Fostering Civic Engagement
through Arts and Culture

About Animating Democracy

Fostering Civic Engagement through Arts and Culture

A program of Americans for the Arts Institute for Community Development and the Arts

Animating Democracy fosters arts and cultural activity that encourages and enhances civic engagement and dialogue. It is based on the premise that democracy is animated when an informed public is engaged in the issues affecting people’s daily lives. The arts and humanities can contribute unique programs, settings, and creative approaches that reach new and diverse participants, stimulate public dialogue about civic issues, and inspire action to make change.

Goals

Americans for the Arts works to strengthen the role of artists and cultural organizations in civic life. Animating Democracy supports this intent through these goals:

Activities

Animating Democracy helps to build capacity of artists and cultural organizations involved in a wide sphere of civic engagement work, including arts-based civic dialogue, through an integrated set of programs and services including:

Americans for the Arts is seeking new funds to continue making grants that support arts-based civic engagement efforts. We do not anticipate any grantmaking in 2004.

Background

Animating Democracy was jointly developed by Americans for the Arts and the Ford Foundation through a field study and subsequent four-year Initiative.

Field Study
In 1996, the Ford Foundation awarded a grant to Americans for the Arts to profile a representative selection of artists and arts and cultural organizations whose work, through its aesthetics and processes, engages the public in dialogue on key issues.

This study's resulting report, Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue (1999), maps activity of the last couple decades, identifies issues and trends, and suggests opportunities for leaders in the field, policy makers, and funders to work together to strengthen activity in this lively arena. The study reveals pivotal and innovating roles that the arts can play in the renewal of civic dialogue as well as challenges faced by arts and cultural organizations as they engage in this work. The study led to the development of a four-year Animating Democracy Initiative to support this arena of activity.

Both the study and the Initiative were premised on the idea that a democracy is animated when an informed public is engaged in the issues affecting people's daily lives. In the workings of democracy, civic dialogue plays an essential role, giving voice to multiple perspectives and enabling people to develop more multifaceted, humane, and realistic views of issues and each other. Yet opportunities for civic dialogue in this country have diminished in recent years. In the renewal of civic dialogue, the arts can play a pivotal role in many ways. In fact, American artists and arts and cultural institutions have long engaged civic issues through a wide spectrum of activity. At one end of the spectrum, topical art articulates or comments on social issues; at the other end, artists and arts/cultural institutions use the arts to engage people in action to affect change.

At the center of this spectrum, there is a realm of artistic activity that consciously incorporates civic dialogue as part of an aesthetic strategy, referred to as arts-based civic dialogue. [See Key Animating Democracy terms. [link] ] By exploring multiple perspectives on critical concerns, arts-based civic dialogue projects seek to engage more diverse publics in discussion and reflection on challenging issues. At the same time, this intersection of artistic imagination with the civic realm offers fertile ground for both aesthetic and programmatic innovation.

Beyond the basic role of producer, presenter, or exhibitor, arts and cultural institutions are playing a key part in this work as catalysts, conveners, or forums for civic dialogue. In exercising this civic role, they are expanding opportunity for both democratic participation and aesthetic experience, engaging a broader, more diverse public in giving voice to critical issues of our time.

Initiative
In 1999, Americans for the Arts launched the four-year Animating Democracy Initiative to foster artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. With the Ford Foundation’s initial investment, Animating Democracy’s core activities included an informational web site, publications, field convenings, and the Lab.

At the center of the Initiative, the Animating Democracy Lab [link] provided grants and advisory support to 32 cultural organizations across the country to implement projects that experimented with or deepened existing approaches to arts- and humanities-based civic dialogue. Investigation through these diverse projects, individually and collectively, aimed to advance field learning about the philosophical, practical, and social dimensions of this work. As part of the Lab design, project leaders came together periodically in Learning Exchanges to share and build knowledge to help projects meet their full potential for success and extend their learning to the broader field.

The Lab’s effects were felt by local communities and the field in several key ways:

In addition, the Lab has generated a vital set of resources for in-depth information about arts and humanities-based civic dialogue work, all available on the Animating Democracy web site.

For further information about the Lab:

National Exchange on Art & Civic Dialogue
Americans for the Arts held the Animating Democracy National Exchange on Art and Civic Dialogue in October, 2003 in Flint, Michigan on the campus of the Flint Cultural Center. Supported by the Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Ruth Mott Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, this national conference shared the learnings and findings of the four-year Animating Democracy Initiative. Over 250 artists, cultural and civic leaders, and community organizers attended from across the United States as well as from Japan, Paraguay, and Australia. The Exchange offered a multifaceted exploration of the philosophical, practical, and aesthetic aspects of arts and humanities activity that intends to stimulate civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. It was cited by Linda Frye Burnham as "one of the signal arts events of the last decade" in her Community Arts Network article, "Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About." [link]

Visit the National Exchange [link] page for more information including notes from 14 outstanding sessions and the transcript of an inspiring presentation by featured speaker Grace Lee Boggs, activist, philosopher, and cultural worker from Detroit.

Leadership

Based at Americans for the Arts within its Institute for Community Development and the Arts, the Animating Democracy project staff [link] includes: Barbara Schaffer Bacon and Pam Korza, co-directors, Andrea Assaf and Michael del Vecchio, project associates, and Mara Walker, Americans for the Arts Vice President of Field Services and Planning.

In addition, staff draw extensively upon a cadre of artists, cultural leaders, dialogue professionals, and community leaders who have come through the Animating Democracy learning network to help design, plan, implement, and assess Animating Democracy activities.

Americans for the Arts

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With a 40-year record of service, it is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in and appreciate all forms of the arts. [link]

Key Terms

Animating Democracy embraces the broad realm of arts and humanities-based civic engagement while continuing to value arts and humanities-based civic dialogue as one form of civic participation. In using these terms, we recognize a range of activities that may fall under such labels and the various interpretations that professionals from the arts, dialogue, and community building fields may assign them. We are respectful of what others bring to definitions based on their own experience. Animating Democracy’s own experience continues to inform these definitions and contribute nuance to their meaning. With these caveats, we nonetheless have found it useful to offer our working definitions of key terms.

Prefacing our definitions of dialogue, civic dialogue, civic engagement, and arts/humanities-based civic dialogue and engagement:

It is true, of course, that the arts stimulate spontaneous conversation all the time. Individuals who experience art together are likely to talk about what they have seen and the ideas and issues suggested by the work. Such incidental dialogue contributes in an important way to broader public discourse about contemporary civic issues.

Animating Democracy acknowledges the value of such spontaneous and incidental conversation that a creative experience or event may catalyze. Animating Democracy is primarily focused, however, on opportunities in which artists and cultural organizations are purposeful and deliberate in planning civic dialogue activity in relation to the art experience, with the intent to enhance participants' connection to the issue as well as the art. Such planned dialogue may be facilitated in conjunction with the final artistic presentation or an integral part of the development of the work--or both.

Dialogue
Animating Democracy’s understanding of dialogue derives from the Study Circles Resource Center: Two or more parties with differing viewpoints working toward common understanding in an open-ended, face-to-face format. Dialogue is inclusive of multiple and possibly conflicting perspectives rather than promoting a single point of view. According to Daniel Yankelovich, author of The Magic of Dialogue, three qualities of dialogue distinguish it from debate or discussion. These are:

Civic dialogue
Animating Democracy has defined civic dialogue to specifically refer to dialogue about civic issues, policies, or decisions of consequence to people’s lives, communities, and society. Meaningful civic dialogue is intentional and purposeful. Dialogue organizers have a sense of what difference they hope to make through civic dialogue and participants are informed about why the dialogue is taking place and what may result. The focus of civic dialogue is not about the process of dialogue itself. Nor is its intent solely therapeutic or to nurture personal growth. Rather, civic dialogue addresses a matter of civic importance to the dialogue participants.

Civic engagement
Civic engagement encompasses the many ways that people may get involved in their communities to consider and address civic issues. These include but are not limited to: joining committees or boards, volunteering, community organizing, participating in community planning or improvement efforts, and attending and participating in civic forums.

Arts- or humanities-based civic dialogue/engagement
In arts- or humanities-based civic dialogue/engagement, the artistic process and/or art /humanities presentation provides a key focus, catalyst, forum or form for public dialogue/engagement on the issue. Opportunities for dialogue/engagement are embedded in or connected to the arts experience. In addition, the arts may provide a direct forum to engage in community planning, organizing, activism, and therefore is a form of arts-based civic engagement. Arts-based civic dialogue/engagement may draw upon any of the arts or humanities disciplines and the spectrum of community-based, experimental, mainstream, or popular approaches to making or presenting art. Individual artists or companies, community-based arts or cultural organizations, or large institutions, may undertake arts-based civic dialogue/engagement utilizing a wide range of artistic practice and dialogic and engagement methods.