The number of articles I have posted on the American Association of Museum Conference is indicative of the merit I found in much that went on there. This one, reporting about the panel on which I served, will (I think) be the last one. The panelists included Prerana Reddy (a contributor to Building Communities, Not Audiences), José Rodriguez from the Queens Museum of Art, and Michael Christiano (former Director of Education at SECCA and now … [Read more...]
EM’s List: Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago
EM's List Member A Community Engagement Residency [This post is by EM's List Editor/Curator, Stephanie Moore] The mission of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago positions it as an innovative and compelling contemporary art center where diverse audiences can experience works and ideas of contemporary artists as well as understand the context in which the art was made. This includes creating a space for open discussion and contemplation … [Read more...]
Rustbelt to Artsbelt
I am attending a conference in St Louis hosted by the Regional Art Commission of St. Louis and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture of Cleveland. The conference’s title is Rustbelt to Artsbelt: At the Crossroads, Arts-Based Community Development Convening. I attended the initial At the Crossroads conference two years ago and found it a fascinating opportunity to connect with grassroots community engagement activity around the … [Read more...]
EM’s List
In Bimodal Engagement, I intimated that there was a plot afoot at Engaging Matters to spread the word about great examples of arts and community engagement activities. The form the plot will take is a recognition list called EM's List (Engaging Matters: EM. Maybe not clever but, for me, easy to remember.) I don't presume that anyone will be lining up to seek such an honor, but I do believe it's important to publicize the good work that is going … [Read more...]
Bimodal Engagement
When I first became sensitized to the need for change within the arts community to a greater focus on community engagement (now over twenty years ago), I sometimes felt like a voice in the wilderness. (I know I wasn't alone, but some of us who felt that way were not connecting with like-minded peers. This may simply have been a pre-Internet issue.) Today, as I have observed in recent posts, engagement has become a buzz word in the industry. I … [Read more...]
Identity as Marketing
Marketing has been on my mind a lot lately, notably in my last post, Systemic Marketing. Several comments on that post expressed surprise (and, frankly, disbelief) that anyone in the arts community could (or ever did) think negative thoughts about marketing. Once upon a time there were some who did not want to identify marketing as a needed element of our work (or wished it could be avoided); now the field has grown up. Marketing is (and is seen … [Read more...]
Mainstreaming Engagement
In a (very) recent post (Shut Up and Listen) I alluded to the article that Sandra Bernhard has written about Houston Grand Opera's HGOco for Building Communities Not Audiences. I also promised (some might say threatened) to follow up on it. One of my very real concerns about the current burgeoning (and gratifying) acceptance of community engagement in the arts community is that it is somehow understood either as an organizational add-on or simply … [Read more...]
Shut Up and Listen
In this blog I attempt to highlight essential principles of effective community engagement work. In my recent posts Lead or Follow? and Equality in Engagement, I have tried to make the point that communities have valuable things to tell us when we work with them–not just about topics or issues to be pursued but about content, form, and media of the art that comes out of the collaboration. In the last week two things have gotten me focused even … [Read more...]
Pop-Ups
Coming from a performing arts background, I'm always especially fascinated to read about cool stuff going on in the visual arts. Recently I've seen a couple of posts about "pop-ups." Letitia Fernandez Ivins, a civic art project manager with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, describes these as "artwork that 'pops–up' in unexpected places" in her ARTSblog post Emerging Ideas: Pop-Ups for the Populi. As I understand it, these are intentionally … [Read more...]
Random Acts of Culture™
Last year (in Engagement via Participation) I confessed my fascination with flash mob arts experiences and got several links to groups that organize them. My favorite is one of the best funded and most visible of such efforts, Random Acts of Culture™, a program of the Knight Foundation. The Foundation funds such work because of the Foundation's interest in "promoting informed and engaged communities. To that end, we strongly believe in the … [Read more...]