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Understanding Community Development

Understanding Community Cultural Development

 

 

Humankind owes its very existence to community culture. Since the beginning of our development as a societal species we have relied on others within our communities for survival. People have always gathered around the hearth to share the hunt, make clothes, eat together, and stay warm. This very primal instinct to gather is counter to how we have been trained as a society, to slowly lean towards autonomy.  Finding the remedy compels me to strive towards finding ideas to bring us back together as a collective of individuals. Public art events, concerts, and theatrical displays are just a few things that seem to draw people together.

 

Finding identity within a community or group gives people a sense of belonging. It helps to alleviate issues associated with depression and loneliness and offers a sense of fulfillment that sitting alone at home and watching TV could never hope to. As an artist, folklorist, and as a non-profit manager, I will always continue to work on finding ways to make it easier for people to come together and build a sense of unity. There is nothing more satisfying than organizing an event that has a buzz that leaves everyone smiling and asking for more.

 

I have many questions and concerns about how to read an area for the purpose of bringing all types people together. An event that allows people to share with one another where they can add their own cultural influences without feeling vulnerable. Be it, food, music, story, I would like to have a greater understanding towards methods of making public places home.

 

 

Doug Wiltshire

 

Community Cultural Development Response

Community Cultural Development can help me as both an artist and arts administrator.  Through what we are learning, I feel that this class will give me better cultural competency. The ability to interact with other cultures and understanding their needs is vital in being an artist and administrator. One must be able to communicate effectively to create an effective piece of art. And to be a valuable asset in a community as an arts administrator, you need to recognize and be sensitive to the needs of cultures besides your own.  If I become an administrator of a venue, I will need to make a safe space for people of all cultures to express themselves.  Too many theatres are spaces for older, white upper middle class people.  That culture is represented in everything we see in our society.  An artist or administrator’s job is to tell stories or allow stories to be told and there are more stories that need to be represented.  But telling stories to a culture from another culture, we also improve the cultural competency of our community.  As arts administrators are important people in the public eye of a city, what they say and do is scrutinized. How can arts administrators who are from the dominant culture be effective at being an “ally” to different cultures and set an example?  Especially in a town that lacks diversity like Eugene.  As artists and administrators, how can we bring more diversity to our art and our community in Eugene and help develop the cultures here?

Debbie Williamson-Smith

Prior to class, I thought community cultural development was a concept about people and place. I saw it as acknowledging both the cultures that already exist within a place and exposure to other cultures, usually through the arts. And I always thought I incorporated that as part of my work approach to marketing the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and the 20x21EUG through collaborations, events, and art. To some extent I probably do but the video we watched, Songs Are Free, has been with me since Saturday afternoon. The harmonies of Ellie’s Song fill my head to the point that I have found multiple videos of the song online. I found other music by Sweet Honey and the Rock on Spotify and it has been dominating my playlist. I have further researched the remarkable women Fanny Lou Hammer and Ella Baker. I have told friends and family about the music and shared links on social media. I have started conversations about learning that the We in We Shall Overcome was the influence of the white community and comparing it the way that people, mostly white people, change Black to All in Black Lives Matter, a topic I’d love to discuss further. In the show, the galvanizing power of the youth movement was behind Civil Rights, which exactly what it is happening now with the gun debate following the Parkland School shooting. Dr. Reagan discussed how the meaning is of songs are placed by the singer and how the physical act of singing gives a person a place so that by singing, you cannot change the air in that space. These 45 minutes of tape, of respectful and honest dialogue, has broadened my definition of community cultural development. And although it might not always be possible, true community cultural development, when presented to those with open hearts who are ready to listen can be a life changing moment where one realizes their power and inspired to help others realize the same.

First Post Response

Hello everyone,

To begin, I would like to share a favorite quote of mine from Jan Cohen-Cruz’s book, Local Acts:

“A community-based production is usually a response to a collectively significant issue or circumstance. … Indeed, the community-based art movement of the past
thirty years is often a cultural expression of identity politics, referring to
groups of people who connect on the basis of shared identities fundamental to
their sense of themselves.”

This is how I approach community cultural development – through the lens of shared performance and applied theatre. It is important to me that artistic work that I am creating has basis in meaning for those involved and for the audience, and that we are achieving work toward a certain goal.

That being said, a conversation came up the other day among some peers about a community-based performance we were researching. They were operating on a $600K grant from the Irvine Foundation, and they created a performance piece around the death of a little boy who was playing in the street and was struck by a car. He didn’t have any parks or playgrounds to play in, and so one of the themes of the piece was community galvanizing around the creation of a new park for the kids.

However, at the end of the day, there was no park made. Yes, they made an extraordinary performance that created deeper bonds of community and enriched the lives of the hundreds of community members who participated in the project. But couldn’t they have just taken that $600K and made a park?

So really, can we say that our cultural work is worthy of attention and funding, when there are so many other ills that beset communities like homelessness, hunger, and substance abuse? In a perfect world, we would have funding for all of these projects, but unfortunately again and again we as artists and cultural workers find ourselves having to defend ourselves against these kinds of questions.

For the record I absolutely believe we should be funding cultural and artistic work, as I think we can combat those ills through our work, but I know these are questions that I have been asked before and will continue to be asked forever…

Response to Community and Cultural Development:

In Community and Cultural Development what has really stuck out to me is the concept of “listen, dialogue and action” when innating a program or project. It is a simple concept but one that can easily be overlooked. Is the need there and does the community want what you are trying to offer? The feedback an individual or organization receives through the planning and implementation of a program is critical to the overall success. I feel this class will heavily influence my future career path. My dream job would be a Creative Aging Director at an art museum or art related nonprofit. The concept of Paulo Freire’s dialogical method in education is something I already feel I engage in through the different arts in healthcare programs I help facilitate at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. I recognize that I learn and grow so much from working with the participants of the different arts access programs, through engaging in conversations as well as in the guidance I offer throughout the creation process. The Paulo Freire concept of education as freedom is something I was immediately able to apply to the marginalized communities I work with. Through the process of arts creation community members have the freedom to express themselves and process different emotions. In some cases this can lead to the sense of healing and comfort. The concept of education being an act of love and courage resonated with me. I am interested in learning more about process and product as it relates to Community and Cultural Development. Personally, the emphasis in the workshops I facilitate is getting the most you can out of the process and the product is secondary. I am wondering how my peers feel about the emphasis on process or product in their own artistic and cultural endeavors?

Community Cultural Development Response

I am seeing the work of Community Cultural Development as work of healing but also change. We will become the facilitators for conversations, engagements, and understanding by bringing together various communities in dialogue.  By encouraging people to tell their own stories brings about an understanding of differences and can help people come together in mutual respect.  Community Cultural Development provides a safe space to take down the barriers, change our first impressions, calm our fears, and be open to possibilities by learning to listen and see others in new and supporting ways. It can also be the means of bringing up challenging topics that may need to be explored in order to develop conversations. Coming together and finding a common theme/place to engage can be powerful.

I appreciate this idea of community being grounded in place and that culture is where we feel most at home.   I am interested in creating a space ( a literal space) that feels like home where people with different beliefs and interests can come together to engage, participate, learn and heal.  This space can be a park, a healthcare clinic, child development clinic, housing projects, libraries, schools, or within urban development.  I have always worked one on one with families, creating the space for health and healing but feel called to expand in creating more systemic changes through space.  These concepts for community cultural development dovetail beautifully with my past and present interests and gives me a road map of possibilities for where I want to go.

Molly Pierce