Group B2: Roya Amirsoleymani, Emily Dobkin, Kelly Johnson, Lauren Silberman, Kelly Tavares
Cultural democracy can be understood as the universal human right to access, shape, experience, benefit from, and participate in the world’s infinite manifestations of arts and culture, ideally realized as a nation free of “official” culture or systemic barriers that prevent citizens from individually or collectively engaging with their own unique cultural heritage and practice.
In the context of cultural democracy, “arts and culture” and its enactments must be understood in fluid and unrestricted terms, as reflected in Raymond Williams’ “Culture is Ordinary”, in which the author states that the nature of culture is “both traditional and creative . . . the most ordinary common meanings and the finest individual meanings”, and that culture evokes and embodies equally the general and the personal.
In “A Cultural Bill of Rights”, Bill Ivey similarly invokes a wide open space for imagining the signs and significances of arts, culture, and art worlds but provides some loose parameters useful for organizing our interpretations of these concepts, including heritage, creative life, the role of artists, diplomacy, and quality, all of which help participants concretely and coherently advocate for and contribute to a productive dialogue on cultural democracy.
Because cultural democracy is contingent upon the opportunity for every citizen to participate in arts and culture throughout her lifetime, a culturally democratic nation must constantly work to create and sustain dynamic and diverse conditions for cultural civic engagement to flourish. Blogger and scholar Henry Jenkins coined the term “civic ecology” to describe a vast communications system that supports civic engagement, positing that civic ecology is best supported by maximizing the availability of relevant and credible information; strengthening public capacity to engage with information; and actively promoting information so that public engagement is encouraged. Civic ecology and the challenges it addresses inherently emerge from and work through a transmedia world, and the concepts of cultural democracy and civic engagement are layered such that to realize cultural democracy, we must employ methods for cultural participation and engagement in terms of civic ecology and transmedia.
One way in which lifelong participation in arts and culture can be promoted and strengthened vis à vis civic ecology is through formal opportunities for arts education and development of fundamental arts competencies made available and accessible to all citizens in local, national, or international community contexts. Barriers to participation in the music world are particularly forbidding and include diminishing access to music education programs, high cost of instruction and supplies, and the amount of time required for training. This essay illustrates concepts of cultural democracy, civic ecology, and their connections through a discussion of four programs that provide accessible music education to youth while leveraging the power of transmedia to educate, collaborate, and inform.
Ukulele in the Classroom Initiative
Canada’s Ukulele in the Classroom Initiative, created by James Hill and Chalmers Doane, brings basic music education to students in fourth through sixth grade using the ukulele, an instrument that helps fulfill music education and participation goals because of its affordability and accessibility. A ukulele can be purchased at a relatively low cost, is portable, is an ensemble instrument, and can be used to teach multiple music elements, making the program approachable for beginners while encouraging mastery and quality musicianship over time.
By providing an easily accessible and engaging program, the Ukulele in the Classroom Initiative is contributing to the next generation of passionate musicians. Its comprehensive transmedia system incorporates books, free online supplementary materials, teacher certification programs, and a web-based support system that promotes dialogue; encourages growth; and circulates ideas, aspirations, and issues. The program’s emphasis on approachability, affordability, and accessibility addresses the civic ecology challenge of strengthening the capacity of individuals to engage with information while helping fulfill the right to creative participation in a cultural democracy.
El Sistema
Venezuela’s El Sistema program exemplifies a successful cultural democracy initiative through which any individual can participate in classical music instruction beginning at age three with free lessons at local program centers (nucleos). Founded in 1975 by Jose Antonio Abreau, El Sistema programs became funded through Venezuela’s social services ministries in 1979 and are now classified as a collective of independent, state-funded initiatives.
El Sistema’s students, 90% of whom live in poverty, attend rehearsals, sectionals, and lessons up to four hours a day, six days a week. The program also partners with parents to build support for students, providing monetary stipends to families when students are accepted to a youth or city orchestra. El Sistema allows all Venezuelans to have access to quality music education from a young age, helping to foster lifelong participation in the world of classical music.
A compelling example of El Sistema’s success is Gustavo Dudamel, who is now conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A recent Ted Talks segment called Dudamel the “greatest young conductor in the world”.
Dudamel is now helping to build El Sistema USA, an umbrella networking organization for international El Sistema-inspired programs that will create a communications system in line with Jenkins’ civic ecology. One arm of El Sistema USA is the Abreau Fellowship, a tuition-free training program for postgraduate musicians housed in the New England Conservatory that trains individuals to launch or build the capacity of programs similar to El Sistema, helping develop expertise that can strengthen music-oriented efforts within the larger cultural democracy movement.
A second extension of El Sistema USA is an online community hosted by Ning.com, where musicians gather to share resources and information about El Sistema and music education. Every current Abreau Fellow maintains a personal blog to increase access to expert information.
AfroReggae
When planning and implementing arts and culture programming in the spirit of cultural democracy, it is critical to consider a community’s specific cultures, assets, and social concerns through the creative and folkloric traditions already embedded in its history.
Arts and culture organizations designed to address or mitigate social problems are emerging internationally. Many of them use music or dance to engage with their communities, in part because these art forms can be easy to facilitate and share among community members and require minimal resources in comparison to many other art practices.
Brazil is home to many examples of cultural organizations working to bring communities together to collectively combat problems through the teaching and practice of music and dance. The AfroReggae organization in Rio de Janeiro is developing an international-friendly and sustainable model for this type of work that focuses on the needs of traditionally marginalized and underrepresented community members. AfroReggae’s programs use music and dance instruction and performances incorporating classical music as well as national and international dance styles to involve youth of impoverished urban neighborhoods (favelas) in artistic activities that help deter them from gang involvement and street violence.
By making opportunities for cultural education and expression available to communities that are often prevented or discouraged from engaging with such activities, AfroReggae participants become involved in alternatives to violence and destruction that instead promote the livelihood, sustainability, artistry, and unique cultural vibrancy of the communities within which they work.
Playing for Change Foundation
An American organization embodying the concepts and spirit of cultural democracy through civic ecology is Playing for Change Foundation (PFCF), a multimedia nonprofit dedicated to inspiring, connecting, and promoting world peace through music.
Inspired to document street musicians around the world singing the same song, PFCF founder Mark Johnson and team traveled with cameras and a mobile recording studio to capture the song “Stand by Me” as performed by musicians in eight different countries. Thanks to social media outlets such as YouTube, which have allowed over 20 million viewers to experience its first video, PFCF is now a global sensation that acquired nonprofit status in 2007 with the mission of supporting music and arts education in high-need communities through benefit concerts that bring together musicians from across the globe.
PFCF-funded schools’ curricula focus on regional music in order to preserve cultural history and traditions while also promoting international connections through music by providing opportunities for participating schools, students, and teachers worldwide to connect with one another. By openly considering the schools it helps support to belong to individual communities and not to the organization, PFCF helps communities feel invested in a school’s success in a culturally sensitive manner.
By leveraging social media outlets like YouTube to inform its creation and inspire its purpose of providing music education to communities lacking formal opportunities for arts and culture participation, PFCF contributes to cultural democracy efforts through civic ecology’s goals of information access and public engagement.
By endeavoring to enhance public access to music education in specific cultural contexts, these organizations exemplify active civic engagement, using a range of languages, images, media platforms, web applications, and other modes of communication to promote, activate, and enhance the possibility for broad public participation in the creation, absorption, and exchange of information. In the process, these organizations contribute to a larger effort to produce and share arts and culture in a democratic fashion and realize cultural democracy on a global scale.
References
1 Williams, R. (2000). Culture is ordinary. In G.Bradford & G. Wallach (Eds.), The politics of culture: Policy perspectives for individuals, institutions, and communities (pp. 16-19). New York, NY: The New Press.
2 Ivey, B. A cultural bill of rights. Adapted Ivey, B. (2008). Arts, inc.: How greed and neglect have destroyed our cultural rights. University of California.
3 Jenkins, H. (2010, October 15). Toward a new civic ecology [blog]. Retrieved from http://henryjenkins.org/2010/10/towards_a_new_civic_ecology.html
4 Ted Talks. (2010). El Sistema USA. Retrieved 24 October 2010 from http://elsistemausa.org/el-sistema/venezuela/the-teresa-carreno-youth-orchestra/
Transmedia Resources
Cultural Democracy and Civic Ecology
Ivey, B. A cultural bill of rights. Adapted Ivey, B. (2008). Arts, inc.: How greed and neglect have destroyed our cultural rights. University of California. A Cultural Bill of Rights
Jenkins, H. (2010, October 15). Toward a new civic ecology [blog]. Retrieved from http://henryjenkins.org/2010/10/towards_a_new_civic_ecology.html
Williams, R. (2000). Culture is ordinary. In G.Bradford & G. Wallach (Eds.), The politics of culture: Policy perspectives for individuals, institutions, and communities (pp. 16-19). New York, NY: The New Press. Culture-is-Ordinary
Tavares, K. (24 October, 2010). Cultural democracy and civic ecology in the era of new media technology: A defense of the individual’s right to not use technology [blog]. Retrieved from http://aaablogs.uoregon.edu/tavares/2010/10/23/cultural-democracy-and-civic-ecology-in-the-era-of-new-media-technology-a-defense-to-the-individuals’-right-to-not-use-technology/
Ukulele in the Classroom Initiative
El Sistema
“How Music Saved Venezuela’s Children”:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Trailer for El Sistema documentary film:
Click here to view the embedded video.
Ted Talks – “The Teresa Carreno Youth Orchestra”
Ted Talks – “Jose Abreau on kids transformed by music”
AfroReggae
AfroReggae (Brazil)
Favela to the World (UK)
Playing for Change
Playing for Change Foundation
Playing for Change Primary Website
Videos
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Click here to view the embedded video.
