… Shahidul Alam’s Pathshala school has produced dozens of world-class photographers and given Bangladesh a reputation for exceptional photography. The Chobi Mela photo festival, which Mr. Alam started in 1999, brings photographers from around the world to the capital, Dhaka, and promotes local image-makers and documentarians. His photo agency, Drik, which he started in 1989, sells stories made by Bangladeshi photographers to media outlets worldwide and encourages its photographers to cover stories the way they want to, and not to try to fit a script imposed by outsiders.
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Came across this blog today exploring the social function of art
with posts by a wide range of artists and writers.
. .Our aim, niche, and focus is simply: the intersection of arts and changing demographics in the U.S. and the Americas.
We welcome submissions from emerging as well as professional “cultural reporters” who have their ear to the ground of what is happening artistically in communities, places, media, and among groups and publics not normally or regularly covered by mainstream art critics and publications.
Last year I attended the Imagining America Conference that was held at New York University over the summer. Much of the conference was divided into breakout sessions of your choosing, and I visited First Street Green. First Street Park is a public park on the Lower East Side located at 33 East 1st Street. This park has been morphed from a neglected space into a place for community engagement through programs that include contemporary artists, architects, designers, and community groups. These events take place from May 1st-Oct 1st each year. First Street Green not only curates programs for the space, but also allows people in the community to suggest ideas and host events.
The first event for this year is on May 4 and is in conjunction with the New Museum’s Idea City Festival. Drawing from this year’s theme, Untapped Capital, First Street Green will hold exhibits, workshops, and screenings from 12pm-9pm at the park. For other events throughout the summer and into the fall, check out the calendar.
This is a really awesome new community engagement program through the arts that is just at the start of what I’m sure will be a long and successful journey. I’m really excited to see how this space transforms in the future.
The French artist known as JR works relatively anonymous. After finding a camera in the Paris Metro, he began to study street art around Europe. Before winning a Ted Prize in 2011, JR created projects in Paris, Shanghai, Spain, Los Angeles.
The most interesting and socially engaging in my opinion is the Face 2 Face project in which he posted portraits of Israeli and Palestinian on each side of the separation wall of the two states. Many said it was impossible as it was high illegal, but it managed to be completed. The aim was to show how similar these two peoples were. I feel that though the images were humorous and light, they spoke about a much deeper level of unity. These people are brothers, yet they fight and kill each other.
After many successful but difficult projects, JR applied and was awarded a Ted Prize for his project, Inside Out. JR called for “a global art project” at the Ted Conference. This new project has extended what JR himself does with posting black and white portraits in urban areas. Inside Out allows for people around the world to submit portraits of their own. These portraits are then printed by the project and sent back in order to display in a public space. Guidelines have you group together with at least 5 other people with the same statement of purpose and then Inside Out makes it happen. The project is ongoing and submissions can be made on the site here. JR has recently brought a facet of his project that involves photo booths to Times Square in NYC. Check out the New York Times article here. I find this project so inspiring because you have so many voices just waiting to be heard all around the world. Many do not have the resources to have that voice heard. Inside Out gives these people the opportunity to share their stories with us, while creating a common ground.
Jublies Theatre is an organization that stages large-scale performances that involve hundreds of community members and more than fifty artists through four-year residencies. They have created a new definition for where art happens, who gets to be part of it, what forms it takes and what stories it tells.
They adopt and play with established forms of theatre and arts production and place it in unusual settings. They equally emphasize each stage of production (before, during, and after), so that they have community members actively participating in everything from stage and costume design, rehearsals, and acting in the plays themselves. They categorize their work into three categories:
Jumblies Ventures, undertaking multi-year residencies and producing new works, passing through phases of research, creation, production, and legacy while forming partnerships and involving several hundred people and several dozen skilled artists and along the way;
Jumblies Offshoots, maintaining relationships with people and places, and supporting new leadership and sustainable community arts initiatives; and
Jumblies Studio, training and mentoring artists and promoting learning, research, discourse, play and experimentation.
My favorite part about Jublies Theatre is the fact that they do so much more than just theatre. They managed to create six other organizations that are all community based art programs. One of them being the organization from my previous post Making Room.
Making Room Community Arts is an organization in long-term residence at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre in Toronto. They create celebrations and ceremonies, both big and small, out of the ground of everyday life. Their goal is to return art to its rightful place in everyday life “as a bridge between our inner and exterior worlds.” Making Room unites the community and the environment we live in, including artists and non artists, in a collaborative art-making.
What I like most about Making Room is the fact that they consider art something that is as vital as food, shelter, and transportation. They find that art is refused to those that need it the most. This is the reason they work together to try and find a solution to provide to those in need. They feel that there is an artist inside everybody and that everybody has potential to create, and the way to access that potential is through collaboration; they just need to be aware of the potential and the process it takes to use it.
On their website, you can find a list of Mandates that the participants adhere to and the activities that they participate in:
Mandate:
To ask fundamental questions through the creation of compelling art (artistic vision)
To explore contemplative and community arts practices (finding links)
To bring diverse groups of people together (community building)
To develop people’s skills and abilities through training and education opportunities (artist and member development)
Activities:
Regular arts drop-ins and art-meditation sessions leading to annual large-scale celebration
Celebrations of seasonal and life cycle markers, creation of new rituals
internships, workshops, seminars, conferences
Forming long-term and transformative partnerships and collaborations
Renovating and occupying of indoors and outdoor spaces for our activities
Here is a super awesome project that they just finished. Not only did they involve and educate the community in a unique way, but some beautiful images came out of it too!
Global Action Project, an organization that works with youth most affected by injustice, has a rich website full of curriculum that is free to download and use in your own classroom. A quick sign-up gives you access to PDF lesson plans. Global Action Project notes that these lesson plans are by no means a solid blueprint. They are meant to explore and add to the workshop as you see fit. They also encourage you to share with them how you’ve adapted their curriculum to suit your classroom needs.
I downloaded workshop entitled Power that deals with the vast gap between the rich and poor in the United States. By identifying the cause of this inequality, we can work together to bring about social justice.
The workshop is full of interactive games to get the students involved. One game is a question and answer game about the media. You discover that the power the media has in today’s society dictates what we hear and most importantly, what we do not hear. This use of corporate media oppresses the interests of the minority. Did you know that only 3% of the 1400 local TV stations in the US are owned by people of color? Staggering statistics such as this are knowledge you gain from this workshop. You can download this workshop on Power here.
Be sure to check out the other amazing guides to workshops on Global Action Project’s rich website to bring to your classroom.
SPARC, The Social and Public Art Resource Center, is located in Los Angeles and aims to produce work that reflects the lives of its community. The organization was founded in 1976 by muralist Judith F. Baca, painter Christina Schlesinger, and filmmaker Donna Deitch. SPARC focuses on women, the working poor, youth & elderly, as well as newly arrived immigrant communities. Their main purpose is to examine what we choose to memorialize through public art. All of the work produced by SPARC is always a collaboration between artists and community members which allows art to rise from the community rather than being imposed upon it.
One of their most famous projects, “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” is a huge mural that shows inter-racial harmony. It stretches for 2,754 feet in the Tujunga Flood Control Channel of the San Fernando Valley. There are park and bike trails as well providing easy access for visitors all year round. It stands as a tribute to the working people of California who have helped to shape its history.
SPARC received support the distinguished Ford Foundation Animating Democracy: The Role of Civic Dialogue in the Arts initiative and from the Rockefeller Foundation Partnerships Affirming Community Transformation initiative to continue working on the great wall which they did until the end of the 1990s. They have now built a park alongside the Great Wall which turns it into an international educational and cultural destination.
SPARC is an impressive organization that uses a participatory process that allows community members to create artistic and socially engaging pieces that give back to the community. They’ve made it onto the Los Angeles Times, and one of the founders, Judy Baca was invited onto Amy Poehler’s talk show this past April.
Last year I attended the
The French artist known as 
