Working together, using the techniques of adult, community-based, experiential education, they turned their communities into places of learning. The arts and humanities are a particularly powerful means by which people may turn their communities into places of learning. The expressive, interpretive and creative aspects of the arts and humanities carry special utility when dividing lines have been etched deeply in communities. Often with greater power than other modes of human discourse, collective engagement with art can heal wounds, break logjams, build bridges. It is not only at the extremes of experience, however, that the arts and humanities are important to collective life.
Art is community's growing edge.
It is through expression, interpretation and creation that the culture is continually reinvented. Nor does art's importance lie only at the extremes of talent or achievement. To be certain, the search is for truth and beauty. But it is through the collective process of reaching toward excellence, amateurs and professionals solving problems together, that the community can grow. Story is the means by which we learn, by which we make meaningful experience from the events of our lives together.