{"id":4452,"date":"2016-03-02T02:00:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-02T07:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=4452"},"modified":"2016-02-29T11:37:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T16:37:54","slug":"the-arts-in-the-small-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2016\/03\/the-arts-in-the-small-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Arts in the Small Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s post is by guest, colleague, and dear friend\u2013Maryo Gard Ewell<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gard<\/p>\n

2016 marks the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the start of The Arts in the Small Community <\/em>project led by Robert E. Gard, and we invite you to celebrate with us!<\/p>\n

Robert E. Gard was a visionary in the field of community arts. While many people in the 1940\u2019s and beyond were talking about \u201caccess\u201d to the arts for people, typically, that meant that Everyman should be in the audience or the gallery to witness America\u2019s finest artists.<\/p>\n

Gard was clear that it meant more than this: that Everyman had a right to create, converse and critique. \u201cIn terms of American democracy, the arts are for everyone\u2026.\u201d His entire career, beginning in the 1930\u2019s when he worked with farmers in Upstate New York to write and produce plays about the experiences of their communities, to a speech he gave just before his death in 1992, was devoted to this vision.<\/p>\n

In 1966, his Office of Community Arts Development in the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture received the first \u201caccess\u201d award made by the newly established National Endowment for the Arts. This three-year project was to foster locally-based arts development in five rural Wisconsin communities \u2013 an unheard-of idea at the time. The result was a book, distributed free by the thousands \u2013 The Arts in the Small Community: A National Plan<\/em>. He began with the conviction that everyone has an important story to tell, dance, write or sing about, and from that unleashing of individual creativity groups could to respond to the needs of their community. This book was the first of its kind.<\/p>\n

Here are just a few ways the Robert E. Gard Foundation will celebrate in 2016:<\/p>\n