Connecting Californians
Finding the Art of Community Change
An Inquiry into the role of story in strengthening communities

Introduction

One California story began in a northern coastal town, with the death of a young child in a family of Hmong refugees from the mountains of Laos. In response to the tragedy, following a tradition thousands of years old, the family sacrificed a pig. Non-Hmong neighbors misunderstood. An ordinance against animal sacrifice was passed, and a painful inter-ethnic clash ensued. In the effort at reconciliation, a Hmong playwright, in partnership with a local community organization and a local theater, wrote a play about the incident that was performed for town residents. The play enhanced community dialogue, contributing eventually to the repeal of the ordinance.

The recurrence of stories such as this throughout California — communities using narrative art to strengthen themselves — led to the inquiry described in these pages. The hunch behind the inquiry was that art is a particularly powerful means of building community, and that the country’s historical interest in grassroots narrative, as exemplified, for example, in the Federal Theater Project in the '30s, might be bubbling up again from communities. The growing national debate about the decline of social capital and the need for civic renewal provided a context for this hypothesis.

The research question: How can different ways of discovering and presenting local stories in public contribute to the strengthening of community?

The inquiry was itself designed as a public conversation, led by a partnership between funders and practitioners who held the question mutually and functioned as equals. The research focused on the intersecting roles of artists and humanists, community organizers (including popular-education and community-development proponents) and diverse residents, all using story to address local issues.

	Max Girard Ukiah Players Theater, The Good War Project. Photo by Evan Johnson

The inquiry had six components:

• A California-wide scan by county during the period 1995-99 for evidence of public performances based on local stories.
• More than 100 interviews with artists, humanities professionals, community organizers, foundation staff and educators in California and nationally.
• Case studies of public performances springing from the issues, aspirations and histories of California communities and used to engage residents in community building.
• Two focus groups, one in southern and one in northern California, composed of artists, humanists and community organizers, convened to discuss their experiences at the intersection of story, art and organizing.
• Three monographs ("The Critical Discourse," "Factors for Success" and "The Sustainability of Storytelling"), commissioned to address prominent issues emerging from the research.
• A literature review.

The research team was particularly interested in the public performance of local story that combined a compelling vision of positive social change with high artistic standards. They postulated that the success of such efforts would depend upon how engaged community members were in all phases of the work, from creation through performance through follow-up reflection. The team had interest in projects that would provide opportunities for people from unlike backgrounds to make human connection and lay the foundation for community problem solving.

The Inquiry Team

Dudley Cocke, artist and Director of Roadside Theater, the 25-year-old Appalachian ensemble company, and Craig McGarvey, educator and Director of The James Irvine Foundation’s Civic Culture Program, first met in the late spring of 1999 at a national theater conference in San Francisco. They quickly discovered a mutual interest in community story, learning theory and the chasm between the arts and humanities and science. Their shared interests formed the background of the inquiry that they pursued over the next ten months, from September 1999 to June 2000. Erica Kohl, community educator, who received her Masters Degree in Community Development from the University of California, Davis, in June 1999, joined the research team in November. Linda Frye Burnham, Co-Director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network, and James Quay, Executive Director of the California Council for the Humanities, also participated in the inquiry.

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