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Field Internship in Community Arts
Dr. Billy Yalowitz, Pepón Osorio
Temple University (Spring 2005)

This course is an experiential introduction to Community Arts, focusing on artist/community collaborations. Community Arts projects bring artists together with people of a community of location, spirit, or tradition, to create art that is based in the life of that community. Projects with two communities will be undertaken this Spring.

This course will lay the groundwork for the basic understanding of these two communities. The course is designed to develop an understanding based on a particular intellectual, conceptual, and personal approach to art and the neighborhood. We will use our experience and process to create parallels with other arts projects dealing with communities that have been created throughout the United States. Starting from the notion that Art already exists in communities and that every community has art object and performance processes, we will develop unique projects that will introduce a different approach to the audience. This Community Arts process is not primarily focused on the idea of bringing the Arts to the community as much as it is to understand how people interact with the Arts as everyday lived experience. Community Arts is a cyclical process, an exchange where we from Tyler/Temple will inform the communities with whom we work as much as we will be informed by them.

This approach to art has a set of demands that differ from traditional art making. Community Arts is a powerful tool for developing an understanding of interacting with people and the visual world, and for furthering personal vision and an understanding of the responsibility of choice in the creative process.

This course will expand the student’s visual and performative capacities. We will explore an array of approaches from creating points of negotiation with our audience to creating work in a relatively unknown environment. From the self to the collective we will investigate and experience various concepts essential in contemporary art making. While collaborating in the creating of Art, students will be looking at their own ways of approaching the community as well as seeing past Community Arts works made by other artists. Attention will be given to the role of research in the creative process.

We will focus on specific questions from the artist’s perspective:

• What is my relationship to this community?
• What are the existing artforms in the community?
• How might this specific neighborhood change when a new art object is introduced?
• How does the public respond to the community arts process?
• What are my points of negotiation?
• How do race and class affect the exchange between me and people from the community?
• What is my sense of private vs. public space?
• Are public spaces socially owned by the public?

COURSE STRUCTURE AND PROJECTS

Course Projects:

1. Partnering with Taller Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Workshop), a Community Arts organization established in 1974 by Latino artists and activists in the North Kensington area of Philadelphia. Taller is a community based graphic arts workshop which provides cultural training alternatives to local youth, and is nationally recognized as a model organization that uses the arts as a vehicle for social change. Working in collaboration with high school students at Taller, Temple/Tyler students will create one original artwork based on a unifying Community Arts structure. Supervised by Pepón Osorio.

2. Power & Glory/Who Am I? will be co-created with Art Sanctuary, an internationally acclaimed community-based arts organization which brings nationally-known African American artists to North Philadelphia for performances, readings, and residencies. The performance/installation will be co-created created by Temple/Tyler students working with the North Stars, performing arts ensemble of young people, and an award-winning staff of professional teaching artists from Art Sanctuary. Supervised by Billy Yalowitz.

Method of Instruction: This is a hands-on, experiential course. Students will work in groups and one-on-one with the instructors to develop a personal approach to community space and personal narrative. We will begin from personal experience, exploring our own relationship to neighborhood space, considering our own community backgrounds and to people from different backgrounds, and move towards forming one-to-one relationships with young people from the community. Readings and slide and video presentations will be used to generate discussion in class. Students will conduct research on the selected sites, investigating historical references, architectural designs, and the social architecture of the community. Students will keep a journal record of their experiences in class and in their field work.

Course structure: Students attend the weekly seminar at the Main Campus (Thursdays, 3:40 – 6:30pm) for discussion, planning, theory and supervision. Field work (see Internship Components, below) includes one 90-minute community session per week, February and March, with a second weekly 90-minute session to be added in April to prepare for Art Sanctuary performances on April 28 – 30 and for final showing of works with Taller Puertoriqueño on April 28.

Community Arts History and Theory: The course will begin with readings and discussion about the history and theory of community arts, and orienting information about the North Philadelphia neighborhoods. Issues of race, class and identity will also be examined, i.e. how each of our backgrounds impacts doing this work.

Internship Components

Relationship building

Each Temple student will develop a collaborative relationship with a high school student as part of the internship. These relationships will form a core component of your experience in the course and project.

You will be creating your final art project in collaboration with this partner. Activities through which these relationships will be built include:

• Learning about each others’ lives and communities through campus visits to a class, residence hall, library, campus event at Temple, visit to the high school student’s school and community
• Planning and going on a field trip together, related to the project, i.e. museum visit, interview with a relative on community history, attendance at cultural events
• Follow-up conversations on workshop assignments and projects, to support the high school students’ learning process

Research

As a group, we will undertake academic and field research about the neighborhood, its history, its social architecture and visual environment. We will report to one another about this research and develop a resource base that will have several applications within the course and project. See below in Assignments for details.

Art Work

Each Temple/Tyler student will develop a collaborative artwork, working closely with a high school student partner. See below in Assignments for details.

COURSE SCHEDULE

Jan. 20 Course Introduction

Project Request: Send an email, due by Tues. 1/25, requesting which of the course projects you want to work on, and why. No guarantees that requested projects can be granted; we will have to balance the groups by a number of factors.

Jan, 27: North Philadelphia history; history of the neighborhood. Introduction to the community more in-depth

Feb. 3: Community Arts History and Theory: Discussion on Community Arts readings. Self-reflection process on cultural forms from students’ communities of origin; issues of Race and Class(Joint meeting).

Feb. 10: Community Site Visit

Feb. 17: Research Planning

DUE: PERSONAL ESSAY ON IDENTITY, COMMUNITY, AND CULTURAL FORMS

Feb. 24: Research Process

Mar. 3: RESEARCH PRESENTATION report on research in small groups.
Create a community map for each community/group portrait of each community
Your point of interest within this map or portrait

Mar. 10 SPRING BREAK

Mar. 17: Design Development, meet with community collaborators

Mar. 24: Design Development

March 31: Design Development

Apr. 7: Prep for Performance/Installation

Apr. 14: Prep for Performance/Installation

Apr. 21: Prep for Performance/Installation DUE: ART PROJECT (Billy’s section)

Apr. 28: NORTH PERFORMANCE OPENING NIGHT (Billy’s section)

ART PROJECT (Pepón’s section)

May 7: Final Evaluation Session; DUE: FINAL PAPER

READINGS

Texts for the course can be found on the Community Arts Network (CAN) Reading Room, http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archive/ca/index.php. In addition, some readings can be found on Blackboard; see instructions at the end of the syllabus for accessing Blackboard.

Please see separate sectional syllabus for additional readings specific to each project.

For 1/27

• “Of the People, By the People, and For the People: The field of community performance”, by Richard Owen Geer (1993) http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/ archivefiles/2002/09/of_the_people_b.php
• “The Citizen Artist”. By Aida Mancillas (1997) http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/ archivefiles/2002/09/citizen_artist_1.php
• Lacy, Suzanne. "Cultural Pilgrimages and Metaphoric Journeys", from Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, on Blackboard
• Lippard, Lucy. “The Object of Process”, from New Land Marks, on Blackboard
• handout - “The Death and Rebirth of North Central Philadelphia, pp. 1 – 11

For 2/3

• “The Selma Project”. By Bob Leonard (1995) http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/ archivefiles/2002/09/selma_project_u.php
• “An Introduction to Community Arts and Activism”, by Jan Cohen-Cruz (2003) http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/ archivefiles/2002/02/an_introduction.php
• Lippard, Lucy. “Ups and Downs”, from Lure of the Local, on Blackboard
• Working Together to End Racism, pamphlet, by Tim Jackins/United to End Racism (2002), on Blackboard
• “The Cost of Whiteness”, by Thandeka. Tikkun, May/June 1999, on Blackboard
• handout - “The Death and Rebirth of North Central Philadelphia, pp. 12 – 24

To prepare for participating in discussion on these readings, please take note of:

• key issues raised
• issues relevant to our project
• how the article resonates with you

For further reading assignments, check the your section’s syllabus.

ASSIGNMENTS

#1. Personal Essay On Identity, Community, And Cultural Forms, Due Feb. 17
A comparative essay on your community of origin and your first impressions of the North Philadelphia community in which you are working. As source materials for this essay, utilize:

• notes on your community of origin’s cultural forms, from class process discussions
• notes from your reflective work on Race and/or Class from the readings and classroom process discussions
• the ethnographic materials on the North Philadelphia neighborhood, and the site visit to the community organization

Please address the following questions, in 3 -5 pages (please double-space)

• How do you anticipate that your background and community of origin might affect you in building a relationship to this community? How might race and/or class affect the exchange between you and people from the community?
• What are the existing artforms and cultural practices in the community? How do these compare to artforms and cultural practices from your community of origin? How do these artforms and cultural practices relate to your own aesthetic values?
• How will you feel about working in someone’s home? About getting to know someone from another community and background, and entering his or her life? About inviting them into your life? How does your own background affect you sense of public vs. private space?

#2. Research Presentation, Due March 3

Choose one aspect of the neighborhood’s life to investigate, in conjunction with your high school partner. You may choose from any of a number of different aspects of neighborhood life:

food; faith; social services; health; arts & culture; schools; recreation/sports; politicians- civic leaders; housing; infrastructure – transportation, shopping, environment; jobs – employment, industry, etc.; social gathering places

1. Conduct and record an oral interview with someone who is knowledgeable about that aspect of the neighborhood. Choose someone who has an insider’s perspective on the neighborhood. Examples: restaurant owner; church pastor; director of community organization; political leader; homeless person; social activist or advocate
2. Identify a secondary source for the research – written material about that part of the neighborhood. Write a synopsis of this material, noting issues and facts relevant to your, your partner, and the project theme
3. Field observation – spend at least 2 -3 hours at this site. Take note of: interactions between people; visual and spatial motifs; cultural diversity (flags, food or religion) health issues; class issues (professional vs. lay people); age (seniors vs. children); people’s walking pace (sometimes you can tell who is working or not); outsiders to the community (their role, their place in the neighborhood); music; clothing; artifacts that are a common denominator; cars (what make?); local fashion vs. fashion imported from Center City; hair styles (both male and female); gender roles.

The following questions should be addressed in your presentation, as relevant:

• A summary of the person, place, or organization:
  What a role the subject plays in the neighborhood
  How the subject functioned in the neighborhood
  Relationship, if any, to Taller Puertoriqeño or Art Sanctuary/Church of the Advocate.
  How did/does the subject define their territorial boundaries in the community Philadelphia, i.e. in what part of the neighborhood does it function?
  Programs and forms of the organization, i.e. educational, political, cultural, social service, artistic, religious
  Significant events related to the subject
  Relevance to current issues in the community

• Significant stories, visual images, memorable quotes from the subject

• Recommendations for further research:
  People to do follow-up interviews on
  Books, publications, films, etc.

#3. Art Project, Due April 21 (Billy’s section), April 28 (Pepón’s section)
Working in close collaboration with one of the young people from the community arts organization, Temple/Tyler students will create an artwork that will incorporate but not limited to  the basic ideas in the course. All students will create a piece of artwork that results from the interaction with the specific people in the neighborhood and may be rendered in any of a number of sites and materials, in a living room of a home or on stage. Students are free to use video, fabric, projections and any other material that she/he is familiar with as long as is part of a collaborative vision between you and your partner from the neighborhood. The artwork should have a should have some interactive quality.  

#4. Final Reflective Paper, due May 7.
In this final paper, you will have the chance to reflect on the residency, the process, and your role in it, project, in relation to Community Arts theory. The primary points of reference for your reflection and evaluation should be your journal entries , as well as your community arts research paper.Look specifically at the following issues: (1)Exchange – the dynamics of our partnership and your relationship with your collaborator (2) issues of race and class (3) The art work (4) personal self-evaluation.

COURSE POLICIES

Attendance
Attendance at all seminar meetings and internship sessions is, of course, mandatory. The course is a combination of academic and applied work. You and your classmates will need to count on one another; work at the field internship sites demands utter reliability. Any anticipated difficulties with attendance should be discussed with instructor before they occur. If you miss more than one class your grade will be reduced by one grade for each subsequent missed class. All missed class work must be completed.

Grading

Class participation		20%
Field Internship participation – engagement in planning, implementation, reflection, problem solving, teaching, research		20%
Personal Essay		10%
Research Presentation		15%
Arts Project		20%
Final Reflective Paper		20%

 

Using Blackboard

All students enrolled in Art Ed 351 will be automatically signed up for the Blackboard Community for our course. All that is required is the student’s Temple user name and password.

To access the articles in the Blackboard file:

1. Go to the TU Portal from the Temple homepage
2. Log in with user name and password
3. Click “Blackboard” at the top of the page
4. Click “Field Internship in Community Arts” in Courses You Are Taking
5. Click “Course documents” on the left menu
6. Click the name of the article.

The articles will download; it may take a minute or two.

It is suggested that you print the articles out.

You can read the articles in the PDF format online; adjust the size% of the articles – easiest to read for most of the articles is 125%.