management, and conflict resolution to instill social and emotional competencies for peace.

Sara shared with me her perspectives on the arts, civic dialogue, and sparking social change through dance.

Q (Maya): How can the arts create civic dialogue? And how does Dance 4 Peace serve as a leader for community engagement?

A: (Sara): The role of the arts in society has long been to start difficult, even disruptive conversations. Whether dance, or fine arts, or spoken word, these tools have been extremely valuable in bringing together communities around a single thought or idea and then inspiring them to take action.

Dance 4 Peace builds on this legacy of using the arts to spark social change. Our classroom activities involve students in civic dialogue, although we aim to use our bodies more than our words to express ourselves. As a leader in community engagement, we view our students and schools as active participants in shaping the curriculum and driving the choreography and creative movement in the classroom.

John Abodeely

A friend and colleague—one on the earlier end of her career—recently emailed me and asked what she thought of her possibly moving back to the east coast and entering a graduate program in the hope of advancing her career more quickly.

This is what I wrote her. Because her question is about career development, I have given myself permission to publish it below:

I think there are two things to keep in mind:

1. There isn't actually a wrong choice. One way or the other, things work out; you'll find a way to enjoy yourself; the important things tend to settle out the way they will: friends, family, fun, relationships of other kinds. You can pick a path—and it's important you do—but a path is nothing but a series of choices. Just make sure you choose—don't sit around too much—and you'll have good experiences, meet people, see things, etc.

The only time this doesn't hold is if you're hell-bent on some outcome: being famous, being a museum educator, etc. In these cases, you can generally mix together the things you must do (like lots of acting jobs, plastic surgery, etc.; a degree in museum education, lots of internships, etc.) with a few rule breaking successes (going indie a couple times to build your acting rep; moving to a small town museum in rural America to be director of education because, while it's not glamorous, it'll rapidly advance your career).

Maya Kumazawa

For the last two posts in a series on how the arts can foster community engagement, I interviewed Sara Potler, founder and CEO of Dance 4 Peace (D4P), a global peace education and civic engagement nonprofit that engages young people through dance and creative movement. Sara shared with me her perspectives on the arts, civic dialogue, and sparking social change through dance. You can read the first half of our interview on yesterday's post. Her are my final questions for her:

Q (Maya): How do you measure impact / what has been the impact so far?

A (Sara): At Dance 4 Peace, it has certainly been a fun challenge to measure how our program is creating peace in classrooms and communities. To measure our impact, we have thought long and hard about our vision of peace and broken this down into specific areas, such as anger management, physical violence, and appreciation of diversity. Using surveys and coded observations, we have been able to demonstrate real change as a result of our programming.

To date, our evaluations have shown that students who participate in Dance 4 Peace are less likely to choose physical or verbal violence when angry. On the flip side, they are 15% more likely to listen to others, 30% more likely to enjoy working in groups, and 25% more willing to try new things. In several schools, pre- and post- evaluations showed a dramatic decrease in tendencies toward physical and verbal violence. One school in DC, for instance, when given a case study of an NBA player punching a fan, 32% more students said this was not okay in the post-test than the pre-test.

Sara Bateman

Lately, it seems that every conference I attend, classroom I enter, or art forum I participate in is fixated on the notion of transforming those in the arts field from just merely that of an artist or an administrator to that of a community leader.

While the arts have been recognized for over two decades as a way to revitalize our neighborhoods, it seems like now more than ever before people are reaching out as a way to ignite community engagement and inspire change. But if we are to depend more and more on the arts as a way to transform not only the structural but the psyche of our communities, if we are to elevate from simply artist to organizer, how do we train the next generation who will be stepping into these roles?

Colleges worldwide have the answer through a new breed of degree being offered behind the walls of academia. Or I should say, outside. Breaking artists out of the solo studio experience, placing administrators in the community, and creating programming that reaches beyond the college boundary, colleges are offering an educational experience that focuses on engagement and activism through the arts.

Kristy Callaway

The internet gives today's teenagers the kind of freedom that driving a car gave teens in previous generations. But unlike learning to drive a car, kids today can teach themselves to navigate the internet. Growing up in Key West in the 70's and 80's, I didn’t have a car or the internet. However, I quickly understood the power of networking.

The ability to seek and find people, places, and things can have as much if not more impact than mobility from automobiles. And, just as with cars, good and bad comes with the "license." Think of the good the internet can do for the police assisting 911 callers, a parent keeping up with a teenager, or a principal searching for a truant student. Or consider the bad aspects of a crazed ex-girlfriend stalking an unknowing ex-boyfriend, or a child molester waiting for parents to leave their children unattended.

Parallel parking seems simple, but takes years to perfect, however, the gaming industry exponentially produces high concept high skill activities for your entire body that completely engage, absorb, and hypnotize players. Traveling at 80 mph in a car or online is exhilarating, scary and fast!

Recently, I met a 14-year-old entrepreneur who customizes Xbox controllers for hardcore players. He was taking a film and production graduate course alongside me to learn how to improve his editing skills in his own gaming efforts and to speed his score acceleration. He sought out this skill set; he didn’t wait for school to teach him.

The new Facebook profile

As we all have no doubt heard by now, Facebook is launching some major updates to the site.

Some of these changes are already being implemented; the others were previewed at the recent f8 conference and will be released in the coming weeks.

Many arts organizations have come to integrate Facebook and other social media channels as important parts of their overall communications plans.

While it’s too early at this point to accurately comment on the impact, if any, these Facebook updates will have for arts communicators (marketers, advocates, thought leaders, and the like), it’s worth at least some preliminary thoughts.

1. The new ticker feed could be a double-edged sword.

One of the hurdles for arts communicators to overcome when using Facebook is the algorithm which powers the news feed on the homepage. Facebook only displays updates from individuals and organizations that the user has interacted with recently or frequently. Thus, while an arts organization’s Facebook page may have several hundred fans, it’s possible that only a fraction of them are actually seeing the content that is posted.

With October right around the corner, we all have the opportunity to commemorate the arts in a big way by participating in National Arts and Humanities Month (NAHM) – the largest annual celebration for the arts and humanities in the nation.

Designed to encourage all Americans to explore new facets of the arts and humanities in their lives, and to begin a lifelong habit of active participation in the arts and humanities, National Arts and Humanities Month is a coast-to-coast collective recognition of the importance of culture in America.

Once again this year, Americans for the Arts is hosting its annual Creative Conversations program in conjunction with NAHM.

The program, started in 2004 in response to feedback from the Emerging Leaders Council, has grown to serve over 50 communities and more than 2,000 individuals each year.