Arts and Community Development

The full transcript of this podcast is published below.
Explore the full GIA podcast.

Ahead of the 2020 election, as LA Weekly reported, the organization For Freedoms -originally founded as an “arts-centric super PAC” in 2016 by Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman- is launching its first For Freedoms Congress (FFCon), a series of discussions and events "bringing together activists, artists and everyday citizens to not only talk about the issues affecting them, but to actually strategize collective action."

A new podcast series, AZ Creative Voices, explores all that happens when artists are invited to contribute to community improvement efforts.

In the first of a series of essays celebrating the tenth anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts’ creative placemaking grants program, Our Town, Lyz Crane, deputy director of ArtPlace America, reflects on the power of arts and culture to transform community development and how "artists keep, make, and transform meaning".

VIBE Collective, a network of artists in the intersection of art, culture, and education that "seek to create spaces for community transformation and healing," shares a list of ways to partner with community artists.

In his foreword for The Haas Institute’s "Notes on A Cultural Strategy" report, director john a. powell writes that "culture can move people in a way that policies cannot. People largely organize themselves and operate around stories and beliefs, not around facts."

Theater artists & activists John Malpede and Henriëtte Brouwers and designer Rosten Woo are creating a project that aims to achieve “Skid Row Now & 2040,” a community-generated alternative development plan designed for and by the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles.

In a recent blog post on Nonprofit AF, Vu Le reflects on how he has been seeing more signs of diverse communities "being treated like children who don’t know what’s good for them." Le writes that, even though he doesn't think that it is conscious or intentional, "it is still frustrating."

Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter co-founder and performance artist has created a new online MFA program, the Social and Environmental Arts Practice, that combines art, social justice, and community organizing at Prescott College in Arizona, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Seven colleges and universities across the United States are receiving nearly $2M from ArtPlaceAmerica (ArtPlace) to support creative placemaking teaching, learning, and research for undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs.