Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts
"Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Artsis a rich combination of life stories, curriculum ideas and insights about the importance of nurturing creativity to confront the difficult circumstances many people find themselves living in these days. Cartoonist Keith Knight ("The K Chronicles" and "(th)ink") and author Mat Schwarzman (Crossroads Project for Art, Learning and Community of New Orleans) crisscross the country profiling ten community-based arts projects that encourage people with little recognized power to share their perspectives, ideas and images with broader publics to effect change. Through the Village of Arts and Humanities in Northern Philadelphia, “Big Man” Maxton discovers his ability to make beautiful mosaic sculptures and kicks a 22-year addiction to drugs and alcohol. Big Man's personal recovery and public art inspire old timers and young children to collectively join the Village's efforts to transform their struggling neighborhood. The women of Mujer Artes in San Antonio, Texas, make ceramic altars to honor and raise awareness about the women murdered at the U.S.-Mexico border. Together the women of Mujer Artes build a valuable intergenerational learning community while bringing national attention to an issue often untouched by the media and public officials. While in college, Tom Hansell sees an Appalshop (Appalachian multimedia cultural organization) film about the people who live in coal mining regions. To him, "the film was like a good punk song—raw, strong and from the heart.” Shortly thereafter, Hansell moved to Whitesburg, Kentucky, to join Appalshop’s staff and made an award-winning documentary about the challenges and dangers of coal-haul trucking through narrow mountain hollers."—Erica Kohl,CommunityArtsNetwork"Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts: Ten Graphic Stories about Artists, Educators & Activists across the U.S.is an amazing educational collection of thousands of social change artists of varied, diverse backgrounds and locations. Committed to the concept of transforming communities through information as art, (or art as information),Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Artsis organized on the CRAFT principle. CRAFT is a conceptual map that stands for five territories of the community-based art process: Contact—"Cultivate trust, mutual understanding and commitment as a foundation for creative partnership." Research—"Gather information about the people, places and issues you are working with." Action—"Produce a new work of art that benefits the community." Feedback—"Spark community reflection, dialogue and organizing to spread the impact of the new work." And Teaching—"Pass on new community-building skills to others to sustain the impact" (p. xxv). Many amazing comic illustrations are quoted and reproduced in black and white in the chapters ofBeginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts. The book ends with a list of resources, inspiring quotations, artist's profiles, and a Craft Activities Table that shows how "art, learning and social change take place in each of the CRAFT territories" (p. 159). The ideas of CRAFT began at the East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, a teen program in Oakland, CA from 1994-2001."—Nancy Lorraine,Midwest Book Review