A Landmark Year: Community Arts and U.S. Higher Education 2006

A Landmark Year: Introduction    Jumping In With Courage: An Interview with Ken Krafchek (Part 1)    Learning to Translate Art into the Language of Community by Christy Zuccarini (Part 2)    Art Work, Social Work: An Interview with Kara McDonagh (Part 3)    Grassroots Arts Education on the Cutting Edge: An Interview with Sonia BasSheva Mañjon (Part 4)    The Athena Project: Refining the Practice of Mentorship in Community Art by Minette Lee Mangahas (Part 5)    Valuing Public Scholarship: An Interview with Doug Blandy (Part 6)    Third Space: Youth, Arts and Community Development by Lori Hager (Part 7)

An introduction to a CANuniversity series of timely articles, interviews, photographs and syllabi from the field.

I've been on a trek across the American academic landscape, following the voices of enthusiastic young people who are earning academic credentials in community-based art.

This year I got to spend time at two art schools with the very first degree programs in "Community Art." Not in youth development with an arts concentration or arts administration with a minor in applied theater or environmental studies with a certificate in community art. No, finally, in the U.S., community art has become something you can major in, straight up.

So, this is a landmark year. I got to talk with these pioneers in the MA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the BFA program at California College of the Arts in Oakland and San Francisco. These are both art schools, so it was a fortunate opportunity to explore the ways teaching artists are applying visual art to partnerships between campus and community. But in between I stopped at the University of Oregon to investigate efforts there to establish a major in community arts. I found it's a complicated political challenge to accomplish this in a big university, and it's unavoidably about power.

These are the burning issues and themes that emerged in my travels:

• Networking and building the field – There's important movement in this area as colleagues come together around the issues that give this field its definition and purpose. What do academics want? When do they want it?
• Tenure and public scholarship – As junior faculty in these programs scramble for tenure there's a huge debate over the tenure track. What counts and what doesn't in the rise to power?
• Teaching for social justice, equity and diversity – Students and scholars want to know what they are working for. What are the values driving this work?
• Learning and mentoring – Out here on the cutting edge of arts education, they're figuring it out as they go along. What's new about teaching this work and guiding the next generation of leaders?
• Teaching across sectors –These scholars aren't just teaching theory and technique, they're sending their young art students out into the world. Does it take more than arts know-how to help students partner with communities under enormous stress?

Along the way on this journey, I collected some interviews and pieces of writing that speak to these themes.

In brief, I interviewed these three programs' directors:

• Ken Krafchek, who supervised the creation and design of MICA's new MA in Community Arts (MACA) and serves as its first graduate director
• Doug Blandy, director of the Institute for Community Arts Studies at the University of Oregon, and currently the dean of academic affairs for the School of Architecture and Allied Arts
• Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, director of the Center for Art and Public Life at California College of the Arts, who developed and chairs the BFA in Community Arts and chairs Diversity Studies

I also spent time with their students and faculty, including:

• Christy Zuccarini, a member of the first graduating class in the community arts MA program at MICA
• Lori Hager, a theater artist with a degree in anthropology who is faculty coordinator of the community-arts minor at the University of Oregon
• Kara McDonagh, a visual artist with a master's degree in social work who is a faculty member of MICA's Master's program

And I got access to early drafts of some major publications in the offing: the Community Arts Partnership Institute Case Book, to be published soon by MICA and Columbia College Chicago, and the Tenure Track Initiative of Imagining America. I'll talk about how these documents address the issues I learned about in Baltimore, Eugene and Oakland.

The circle is widening and something is afoot. All aboard.

Linda Frye Burnham is co-director of Art in the Public Interest and the Community Arts Network.

Original CAN/API publication: September 2006