Teaching Topics for Community-based Arts for Social Change

One of the resounding questions in the field of community-based arts is: How do you teach this stuff? Alternate ROOTS, a southeastern-regional organization of community-based artists, has been thinking about it. ROOTS provides training in community arts through its CAPP (Community Arts Partnership Project) Resources for Social Change, and the training-faculty members have produced a list of topics they feel should go into any curriculum for learning how to do this work. Here it is.

Art-Making: Aesthetics
History/principles of arts activism and cultural animation
Discipline-based approaches to working in community
Technical training in specific discipline

Education: Learning through Dialogue
Learning about multiple intelligences and learning styles
Critical response process and other forms of critique and feedback
Active listening
Research methods and other preparation processes
Cross-cultural communications

Partnering: Partnership Design & Implementation
Facilitation/mediation skills
Resource identification
Collaboration skills and coalition-building techniques
Building equitable partnerships
Residency design

Politics: Power Analysis
Community-based planning methods
Undoing racism
Group facilitation
Community organizing
Aligning organizational functions with mission

Change: Transformation-personal, institutional, systemic
Personal growth in a social context
Learning about issues (such as those specific to incarcerated, homeless, etc.)
Expanding/deepening the impact of any single art "event"

©Alternate ROOTS

Original CAN/API publication: November 1999