Awareness, knowledge, understanding

Popular media—film, television, celebrity, online games, and online videos—is a powerful way for the creative community to depict critical social issues and engage people in contributing to social change.  This paper focuses primarily on popular...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Open space documentary is an emerging framework for community-based media. Intentional participatory media experiments are proliferating across rapidly developing and evolving distribution platforms.
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
Youth media is a diverse array of practices in which young people collaborate with artists and educators to express themselves creatively, communicate with peers across borders, and participate in community dialogue and problem solving. Social...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
In towns all across the United States, young people are using music and art to make interesting, creative, and positive things happen in their communities. They are punks, rappers, educators, singer-songwriters, artists, and community organizers who...
Last Updated: September 4, 2013
A May 22 Funder Exchange on Evaluating Arts & Social Impact, presented by Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy program and hosted by the Nathan Cummings Foundation, brought together funders, evaluation professionals, and arts...
Last Updated: September 20, 2013
In this paper, long-time community arts chronicler Linda Frye Burnham offers snapshots of selected projects that help capture the range of community arts projects and programs happening today. They are led by veteran and up-and-coming artists and...
Last Updated: October 29, 2013
As a long-time activist and co-founder of the Boston-based Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI), Lori Lobenstine discusses making meaning and creating change in the public sphere through the integration of social justice strategies with art...
Last Updated: January 13, 2014
The Idea Book for Liz Lerman and the Dance Exchange’s The Matter of Origins: Evaluation Findings presents research measures and findings by Michigan State University (MSU, 2011) from an evaluation of Dance Exchange’s Matter of Origins project. ...
Last Updated: June 20, 2014
Lily Yeh is a global artist who is fueled by a belief that art is a human right, and that artists can create a foundation for profound social change. Slight of frame, but large in spirit and vision, the 70-year-old artist was born in China, lives in...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
The Penelope Project uses the story of Penelope from Homer’s Odyssey to engage an entire long term care community in the creative process. Its goal was to improve the quality of life of people who live, work, and visit in a long term care setting...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
Promethean Community uses a variety of theater techniques to co-create an environment that allows the community stakeholders to create new ways of relating to each other. This consciousness raising allows the community to create an on-going...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
Branding Democracy was a year-long multidisciplinary thematic exploration that gathered thinkers, artists, and the general audience around “democracy.” The project looked at the design and packaging of the concept of democracy and the multiple ways...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
Sojourn Theatre’s 2010 project On the Table is a participatory performance that bridged two Oregon communities, one urban (Portland), one rural (Mollala) with the aim to shift people’s attitudes about the places where they live. The performance...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
Instruments of Change uses the arts as an educational tool to empower people to become instruments of transformative change in their own lives. By expanding community access to cultural activities, we allow diverse populations the opportunity to...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014
The Laramie Project is a play created by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project in reaction to the brutal 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. In what is widely believed to have been a homophobic hate crime,...
Last Updated: August 14, 2014

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