I've written often before about the Thousand Kites Project, which uses theater, music, poetry, radio, film, and other artforms to bring the story of the burgeoning prison-industrial complex home, in the hope of reversing our status as Corporation Nation. One of the deepest divides in this nation is between those for whom the criminal justice system is a lifelong presence (and a feared destiny), and those whose race, class, and condition make it seem like a distant nightmare (or even nothing at all). This project powerfully makes the point that all of us are implicated, and all of us have a role in changing things.
Community murals are collaborative works of public art that embody people's aspirations or challenges, creating public sites as opportunities for dialogue, engagement, and learning about our own communities. Look at the Restorative Justice program at Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program for a remarkable example; or check out "The Great Wall of Los Angeles," the world's longest mural, sponsored by the Social and Public Art Resource Center, which will celebrate the mural's restoration next weekend, marking a 35-year commitment to depicting the buried history of this diverse state.
In very different ways, all of these projects (and many more like them) engage people who are often considered marginal to social power, bringing their lives into the public sphere, extending cultural citizenship. Funding for this work has never been abundant; at the moment, it is dismal. There are legions of artists qualified and ready to put their skills at the service of democratic public purpose, hoping against hope for the opportunity. Every public initiative should include programs like these to embody the public interest, involve people, share stories, and thus build the kind of resilience and connection we need to face the future.
Educating for the future
Arts education and arts programs have been cut in just about every school district in America. I don't think it is hyperbolic to call this "insane." How will future generations see it? That U.S. leaders decided that children don't need to develop their own creativity and imagination? That they don't need to learn to read and handle their own emotions through drama and music? That when it came to curriculum, improvisation, innovation, resourcefulness--the skills of artists that will drive the future--were expendable? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills' research found that "Students' capacity to create and express themselves through the arts is one of the central qualities that make them human, as well as a basis for success in the 21st century." (Click here to download their 21st Century Skills Map.)
In "The Long, Hot Summer of Service: Community Artists on The Job," published a couple of years ago on the much-missed Community Arts Network, I offered several examples of teaching artists corps, where trained artists work in school and community settings to teach artistic skills, and also to use their gifts to improve the quality of teaching in other subjects, especially to connect the material with kids far more powerfully than is possible merely by assigning reading or parking them in front of computers. There are many organizations active in this field; check out the Association of Teaching Artists and Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education for more examples. To prepare students for the future they will face, every school--every classroom--should have daily access to the work of teaching artists to supplement and support the work of teachers and administrators.
Protecting the environment and greening the economy
The second of ten proposals in Rebuild The Dream's Contract for The American Dream is to "Create 21st Century Energy Jobs":
We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.
A factsheet supporting those contentions can be downloaded by clicking here.
The cultural dimension of greening energy and our economy is just as important as understanding where on the industrial landscape green jobs can be created. How do people's habits and consumer choices shift from dirty to clean energy? From all we know, that kind of personal change results when people feel a direct emotional connection to both a problem and its solutions. We have to be able to envisage the consequences to the planet of continuing on our destructive path, and to feel in our own lives and communities the relief of helping to bring about what Joanna Macy calls The Great Turning.
Providing people with the means and opportunity to experience those feelings should be a public responsibility. Green energy facilities ought to be equipped with public spaces, such as parks, gardens, and visitor centers, where people can learn more--and not only those who are disposed to learn by researching facts and figures, reading white papers and scholarly books. Look at how widely Annie Leonard's The Story of Stuff has been circulated, using basic artistic tools--storytelling, imagery, animation--to convey powerful, urgent truths in ways anyone can understand. Nearly a million and half people have viewed it on YouTube alone. Individual artists across the country have created works that embody the values we call "green." Check out the amazing work of sculptor Ned Kahn, who has focused on making invisible natural processes visible through his art.
Imagine artists and creative organizers employed in every community to create the works and interactions that bring energy issues down from the abstract plane into people's own lives, spurring them to make choices that help heal the planet, and to press both the public and private sector to do likewise. I'd like to see us use what we know about how human minds change: I'd like to see a Green Arts Corps be part and parcel of any green jobs initiative from day one.
Promoting health and well-being
Nowadays, it is generally acknowledged that the mind and spirit have as much to do with healing as does the purely physical. The body of research proving this has grown so much, it can't be ignored. (Check out the Foundation for Art & Healing Website, for instance, where you can download a compendium of findings on art and public health that appeared last year in the American Journal of Public Health or read about performance artist Robbie McCauley's one-woman show about coming to terms with diabetes.) One of my personal favorites is the work of Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, who showed the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science Conference how brain-damaged individuals can regain the power of speech through singing, and whose Harvard-based Music and Neuroimaging Lab is a leader in the field.
Every form of health promotion and treatment needs to speak to the mind and spirit as much as the body, and the best way to do that is through employing trained community artists as teachers, storytellers, and group leaders. They can help people face the fear and loss that often accompany illness; connect people to healthier ways of eating, exercising, and living that can contribute to illness prevention; and illuminate the ways that public health challenges are public issues as well as private troubles, best addressed through collective knowledge and collective action. Imagine how healthcare would change if clinics, hospitals, and hospices were infused with cultural creativity, guiding people in drawing on their own heritages and imaginations to support their healing. What if every ward had its own storyteller, its own musician, its own visual artist to help patients and their loved ones generate the images and experiences that can strengthen the ability to heal and support their ability to cope when healing is not possible? Considering the high cost of conventional medical treatment, these are jobs that can save money, save suffering, and even save lives.
I am trying to tell the story right. In the story I am telling, job creation proceeds from a radical shift in our understanding of work and its rewards, from a radical shift in our understanding of the public interest. We can make this shift, to be sure, but will we? If you still think we can't afford it, click back to the doubletime ticker adding up our investment in war.
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