Through collaborative public projects, innovative scholarly work, and experimental teaching, Arts of Citizenship builds bridges between the university and the larger community. In recent years, cultural and artistic expression has become a charged issue in American politics and public life. The culture wars of the past decade have shown how deeply Americans are divided about their civic values-and how much they endow the arts and humanities with public significance.
Academics play a complex role in the politics of culture.
We have pursued exciting new research into popular culture, the media, and civic values, yet our work has often been framed in ways that are inaccessible to the publics that we study. Partly because of this distance, the arts and humanities have been lightning rods for conflicts over such topics as the teaching of American history, ethnoracial diversity, and public funding for the arts. Doing so is not only a civic responsibility but also an intellectual opportunity, a chance to create new ways of researching and teaching. At the same time, Arts of Citizenship commenced local community projects centered around the historic Ann Arbor riverfront area of the Broadway Bridges, two center-city infrastructures slated for reconstruction. Goals of the Arts of Citizenship Program YoHA developed a useful model that connected intellectual analysis with community practice, national conversations with local projects, across a variety of disciplines in the arts, humanities, and design.