Crisscrossing the University-Community Borderline: The 31st Annual Social Theory, Politics and the Arts Conference

The “Community Arts and Higher Education” panel at STPA (left to right): Ken Krafchek, MICA; Nicole Garneau, Columbia College Chicago; Billy Yalowitz, Temple University; Melanie Ohm, Arizona State University; Lori Hager, University of Oregon

“Cultural resistance requires free space.” —Doug Blandy, University of Oregon at Eugene

“Where is the space in which we can interrogate the notion of community? Especially when we see examples of the ways in which culture is used to reify one community and to justify appropriating cultural and natural resources from others?” —Carol Rosenstein, Urban Institute

These were the kinds of ideas participants heard at the 31st Annual Social Theory, Politics and the Arts (STPA) conference at the University of Oregon October 6-8, 2005. Track One, "Arts Education, Community Engagement and Community Cultural Development," offered fertile spaces for discussions of these topics as well as community arts, leadership development and university-community partnerships.

This was an academic conference, and the perspectives were almost exclusively those of educators and researchers. Of course, many faculty members are also practicing artists. At STPA I was on the “Community Arts and Higher Education” panel, presenting Columbia College Chicago’s new Arts in Youth and Community Development (AYCD) concentration of the Master’s in Arts Management.* The other presenters were all from colleges and universities offering degree programs or curricular opportunities in community-based arts. Following are some highlights from the “Community Arts and Higher Education” discussion.

In the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, Billy Yalowitz is the co-director of the Cross-Disciplinary Arts in Community program, now in its fifth year. His paper, "Trespassing: Community-Based Arts and Crisscrossing the University-Community Borderline," asked: “In the process of collaboration, how can questions of decision-making, voice, power and the issues of race and class implicit in these university-community partnerships, be negotiated?” Yalowitz showed documentation from North Cycle, a collaborative art project between Temple University and the North-Philadelphia based “Grands as Parents” (GAPS) organization. Yalowitz also addressed “the contradictions of [his] participation in and leadership of the project as a white person and as a university professor,” and how that led to structural changes in decision-making power among individuals working on the project:

The conventional, essentially racist relationship between the university and the community is here reversed, so that the university is seen literally to reside in and to be guests of the community. With this transformation, it becomes possible to see Temple students and faculty as members of the North Philadelphia community in different ways, expanding the notion of the community from those who live in that contiguous geographic area to those who are committed to building relationships over time, from those who share a racial/class identity to those who are creating a new set of cultural practices together.

Melanie Ohm from the Office of Community Programs at Arizona State University’s Herberger College of Fine Arts examined organizational structures for community-based artwork within the academy, offering analysis that might be particularly useful to those of us who are staff people working within offices or centers dedicated to community partnerships within higher education:

It has been a struggle to simply describe what it is that we are as individuals who cultivate environments for university-community engagement. The simple descriptions are too simple—facilitator, resource exchange—as if we are a shuttle service for the work of others. The complex descriptions, however, involve too many words. We are responsive and creative, chaotic and organized, measure time by relationships rather than products, and we move with versatility through multiple spaces and roles in the course of a day. We are connectors and relationship builders in every aspect of our work. What is the relationship of our work and our selves to the infrastructure of our colleges and our universities?

Ken Krafchek from the Maryland Institute College of Art presented MICA’s model of training artists to serve community through its new MA in Community Arts Program. From his vantage point in the launching of a new master’s-degree program, Ken asks some essential questions for community art practitioners and educators:

To what degree is the community-arts field burdened by what I consider to be the community-busting aspects of high art’s preoccupation with the self? Can the community artist trained in traditional high art ways “let go” of the “self-pleasing” aspects of making art (and living)—and truly engage (i.e. commune) with the world?

Our work as community artists is grounded in the principles of cultural democracy and social justice. What happens when issues of privilege, power and difference butt up against the entrenched conservatism of the academy and establishment art?

Lori Hager from the University of Oregon facilitated the “Community Arts and Higher Education” panel, and framed the discussion with her own research into community-arts degree programs in the United States. She pointed out that faculty engaged in community arts work are often hindered by “the tenure and promotion system, which still promotes based on old academic models, rather than new models of public scholarship. Faculty are not frequently rewarded for community work, which is often viewed as something you do on your own time, until you publish.”

There was a great deal of intriguing scholarship presented at STPA this year that has relevance to those of us in the community arts field. Some points of interest:

Zipporah Lax of the University of Southern California School of Fine Arts made a presentation called "From the Object to the Project." Lax makes observations about changes in cultural production — that artists and producers of culture seem to be more interested in creating projects rather than objects, but art schools may not currently be educating people to produce art in that way. She says “project art” places a higher value on critical rather than formal art making. Artists working in this way “ignore the gatekeepers,” and change authorship from “I” to “we.”

Buzz Alexander of the University of Michigan discussed his work in "Incarceration Nation & The Prison Creative Arts Project." In the community setting of a prison, students are expected to approach prisoners with complete respect and to completely believe in the people with whom they are working. Alexander challenges students to think about their own rehabilitation. In examining “at risk” populations, college students confront the “risk” of acquiescing to massive incarceration. Girls in juvenile facilities practice “anger management,” — but college students are encouraged to critique the problematic ways in which their own anger has already been managed.

Rodney Wambeam of the University of Wyoming openly challenged the assembled crowd to reinvestigate community arts programs as effective deterrents to alcohol and drug abuse in "Why the Arts Need to Understand Prevention: Moving Toward a Comprehensive Approach to Community and Cultural Development." Can arts programs impact substance-abuse prevention? Are culturally developed communities healthier communities? He explained that the arts have not yet succeeded in proving the effects of arts programs on substance-abuse rates, but there are cutting-edge initiatives in prevention and lots of new funding opportunities, and the arts should be taking advantage of them.

Janie Paul of the University of Michigan is an artist concerned with issues such as racism and class struggle. In her presentation, "Addressing Inequality Through a University/School Arts Partnership," Paul discussed Detroit Connections, which links undergradutate students with two under-resourced elementary schools. Detroit is now the poorest city in the country, and has one of the most segregated metro areas with high concentrations of African-Americans, Latinos, Arabs and Chaldeans, while the student population of the University of Michigan has become more affluent over the years. In Paul's experience, students are well meaning and eager to participate, but are very ignorant of communities only 10-15 miles away. When Paul's students talk about helping disadvantaged children, she encourages them to come to see their own disadvantages: isolation, ignorance of the struggle for human rights, and inability to see themselves in a process of social change.

At STPA, there was definitely a sense in which academic professionals working and doing research in the field of community arts really value the opportunity to come together with colleagues to share struggles and lessons learned. The Community Arts Network was raised on several occasions as an excellent platform for the exchange of ideas in the field, and there was an emphasis on coming together at such future meetings as the National Art Education Association in Chicago, the Americans for the Arts meeting in Milwaukee, and Imagining America in Columbus, Ohio.

After STPA, Lori Hager of University of Oregon reflected that:

What stands out the most is the community of colleagues that almost immediately coalesced.  Because we had worked to communicate our thoughts and ideas ahead of time, we were ready to take advantage of the face-to-face moments to share our experiences, ideas and goals for our community arts programs. For me, it highlights the idea that the time is right for focusing on issues, concerns and scholarship of community arts in higher education through a professional association of scholars and practitioners.

*To read Nicole Garneau's speech at the STPA Conference, click here

Nicole Garneau is assistant director of Community Partnerships in the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago, where she coordinates the Arts in Youth and Community Development concentration of the Master's in Arts Management. For ten years, Garneau has been an active member of Insight Arts, an arts organization dedicated to social justice and human rights. She is also a practicing performance artist based in Chicago.

For more information about Columbia's AYCD program, visit its Web site and an article on CAN about the program, "Learning at Street Level: Columbia College Chicago's New Youth-Arts Master's Degree" by Linda Frye Burnham

Original CAN/API publication: December 2005