{"id":3206,"date":"2015-12-13T23:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T04:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/?p=3206"},"modified":"2016-02-17T00:43:06","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T05:43:06","slug":"art-spaces-as-places-for-community-engagement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/2015\/12\/art-spaces-as-places-for-community-engagement\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Spaces as Places for Community Engagement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><small><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc.jpeg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3209\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-3209\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc-300x225.jpeg\" alt=\"nampc\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc-300x225.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc-768x576.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/nampc.jpeg 1632w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>This week, we&#8217;re\u00a0sharing reflections on the Summit at Sundance process and on\u00a0the ideas leaders in the Chief Executive Program: Community and Culture worked on during this Summit last month. We encourage you to add your voice, questions and experiences to the conversation, and to use the information and conversations to inform action! In this post, Daniel Gorman (Shubbak Festival), Cristy Johnston L\u00edmon (Destiny Arts Center) and Carol Varney (Bay Area Video Coalition) share their ideas on how they might use their spaces to heighten community engagement and to have important social and political\u00a0dialogue.\u00a0<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Over the course of our time together in the National Arts Strategies, Chief Executive Program: Community and Culture, a key point that emerged again and again was the disconnect between arts organizations and the wider, urgent questions being asked across society. As such, during our final gathering one of the topics we discussed was how to better use arts spaces for real community engagement. We need to think about how we can use our spaces to open the dialogue between those who want to be in conversation, in community, as well as those who are in conflict. Arts spaces can provide a \u2018neutral\u2019 space to facilitate conversations, creating \u2018safe spaces for unsafe conversations\u2019 as one member of our cohort put it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">A number of key ideas came from our discussion:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li3\"><span class=\"s1\">Don\u2019t just \u2018tack on\u2019 community meetings and dialogues, integrate community-led initiatives into every element of your work<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Be creative with how you use your space. Think about whether your space could be handed over to other community groups for use outside of your programming hours. You could also offer a grant subsidy to offset usage costs for grassroots community organizations. Don\u2019t let it sit empty!<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s3\">Facilitate the difficult conversations, and share contacts and networks to leverage a diverse community for these conversations. <\/span><span class=\"s1\">Freedom of expression is a key component of this \u2013\u00a0we should use the \u2018arts\u2019 as a tool to deal with radical\/challenging topics in our communities \u2013 and we should do this through deep partnership with those in the community working on these topics<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Arts organizations have a flexibility of space and a can encompass many communities within their mission. Ours can be open spaces for unexpected ideas<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">We have great resources available: specific tools and expertise \u2013 let\u2019s be sure to use them, and let others know they exist and are available for community use<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">Use our spaces and the artists who work in them, as well as workshop leaders, to support community advocacy through the arts<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">We can fundraise for a community engagement manager as a core priority in our spaces<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Many of these points came up over the course of our gathering. As members of our community with a space as a resource, we have both a responsibility and a huge opportunity to engage with some of the most challenging topics of our times in new and exciting ways. We strongly believe that this can be a hugely enriching process for all involved, and can lead to the creation of ever more relevant and high-quality work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, we&#8217;re\u00a0sharing reflections on the Summit at Sundance process and on\u00a0the ideas leaders in the Chief Executive Program: Community and Culture worked on during this Summit last month. We encourage you to add your voice, questions and experiences to the conversation, and to use the information and conversations to inform action! In this post, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":3209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,662],"tags":[676,272,104,675,674,489,168],"coauthors":[671,673,672],"class_list":{"0":"post-3206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-stories-from-the-field","8":"category-the-chief-executive-program","9":"tag-carol-varney","10":"tag-community-engagement","11":"tag-conversation-2","12":"tag-cristy-johnston-limon","13":"tag-daniel-gorman","14":"tag-place","15":"tag-the-chief-executive-program","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3206"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3210,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3206\/revisions\/3210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3206"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/fieldnotes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}