{"id":4773,"date":"2016-12-07T02:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T07:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=4773"},"modified":"2016-12-05T12:04:04","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T17:04:04","slug":"middle-class-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2016\/12\/middle-class-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle Class Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iowastatefair\"For the many of us reeling from the recent election, middle class communities are much on our minds. I’ve written about it twice already: Blindsided<\/a> and Should We Bother?<\/a> I thought it might be good to dig a little deeper into what this might mean for community engagement.<\/p>\n

The beauty of my operating definition of community\u2013a group of people with something in common\u2013is its flexibility. I know it is woefully inadequate in sociological (or most other) realms but it works perfectly for community engagement planning. We can use it to identify groups with which we want to develop relationships and proceed to the work of doing so.<\/p>\n

Ronia Holmes recently pointed out here (Your organization ‘sucks’ at community and let me tell you why<\/a>) that our field\u2013both funders and arts organizations\u2013has inappropriately identified community engagement as work with marginalized communities. And as she also pointed out, the attempts at cultural colonization that often result are far too frequently condescending, wrong-headed, and breathtakingly ineffective. I have long held that middle class communities (and many other non-marginalized communities) are communities that should be considered for engagement.<\/p>\n

So how might we proceed? The principles are the same regardless of the community we are trying to engage. Most importantly we need to learn about the community before daring to create programming<\/strong>. There are questions to ask that can provide helpful insight. At the risk of repeating myself, here are two sets of questions I’ve presented here before.<\/p>\n

When you think of our [city, state, region] what are the most important things that come to mind about:<\/em><\/p>\n