ART & DEMOCRACY WORKSHOPS (planners/facilitators)

Community Change & Art in Eastern Kentucky - Robert Gipe and Judi Jennings (AFP)
An Exchange of Creative Process - Elia Arce (AFP) and Surpik Angelini
We the People (creating lamppost banners) - JoAnn Moran
Holler to the Hood (film/discussion) - Amelia Kirby and Nick Szurberla
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear (film/discussion) - Herb E. Smith, Judi Jennings (AFP) and Uday Joshi
Changing our Framework with Changing Demographics - Meena Natarajan (AFP) report
Art at the Intersection of History & Memory - Judi Jennings (AFP) and Jan Cohen-Cruz
Art & Performance to Policy - Marty Pottenger (AFP) report
Community Arts & Curriculum - Marty Pottenger (AFP) and Jan Cohen-Cruz report
Youth & Art - Chrissie Orr (AFP) and Laura Doggett
Next Steps: Looking to the Future - Marty Pottenger (AFP)

ART & PERFORMANCE TO POLICY WORKSHOP

examined the role that art and performance plays in challenging, developing, and influencing the formation of social policy. The goal was to gather individuals whose work has already involved the intersection of policy and art/performance and begin the conversation. Another goal was to develop a rough timeline of the issue historically; to strategize about the possibilities in the future; to sharpen the relationship(s) between policy and the art-making that many of us are engaged in. – Developed and facilitated by Marty Pottenger.

Panelists:
Dee Davis (Center for Rural Strategies), Suzanne Lacy (Artist/Otis College), Greg Howard (Director, Appalshop), Carmela Castrejon (Border Arts/activist/AFP), Marty Pottenger (artist/Abundance/AFP).

COMMUNITY ARTS & CURRICULUM WORKSHOP

explored the emergence of community arts as a field of study in academic institutions along with concrete opportunitiesand particular challenges. Several of the leading pioneers, themselves fairly early on in the process of fully negotiating the relationship of ‘community arts work’ to their various institutions, came together for a session entitled “Community Arts and Curriculum.” – Developed and facilitated by Marty Pottenger.

Panelists: Uday Joshi ((formerly) New World Theater/University of Massachusetts Amherst), Maureen Mullinax (Learning Center/Appalshop), Jan Cohen-Cruz (New York University, NY NY), Bob Leonard (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA/C.A.N.) and Martha Bowers (artist/Dance Theater Etcetera/part-time teaching at NYU).

Some of the 25+ participants: Suzanne Lacy (Otis College), Caron Atlas (Arts Consultant/faculty NYU), Catherine Graham (McMaster University, Ontario Canada), Rebecca Shephard (NYU student/graduate), Patricia Raun (Dept. Chair/Theater at Virginia Tech), Gwylene Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet (Artists, Charleston NC, Alternate Roots,), Louise Smith (Artist/Anitoch College), Dudley Cocke (Roadside Theater/ advisor to project with Jan Cohen-Cruz at NYU).

Session Goals:

• offer an overview of current community arts-related educational practices and programs
• create the opportunity for artists and professors to reconfirm our connections and challenge the sort of divisions and disparity that often develops between academia and artists
• keep artists’ voice central to this work -- to think about next steps and possible pitfalls as community arts work becomes more integrated into ‘university culture’
• contradict the isolation that both groups of individuals often face in their work
• exchange strategies and support in building programs that forge unique institutional relationships, programs that embody the nature of the work through structural ties to the artists and communities as part of their basic design
• facilitate the sharing of perspectives, syllabuses and curriculums in a process of strengthening existing programs and furthering the field as a whole.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS IN AMERICA WORKSHOP

The fact that by mid-century there will be no single majority population in the U.S. highlights the need for collaborative politics between people with differences in culture, lifestyle, gender, class especially at this particular juncture in history. I was interested in how this shift would impact aesthetics in artistic endeavours, and the lens through which we see the cultural “other”. – Developed and facilitated by Meena Natarajan (AFP).

Panelists:
Vanessa Whang, arts consultant; Dipankar Mukherjee, Artistic Director, Pangea World Theater, Minneapolis, MN; Linda Parris-Bailey, Artistist Director, Carpetbag Theatre, Knoxville, TN; and Elia Arce, Los Angeles-based artist and cultural activist.

Summary of panelists’ comments:

Vanessa Whang commented during her opening remarks that Kentucky has been one of the states that has experienced large demographic shifts in terms of increase in foreign born individuals in the state. She emphasized the need to move into a new way of thinking with an evolved notion of identity that encompasses the need and opportunity for building a more comprehensive understanding of diverse cultural and aesthetic systems of theory and practice. She spoke about investing in knowledge building that extends beyond a European/conservatory-based cultural paradigm – beyond a one-size-fits-all mind-set that fails to acknowledge the diversity of cultural systems. Vanessa added that all cultures are essentially equal as systems with their own social architecture and logics of valuation but as a nation, we don’t know enough about those different systems. She said that we need to move beyond simple notions of “celebrating difference” and acknowledgements of diversity that are only skin deep and driven by reductive racial constructs.

Linda Parris-Bailey spoke about her own experiences in Knoxville, Tennessee working with the African American community in Knoxville, Latino community in Knoxville and Vietnamese community in Biloxi. She spoke about the importance of creating allies as power begins to shift. She also stressed the need to look at the opportunities to collaborate. She spoke about her work with the African American and Haitian community in Florida and the need to engage and work through difficult issues.

Dipankar Mukherjee spoke about the theater responding to the times in which we live bringing together people who disagree as well as those who find common ground. He remarked that he was interested in creating moments of “encounter” and creating a space of equity in the arts. He said he was interested in the notions of power – who convenes the table at which we all sit and who the guests are. Dipankar also spoke about his interest in new nomenclatures that are coined by the people at the table and a search for collaborative politics as we recognize and understand differences.

Elia Arce spoke about being an immigrant from Costa Rica and the challenges of being an individual artist being expected to do certain kinds of work based on how people view her and the fact that the circumstances of being an immigrant is both empowering and disempowering. She spoke about the contradictory feelings that come up when she is “looked at as a role model” and “being proud of being a role model” at the same time. She spoke about the need to speak freely without always having to take care of the other.