Community Arts Management
This class served as an overview of the practices, programming, places, and policies comprising the community arts field. Through readings, discussions, guests, field trips, and collective critical engagement, students were introduced to a range of issues that arts and culture workers navigate when engaging community. Course materials ranged from historical to contemporary perspectives, while covering a range of sites or locations.
Grassroots and Mountain Wings_Collaborative Book Response
Stacey Ray_Community Arts Mngmt Case Study_Wormfarm
Community Cultural Development
This course was an overview of the relationship of arts and culture to community development. Settings, constituencies, philosophical approaches, methodologies, planning and funding of arts an cultural programs were examined. Career opportunities were discovered and explored, and there was a strong emphasis on developing practical strategies for community cultural development. Focus was on making the difference in communities. Course objectives: learn the history, theory, and multiple practices of community cultural development; understand the challenges and opportunities facing community cultural development and those that work within this area; practice community cultural development and consider future roles in this area.
Arts and Culture & Economics_Partners in Revitalizing Rural America
Art in Society
This course examined the arts as expressive practice that manifest through material culture in society, with specific attention to the concepts of participatory culture, trans-media, and the values embedded in arts programming. We explored the relationships of art to society and individual experience using folkloristic anthropological, sociological, philosophical and art education literature, and did so in a transmedia environment. Drawing on concepts derived from various resources, we examined the ways in which material culture functions to maintain, transmit, and dynamically engage cultural and social change. Fine, functional, popular, folk, multimedia, and environmental forms of art constitute the range of subject matter, and specifically were seeking the implications for arts managers that these various critical perspectives entail for work in the arts and culture sectors.
Field Guide Proposal_Installation Art
Re-installing Rural_Digital Field Guide to Rural Contemporary Art Installations
Learning Objectives
To learn how the arts and our material culture has changed with the new developments in media and technology, and what new art worlds may now exist (or exist in the future) because of those changes. What is the role of leaders in the arts and culture sectors going to look like as this process of trans-media integration continues?
Reflection: Changes in media and technology have influenced every aspect of the arts, from art production to art consumption and purpose. This is particularly evident in areas of participation and outreach. We now have the capability to engage wider audiences, and actually encourage deeper levels of participation across through digital media. This is particularly influential in the rural arts, where current organizations are working to utilize technology and the digital realm to connect all of the rural creative activity happening across regions and the nation as a whole. It has also allowed for greater creativity among people who were primarily art consumers and now art creators. Because of these advancements, barriers to participation and to possibility within the arts have begun being eroded to allow for a fuller picture of arts participation and appreciation.
To better understand the role of participation in the arts, how and why it is important and how cultural leaders can support and generate participation.
Reflection: I now have a much more refined sense of what participation in the arts really means, and I understand that it is much broader than I originally suspected. Especially due to technology developments mentioned above, the idea of what can be interpreted as arts participation has really exploded with traditional ideas of participation serving as only a small portion of the whole. Especially in rural areas where access may serve as a barrier to traditional forms of participation, there is an increased reliance on innovative methods of encouraging engagement.
To better understand the role of art in society as a whole, and be able to understand how art worlds operate within different levels. How does society (on a global scale and on a local scale) influence the arts?
Reflection: My idea of what constitutes an art world is also much greater but more refined. The definition of what constitutes “art” can be immense but really depends on variables of person and place. Art is not actually defined by what most of the population understands to be art, in other words, what they understand to be “high art” mediums. Art serves a much more grounded and instrumental purpose and really seeps into every dimension of our culture. I also now better understand the many dynamics and political structures at play in these worlds and how there are both tangible and intangible frameworks set to evaluate and understand art and that these perceptions of understanding are constantly changing as our society changes. Rules of remix, politics, participation, interpretation, presentation, aesthetic….it is all in a constantly fluid motion of change.
To understand what constitutes art, and what does not. What is the purpose of art in different contexts?
Reflection: Similar to the above, I have a greater sense of what can be defined as art and in a way I understand that almost anything CAN be art but it is the perceptions of people and the framework of place and culture that make this variable across society. There are suggestions for what are should be, established by people and institutions who we have elected to make these judgement, but none of this is concrete. The article “Culture is Ordinary” really struck me in regards to this idea….the most genuine forms of artistic expression may be found in the everyday. I also have a different perception on process and understand that it is not always the product that matters but what happens along the way to reaching that end goal, especially in projects that may have an effect on community development.
To understand how I, as an arts leader, can utilize the arts to generate social and cultural change.
Reflection: I have unexpectedly taken a new, exciting path in my research and career interests because of both Art in Society and Community Cultural Development. Before these courses I did not really understand the impact that art can really have on society and what it can accomplish. How it can affect people. How it can affect communities. How it can create change. I am from a long generation of rural butchers and farmers and was raised in the same small community that both my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were part of. For the first time, I have realized that I can link my deep connection to rural Montana, with my passion for contemporary art and my need for a career with meaning and social purpose. I seem to have found the place where all of the pieces of my identity can live together in peace and where I can develop my purpose. I am excited for what is to come!
