Minding the Gap: A Cross-Generational Dialogue, Part II

This is a dialogue about generational leadership transition in the field of community arts (or community cultural development) between Arlene Goldbard, a leading writer and consultant in the field for more than 30 years, and Lee Ann Norman, a 2006 graduate from the Master's program in Arts and Youth in Community Development at Columbia College Chicago.

The conversation started when, in early 2006, Lee Ann Norman took the initiative to send the Community Arts Network "A Response to the CAN Report." It analyzed the state of the field presented in our report on the CAN Gathering of U.S. field leaders in 2004. Norman saw many problems and unanswered questions in the report, and put forward the suggestion that the field is being led almost exclusively by aging white Baby Boomers who often don't seek the advice and counsel from the younger generation of people who are being formally trained in new courses and degree programs emerging around the country. She felt some new solutions might be found if they all sat down together at the same table as peers.

Norman's essay set off a chain reaction of responses on listservs and Web sites across the country. One of those was "Nobody Here But Us Chickens," a post on May 19 by Arlene Goldbard on her blog. It drew a flood of reactions from her readers, in response to which she wrote "Re/Generation," May 23. It wasn't long before Norman and Goldbard were writing to each other, and they shared their e-mail correspondence with CAN. It airs some feelings, questions and answers about power and transition that are apparently not limited to this field. As the older generation faces the complex and dismaying issues of "retirement," often with no resources to fall back on, how will the wand be passed to the next generation? —Linda Burnham

(Thanks for all of the information and sources. Helpful indeed.) It’s interesting that your experiences with the collective have kind of culminated in the same things — this recognition that this kind of governance structure is hard work (perhaps more difficult than everyone who thought it was a good idea anticipated), and that it takes a certain level of maturity in order to make it work.

Your experience in the commune made me think, for some reason, of "Talking Back" by bell hooks. She writes that she feels one of her primary responsibilities as an educator is to help her students find and use their voice. She writes a lot about how some people feel … not more comfortable with using their voice, speaking of their experiences (all of them) than others and conditions set up that are conducive to that (or not). So, in an ideal setting, an environment would be created in a collective that allows for open and transparent communication, mutual trust, and respect — from everyone, for everyone. You know, some people are taught that their experiences are more important, their voices, so they use any and all platforms for it, while others … people can use their power and influence for good, and others can use it to maintain their favored position.

So collectives have drawbacks, hierarchies have drawbacks, hybrids have drawbacks … what is it about our work that makes adequate leadership structures such a challenge? On the face, it doesn’t seem like it should be so difficult, but what do you think it is? I’m sure there is something in the fact that the activity is rooted in resistance; I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that it’s about people’s, a community’s self-determination … but what is IT? Can we give it a name? What’s the critical issue, in your opinion?

This is a bit tangential, but it comes up a lot in my work because so much of it deal with young people. (Ethics again; maybe theory, maybe philosophy…) Who owns a work? When you create something in a group, a community, as a young person even, how do you handle those “things.” I’m sure you’ve heard stories about co-opting and exploitation. A member of a local youth arts organization was telling me how surprised she was to see images of her group and their young people in literature about my grad program when she was shopping around looking for professional development activities. I found it odd too since the organization isn’t formally affiliated with the college as a partner in any way. But they’re nice pictures … her organization does great work … Gallery 37/After School Matters (a city program) hires kids to create work as “apprentice artists” in one of their programs, but they don’t get to keep much of their work even though they have to present a portfolio, fill out applications, etc. ASM “owns” the work essentially, but I’m not completely sure that’s part of the kids’ contracts, or if they even have them like that, though they get paid. Another art center uses about an 80 (to the organization)/20 (to the youth) split for work their kids make and sell in the store gallery. I understand the idea of giving something back to the community, but sometimes, these practices don’t exactly sit well with me.

I worked on a proposal for a contract once and that was EXACTLY what we were told to do: pack it full of stuff, then do the best you could on the least amount. Do you think it’s a question of misinformation? Like, do they REALLY think we can do all of these things in 6 weeks on roughly “$1.50 per child per day”? Again, maybe it’s a question of people advocating for themselves — everything seems to go back to voice…

We do tend to be concerned with the latest, greatest, the next, the new, however, it’s important to simply remember. A colleague of mine once said that a conversation our cohort was having was difficult for her because it was all about culture, history, the past, and she felt like she didn’t have it. We were all a bit mortified and scolded her a bit and said, but everyone has a past, everyone came from a place, ancestors, history, story, etc. A big part of the ruling culture is to try and erase that, dismiss it and convince you that that you lack so if you can just get that one thing, be one shade lighter, have that much more disposable income per week, drive this car, live in this neighborhood, read this book, see that exhibit, listen to this composer, THEN you’ll be valuable, worthy, okay. So, I don’t see our work as about new stories, but more about reclaiming and discovering the ones that have been hidden from us, suppressed, denied. We can’t move forward, or move beyond ourselves and all that we carry (good, bad, ugly, indifferent) without an understanding of that past, our history — we can’t make connections to others if we don’t know ourselves. And no, I’m not advocating an “identity politics” and self-segregation because that’s often rooted in the same kind of idealizing of the culture, the thing, that denies the whole story, the complexity of the human condition — what it means to be alive. Where do we tell the whole story? Well, we first “talk amongst ourselves” because even in a culture, a community, there is diverse experience, then we make connections across neighborhood boundaries, ethnic, social, and economic lines … and then we get online and post them all to our blog. ;)

I don’t know … maybe I sound a bit “trippy” and idealistic myself, but it’s all about reclaiming.

Yes, I am interested in bell hooks' point too. An internalized sense of entitlement on the part of privileged people is often the force behind someone seizing leadership in a collective situation. One way to fix that is to work on holding their egos in check. But the other is to raise all ships on a tide of self-expression: if all share a feeling of entitlement of that kind, it becomes not a privilege but a right. I like the way Paulo Freire talked about it, how becoming a subject of history (instead of its object) meant learning to say one's own words with one's own voice. What you describing as reclaiming fits right in there, I think.

I don't think the vexing leadership and structure questions we've been discussing are peculiar to our field. I've worked with quite a few other types of organizations and seen the same tendencies manifest there too. But always more so in marginal fields. From what I have seen, when people feel their work is oppositional (when it often feels like rolling a big rock uphill), when they feel powerless in relation to the big world, then it is easier for them to fall into exercising their desire for domination in the little world of the organization. I've seen lots of compensatory behavior, where the guy who has a low-paying, boring day job becomes king of the world when he's chairing a meeting, or the artist who gets by in the big world waiting tables becomes the czarina of political correctness when she gets with the fellow members of her small group. This is human, I think. But it's another case of needing to notice and acknowledge all the dynamics — to tell the whole story — in order to bring them under control.

The ownership question you raise is important, I agree. I don't know that there's a single right answer (there are good arguments for the artist to own his or her work or a program participant to control the use of his or her own photographic image, and other good arguments for sharing ownership). Here's another example of just what we were talking about earlier: needing to work through these types of decisions on the front end, so that everyone involved knows the terms, indeed, so that everyone is part of setting them. There's probably some legal clarity to be gotten (i.e., probably your school arranged with the photographer to use those images, and the photographer could have made things crystal-clear by obtaining releases from the group members before using their images), but there's always more than one way to look at it. To me, what's important is that everyone who cares is able to take part in deciding which way will prevail in a given context they jointly control. In much the same way, perhaps the organization you mention has a compelling argument for why it should take an 80 percent commission on young people's work, but that is twice the bite a commercial gallery would take. Wouldn't it generate better relationships to work out a fairer compromise with the kids?

You ask if I think the grantmaking world's culture of falsehood I referred to in my last message is rooted in misinformation (like do grantmakers really believe you can do magic with $1.50 per child per day?). Honestly, I don't. I think if you sat most grant officers down with that question, they'd be perfectly clear about the impossibility of accomplishing all that's promised. My hunch is that it is more a matter of word-inflation. Someone started it a long time ago by promising the moon and getting a nice fat check in return; now everyone has to ante into the grant-getting game by making claims as extravagant as the next applicant's. People keep doing it because they fear (perhaps correctly) that being the one to deflate the language-balloon would get their proposals rejected. It feels like a game that everyone agrees to play together. The irony is it produces almost exclusively losers (i.e., most grant programs get ten times as many applications as can be funded with the dollars earmarked, many of them just as worthy as the winners), yet it continues.

When we started, Linda suggested we talk about leadership transitions: as pioneering baby-boomer community artists begin to retire, "how will leadership pass to a younger generation of people who are receiving formal academic training in organizational management?" If you are interested in discussing this, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. How do you envisage this process working, if it were to work well? How would you like it to go?

My friend and colleague attended an inspiring conference with artist/activists from all over the country in New Orleans last weekend. The big dilemma there is school is getting out, so everyone anticipates families coming back to build out, clean up, let go, mourn even … but so many of the youth services are gone — their physical spaces, their human assets. Everyone is concerned about what the kids will be doing this summer in the city that still looks like the hurricanes hit just yesterday.

They kicked around a number of ideas, she told us, but the one that was most inspiring to her was creating this national standards/education/infrastructure for the field. You know where there are professional associations that can be used as standards, guides — American Psychological Association, etc. – they were starting to envision one of those. To outline a process for training from bachelors degree through PhD. I thought about that when I initially wrote my CAN response. It’s tough because one of the things that is great about our field is that there are so many different ways to do and be because it touches so many areas. However, this lack of “standardization” could also be our downfall. Without having a gauge or framework, the accountability question comes into play. My colleagues and I have had numerous discussions with some of our professors (the ones who are active in our field) and college program administrators about this. In some ways, we probably need some agreed upon definitions — what is community-based art, what do we mean by youth development, community and economic development, etc. I think some leadership transition tension is created around that on a “generation gap” level because now that many in my generation have more academic training, we might be defining things in different terms. I’m torn about this practical — to formalize/standardize or not …

I still think we have to figure out a way to cultivate leaders — there is a question of identifying people and mentoring the potential, desire, ability. (I will have more on this point a bit later.)

For now, though, how do you feel about standardization across the field — creating structures, etc. One could argue that we’ve done pretty well without too much of it, but as you see the direction of the work, the issues to be tackled, etc. — do you think this is relevant?

Well, here is something I feel strongly is not a good idea: national standards for community cultural development certification. This goes to the heart of definition: in essence, is community cultural development a set of practices and techniques that one must master to receive professional certification? Or is it an outlook, a body of cultural and political values, a commitment to social change through culture that employs a range of practices and techniques as tools, not essence? I vote for number two.

Thirty years ago, when I first began reading about community cultural development, I was strongly impressed by this 1975 essay by Jean Hurstel on “The training of animateurs,” subsequently published in book form by the Council of Europe:

Some professions need to condition accreditation on a set of universal standards. We want to be sure a dentist knows how to examine and treat teeth, and an attorney has mastered the court system. But our society is now going way too far in standardizing what should be fluid, creative and shaped by human character more than technique. (Do I have to say more than "No Child Left Behind?") I imagine we'd agree that national standards or certification for visual artists or musicians would be ridiculous. I feel completely convinced that community cultural development practice falls into the same category, and it is hugely important to resist whatever impulse wants that category shift. If it comes, one result will be a great rise in seeing the techniques applied without its core values and social commitments.

To some extent, this is what has happened in France (and in some other parts of Europe), where the culture of standardization and certification is deeply embedded. If you read the want ads, you see people asking for an "animateur" for an insurance office, more or less meaning a real go-getter. And in the Maisons de la Culture, along with the good practitioners, you see a lot of certified bureaucrats serving out their time — which leads to more of the uncaring or hypocritical behavior you wrote about earlier.

I no longer believe that the right structures, standards or certifications will get the right results. Experience has shown me that you have to work with the messy particularity of human beings, case-by-case, in all their facets. I agree with Kant, who in one of my favorite epigrams said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made." As I have been pondering the question of generational succession Linda raised, that is where I keep going. I don't think there's a formula. Instead, the foundation of successful transition is dialogue. Where I've seen it work is where everyone sits face-to-face with the commitment to staying present to all the differing truths of the generations. People talk about loss and hope, rejection and resentment, dreams and ideals, and eventually they start generating ideas about how to make room for everyone in the transition. To me, the analogy is with teaching. When issues are contested and seemingly intractable, they say, teach the contradictions.

I've seen this translate into action in different ways. For example, a senior leader can have a transition period of occupying a new role (director emeritus, perhaps, or in some cases moving over from an administrative role to an artistic one); organizations can use an internal mentoring model, where for a period of time a younger person teams with a senior one and both learn and refine a role based on their exchange (one form of cultivating leadership I like). Established organizations can serve as incubators for new ones. If a senior leader feels energetic and has the support of the group, rather than focusing on replacing that person prematurely, the group can seek funds and provide support for a pilot program with the intention of spinning off into a new organization after a few years.

Of course, not all groups are democratically managed or as participatory as this in their planning. When they use the conventional model where a Board hires an executive director, the Board often initiates an external search that leaves younger staffers behind. So questions of management style come into it too. Where governance is participatory and responsive, then dialogue and commitment to work it out together are key, from what I have seen.

PS: But I'd love to see practitioners talk about curriculum, what's really needed. I imagine that would turn up courses like "Art and Social Change," "Cultural Policy and Cultural Development," "History of Community Organizing," "Group Psychology," "The Ethics of Cultural Development Practice" or "Global Trends in Community Cultural Development," some of which would be challenging to conservative institutions, unlikely to make it into a universal standard. As I look around the country at the programs springing up, I see some that are strong in one or several areas, but none yet that give full attention to the range of needed curriculum as I see it.

I am really torn about this issue too, but I think the presence of our work in higher ed creates a snag and creates the need to think about this from all angles. I was talking with a colleague today who reminded me that so much of the work is rooted in context — like the complex mix of factors that create the social climate in Chicago are very different than those in L.A., Dallas, or my small hometown in East Central Illinois. I agree with your definitions of the work, and we’ve both discussed our view about the role of knowledge, where it comes from, where it can go, how it should be used, but … I was also reminded that I’m actually an “old girl” myself (I’ll be 30 next year) and because I’ve got nearly a good deal of working life behind me, just because I recently completed the coursework for my master’s doesn’t necessarily make me the next generation, but rather, I’m different; again, the university training/professionalism of a field question. Maybe there is a rift here because some of us don’t recognize this strongly or identify with it as much because there is increasing fervor in academia to “professionalize” the field. We can’t deny the need for professional development, right? Isn’t life a bit easier if you know how to talk the talk, walk the walk — the rules of engagement in a sense? (Back to Said: professionals vs. amateurs.) I think this is interesting because so much of the work comes from love, passion, drive etc. and that’s one of the characteristics or definitions of amateurs: they’re allowed, if not required to love — to do for the love of, to work for the love of … I don’t think we lose that (or that we have to) once we can be dubbed “professionals.”

Giroux talks about resistance pedagogies that put the power back into the hands of communities (and teachers in the education context) and seeks ways to shift it away from larger institutions. It’s important when we consider what academia, especially higher ed typically symbolize — elitism, etc. etc. in some ways I think this is a great opportunity to inform the process, guide it, shape it. I think we need to get involved and seriously consider how or if this is really a viable path. Since community cultural development is beginning to grab the attention of higher ed, that already implies a standard — people have expectations about things that come from this arena. Whether we like it or not, it’s coming. Can we have a “standard without a standard” or agree upon something we can be at peace with at the very least?

Leadership development is about reaching out and reaching back, at the core, I think. I’m sure you can readily recall people that you learned so much from, that guided you along your path, helped you find your way, and even showed you examples of how NOT to be or do … I like the model you mentioned about pairing younger and older in refining and defining — kind of like what we’ve been doing in a sense.

You’re right; there is no formula, just the culmination of our experiences …

PS: My program had a workshop on community organizing where we read about all this radical organizing theory etc. We touched on some things in my aesthetics course in the interdisciplinary studies department — artist in a climate of change, but yeah, we only really scratch the surface. Curriculum IS important. What do you see as the range needed based on your experience—I have some thoughts that I’ll get at you momentarily,

I do see it as good that community cultural development is increasingly recognized in the U.S. as a field of professional endeavor; and of course, I agree that knowledge is essential for grounding the work. I even see why within a given institution it is necessary to create standards for the awarding of degrees (although I note that some institutions function successfully with an independent study model, where assessment is more subjective and success is less about the fulfillment of certain preset requirements than about the approval of a review committee of respected advisors).

I just don't want it to get generalized and standardized as a field, so that there is some sort of certification comparable to the bar exam, or something else that pressures every program to be similar to the others. For reasons I wrote about earlier, I think this is antithetical to the practice. I take the fact that institutional leaders want to standardize things with a large grain of salt; after all, institutions exist in large part to reproduce and perpetuate themselves, so what else are they likely to do? In this case, I think it is the misapplication of a principle. Again, to me, the comparable disciplines are more in the nature of artmaking than, say, law or medicine.

My own ideas about curriculum include the kinds of courses I mentioned in my last PS. The essential framework as I see it is to teach the relevant practices right along with teaching the context or container for those practices. Remember when you wrote how it wasn't until you were in a practicum situation that you understood how important relationships are to funding? From my experience, many students are given grantwriting courses, but they almost always fail to accurately portray the politics of funding (even such basic realities as "who you know is at least as important in getting grants as what you know"). I think the best curriculum joins the macro and micro, so that while a student is reading about relevant techniques or learning to work with people in hands-on situations, he or she is also growing in understanding of the social context that influences (and sometimes distorts) that work. Then, when that person graduates and is working in community, he or she will also be able to share both types of knowledge.

One of the obstacles to this approach is the very fact that it promotes deep questioning, and often that questioning turns back on the academic institution, because the democratic principles and practices that are imparted in class are at odds with the way the academic institution is run. But how much of a service are you doing students if you fail to fully, accurately teach the context they will enter?

At least if each institution's decision-makers are free to create their own curriculum and standards for awarding of degrees, the progressive ones will get closer to the ideal I've described. But they will always be faced with the difficulties of institutionalizing an insurgent practice — which comes back to teaching the contradictions.

I like the independent study model and it might be a way to deal with/address the issue. So much of what we do calls for a piecing together of things, a picking and choosing because so much is dependent on context. That being said, it means that we have to be very adaptable, flexible, and inventive as we will venture though a number of different communities and situations. So, yes, it would be difficult to standardize the field. The situations are not general, true, but specific to time and place. Your take on the nature of institutions (“institutions exist in large part to reproduce and perpetuate themselves”) is interesting. It is about maintaining a kind of status quo that bumps up against the principles of the community cultural development field. I wonder what it means, then, that institutions are getting trying to “get a piece of the action.” We spend a lot of time thinking about how to leverage power or shift those dynamics so that different voices are heard, all perspectives are represented, etc. so it’s something that stays in the back of my mind: how to work with it because you can’t make it go away (this higher ed/institutional presence).

Your point about the balance of the book knowledge with the social contexts and relational aspects is really important. My cohort and I struggled through this on multiple levels. Some of our courses were really good at teaching the social context of the work and giving us tools to question and probe. Then, the next thing would be so anti-questioning it almost felt like a different school. That’s probably an issue the institutions will have to look deep inside to answer. If you are going to create a space that teaches the complete and complex nature of the work, then you also need to be ready to take it when the students take their newfound knowledge and hurl back a critique. Some faculty and administrative staff members were better equipped to deal with that than others, in my experience, but I think there has to be (again) a two-way, or horizontal exchange of knowledge and information in order for this model to be really successful.

I think it’s really about the goal: what is the final/most important outcome for students? If institutions can answer that question honestly, then I think that ideal can be reached eventually.

But honestly, getting past all of the logistical, tangible things, what’s most important is the space for dialogue, learning, and exchange. We have to get out of our little shells and reach out to each other, to work together so we can work smarter, and honor and recognize the fact that people held open doors for us, or sometimes kicked them in so that we could continue on our path, and we owe to those coming up now to do the same. The work isn’t about isolation and stratified structures, but giving away what you have, working together to achieve this thing that is larger than self. We don’t need institutions to get us together to talk, we don’t even need formalized structures to pair up mentors and mentees. I think we just need to reach out, reach back.

(Do you think we’ve missed something, any critical points, anything else on your mind? I think we’ve done well...let me know what you think.) Talk soon, LAN

That is a really excellent question, I think, about why institutions are trying to get a piece of the community arts "action." I have several thoughts about elements of an answer, each with its own mix of the cynical and the ideal.

One challenge for universities has long been that few arts graduates work in the jobs for which they were trained. I remember back in the seventies when I was organizing artists in San Francisco, I used a juicy quote from a professor who said something like this, "My graduates are some of the best waiters and waitresses in the city." A leitmotif of our organizing pitch was the Sleeping Beauty story: that artists were trained to prepare themselves and then linger hopefully to be kissed into life by the prince (i.e., the agent, critic, director, etc.). We argued instead that they should take the initiative in various ways, including starting their own outlets, and turning their gifts to social change if they were so inclined.

So from an educational institution perspective, the community cultural development field seems to offer a meaningful way for artists to actually find work as artists, instead of competing for the rare opportunity to be "discovered." That suggests pragmatic economic thinking, and it makes sense.

I also think there's a more cynical part of the answer, in that as a few funding initiatives have come along for community cultural development projects, some institutions — where cash sensors are highly evolved — smell a new pot of money. I hope they're right (and I hope they don't get it all).

These institutional considerations then converge with people in academia who are progressive, who are drawn personally to community cultural development values, who themselves want arts work to make a difference to community and society. Most of the programs I've seen come into being have been driven by individuals with this vision who see their institutions' appetite for new funding and outlets as a fortuitous convergence of interests. They design and propose pilot programs, make the first two arguments to get them approved, and as student interest is beginning to grow in this time of dissent and increasing activism, the results are a win-win. More power to them. (The downside is when faculty is then drawn from the existing institutional roster, and you have studio artists trying to teach community cultural development without really learning it first. That is alarming and too common.)

You raise another important point in noting that when educational programs teach questioning, they need to be prepared for that questioning to be turned back on themselves. Sometime if you're interested, I'll tell you a hilarious story from 20 years ago, when we were asked by a very progressive art school in the south of England to teach students about collaboration. The subject they chose for their study was how the school assessed their work. It would have made a great documentary, all the squirming that went on when lefter-than-thou faculty were asked to practice what they preached. But of course the best way to learn community animation is to use yourselves and your own situation as practice; then you get a real seat-of-the-pants education in how it feels, a pearl beyond price.

You observe that within institutions, people spend a lot of time thinking about how to shift power dynamics. It's interesting to watch that dialectic in action over a long time: when the students took over the universities in sixty-eight, when the universities clamped down, when new programs (like Women's Studies and Black Studies) were started in response to demand from students and progressive academics joining hands, and when they gained enough power to affect the highest echelons within institutions (e.g., Cornel West is still standing, Larry Summers not so high). if you take a long view, there's reason to see progress. I like to think there's also a useful role for people like myself who stand outside the inner circle of institutions and still try to speak truth to power, helping to keep that dialogue from getting too incestuous.

So here we are, two individuals — one twice the age of the other — who've come to an agreement that dialogue, exchange, connection are what teach best and enable us to learn most, generation to generation. I've loved having you as a pen pal, and would be honored if you wanted to talk with me in future to get my perspective and share your own on any issue or challenge that arises. Maybe we should start a self-mentoring pen-pal program (perhaps we could find a way to match-make compatible pen-pals) as well as an Ethics Hotline column on CAN?

Thanks, Arlene:) It’s been really fun! I’d love to hear your story about that progressive school in the south of England … this has been helpful to me. I’m very aware that I have a particular bend on things, so of course, I have an inner circle of like minds (similar, but not too much), so it’s great to have conversations with people that help open me up even more and ask me to think about things in multiple ways. What you say about funding initiative is very true. My college, for example is heavy on service learning through various programs like Urban Missions which is also a presence at other schools). It makes sense though because the mission of the school is to connect with the city as well. Many of the people who work on these programs DO have a personal investment/passion about the work, which is great. I think it helps contribute to the greater good and expose and educate people to different issues and this kind of work. It’s also important to have people like you who are a “third eye” kind of view. We need perspective even we do engage in “crit/self-crit” or “critiquing the critique” so that we are able to see the successes and issues clearly and progress can continue to be made.

An ethics hotline and pen-pal mentor match is a fabulous idea! I have a feeling we’re all willing and eager, “old girls and guys” and those “young whipper snappers.”

Again, thank you so much for this. Have a good weekend; I’ll check in with you soon...

Arlene Goldbard is a writer, social activist, and consultant who works for justice, compassion and honor in every sphere, from the interpersonal to the transnational. Goldbard's essays have appeared in such journals as Art in America, The Independent, Theatre, High Performance and Tikkun. Her books include "Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture," "Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development," "Community, Culture and Globalization" the forthcoming 'New Creative community" (New Village Press, October 2006) and her novel "Clarity."

Lee Ann Norman received her Master of Arts Management degree from the Arts in Youth and Community Development program at Columbia College Chicago in May 2006. She completed her practicum with Young Chicago Authors, a nonprofit organization going through a generational leadership transition.

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Minding the Gap: A Cross-Generational Dialogue, Part II

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