About Us
(5) Community-based Arts and Culture
Community-based cultural work has demonstrated its power to stimulate civic participation and achieve social change in villages and nations around the world.
Through poetry, music, visual arts, dance, theater and multi-media arts, artists play vital roles in educating and engaging the public. Such engagement is at the heart of democracy - providing creative ways for individuals to establish a sense of community and build mutual trust through dialogue with one another.
Arts-based community development provides a foundation upon which people are empowered to take action on issues that affect their lives.
Community arts projects provide a forum for new, local and emerging artists to perform and/or present their work and conduct community-university discussions about the intersection of democracy and culture.
Engaged University's school and community art projects seek to build a more coherent community identity by consciously creating safe spaces and a new shared script through storytelling and organizing around an inclusive vision of the future.
In the Community Arts and Culture arena, we seek to:
(1) close the digital and other divides that work to limit the access of new immigrants and members of lower socio-economic groups to the internet, computers and other contemporary arts and communication technologies;
(2) nurture the artistic expressions and cultural heritage of all members -- newcomers and more established residents-- of our community; and
(3) to foster communication, understanding and collaboration within and across the different segments and cultures of our community.
Our larger purpose is to give greater visibility to the concerns of youth, new immigrants, people of color, the poor and/or disenfranchised through cultural expression and the sharing of emerging vehicles for expression with an engaged audience.
We hope to create and support imaginative new community cultural resources and to produce an appreciative constituency for such art.