Animating Democracy Chapter 1: Can The Arts Help Save It?

Animating Democracy

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Those are important. But the threshold issue is that an increasingly huge percentage of Americans perceive a big chunk of our citizenry as the other, a foreign body whose well-being is not their concern, whose mere presence is a threat, and for some, constitutes an enemy camp. So much so, that some folks are just fine with making it hard or even impossible for those others to vote.

But I have to say, even if those mechanics of what we call democracy were unencumbered, if Americans do not see themselves as citizen co-creators of what's next, then both the idea and the reason for it for our democracy is subverted. We the people then become a hollow headline, a gilded frame with nothing inside.

Given this, I believe strongly that the way forward needs to push beyond the helpful instructions contained in the opening pages of the voter pamphlet. In a recent paper, Harry my colleague Harry Boyte (CSCW EP: 79), refers to democracy as deliberative public work. I would concur but would add that it's particularly hard public work because I don't think it comes easily or even naturally to our species.

As an artist, I find myself referring to democracy as a practice. A creative practice, actually, that involves as much hands as it does heads and hearts. Now, this might seem odd, but I think the short shrift we've given the hands part of this equation has provoked a dangerous dichotomous tug of war that is undermining our sense of common purpose.

By this, I mean that if we humans no longer know one another through the shared struggle of what was once necessary for our survival. Left to our own devices, the extremes of intellect, (head), and passion, (heart), can wreak havoc among us strangers.

There's a saying shared by many cultures that speak to this. It's harder to hurt you if I know your story. History is not chapter headings or headlines. Neither is it the concise, maybe even well written paragraphs that follow. Our histories are our lived experiences and the stories that rise up. It is the visceral all hands making and doing together that gives birth to the stories that bind us.

“After he helped me fix my roof, we stopped arguing about the fence.”

“After the cooking, and the eating, and the high school stories we told, we were no longer strangers.”

I'm also an optimist, so, despite my complaining here, I believe strongly in the creative antidote personified by this week's show. In it, we'll learn all about an arts organization that is surprisingly called Animating Democracy. Our tour guides for this episode are Pam Korza and Barbara Schaffer Bacon, two legendary cultural leaders whose pioneering work at the University of Massachusetts Arts Extension Service not only helped spawn the local Arts Council movement in the Northeast, but also gave rise to an organization founded on the belief that That a healthy local arts community and robust civic participation are both mutually supportive and intrinsically connected.

Our conversation took place during my visit to the University of Massachusetts Amherst at the Arts Extension Service's 50th anniversary celebration.

Part one. What is an Animated Democracy?

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[00:04:18] BC: where are we? Belcher,

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[00:04:22] BC: So that's in Massachusetts. Who's Belcher.

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[00:04:44] BC: So. Here's the thing. Uh, every day we opened the newspaper, and we hear about all these famous people for all kinds of reasons. And maybe 1% of them will end up in history book that tells the story of. This place or that place for everyone that follows right.

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[00:05:05] BC: So. One of the reasons that I do this podcast is to make some space in the universe for stories that I think matter, but don't get told.

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[00:05:29] BC: Well, we're trying to make them fun and informative and inspiring. Just like the story. You are about to tell. All right. So why don't we begin with introductions? Pam. Who are you?

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And, and so that was where we really started our track. And we co-directed the Animating Democracy program at Americans for the Arts, for 20 plus years and, are excited to talk about that with you today. I'm, I'm a local. I, and so is Barbara. I grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts, and have roots in the agricultural community here through my grandfather, who is a farmer.

Both grandfathers were farmers, so, very rooted in this place and with my family all here too, which is, I think, a wonderful thing.

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[00:06:59] BSB: So, I'm Barbara Shaffer Bacon, so to just make a concrete tie in the story of us being from this place and the early work with arts extension. So, arts extension was founded and it began helping arts councils form with the idea of community leadership through the arts and for the arts and so in Belchertown where we are recording here, they got an arts council going and a woman named Dott Rhodes surfaced as a community leader in the arts and she became a member of the school committee and when I ran for office and became a member of the school committee, I sat in Dott Rhodes seat.

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I was reading and the most recent U.S. Census that six in 10 folks are living within a hundred miles from their birthplace. Which brings to mind the reasons that I think that what you've been up to with art and civic engagement and civic discourse is so important.

Well, actually three reasons first. The legacy place stories, the historic memory that those six and 10 represent understandably are a very powerful presence in many of our communities still. Second over the last 30 or 40 years, that history has been on a collision course with the exponential pace of, you know, social, technological, economic, and cultural change that has taken place.

And third. The remaining 40%, which is growing represents newcomers. Who not only don't share that old story, but they also bring new and different stories to the mix. So bottom line, the towns and cities, our grandparents, and great-grandparents grew up in are just not the same in there. Continuing to change.

And a lot of people are asking, understandably, “Where am I? What the heck is this community? and, “What is my place in it? Right. So, in some ways, the work you've been doing, it's been trying to give people an opportunity to answer those questions. Individually and together as a community. Which you've dubbed. Animating Democracy.

Okay. So. When I first heard the term “Animating Democracy,” I was excited. I was intrigued and a little bit confused, which gave rise to the question. What is an animated democracy?

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In the mid 90s. Yep. about the, the role of the arts and community, the role of the arts and society, and where was the sweet spot where there might be some partnership between the two organizations and within Ford, there was an interest in the intersectional funding between the divisions within Ford. So, arts and civil society...

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And her first way of doing that was actually to bring Anna Deavere Smith back. Into Ford Foundation as an artist in residence and Anna had a vision that there should be dialogue that her plays should do something not just exist on the stage and she wanted to experiment with dialogue

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[00:11:39] Anna Deavere Smith: Well, I mean, to use that, the word intersectional is one way, I would use also a word, um, uh, it's a funny way of thinking about integration, but because we are now at a time that we're very splintered, like I get to teach at NYU, right, and, and my students are all very original, right, and there's something to me that is wonderful about that because they get to create for themselves an identity that is perhaps unexpected.

Then, then the question is with all of those different identities together, where do we find a common thread? I mean, that's, that's one, one thing I would say is, are there, is there a way, and I don't have an answer for it. Is what, what are the strategies we need to create common threads now that we don't have to say, Oh, this is all this way, or this is all that way, or this is where you have to be to be this.

And this way you have to be to be that. But therefore, I think the project is, you know, if we want to work together, how do we create communities of goodwill? And does that require finding common threads? Are there other strategies?

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She has Anna Deavere Smith, who's this highly respected artist who's having a chance to build, shows and play with her relationship with audience around that. and then we sort of were her way of looking at institutions. What can arts organizations do in this space of, and animating democracy was not a name that came from Ford.

media, more so than it was in: 1996

[00:14:09] BC: All right. So, taking the story that Barbara just shared as an example, it sounds like the cast of characters who are giving birth to Animating Democracy were coming to the table with some basic assumptions about art, civic engagement, dialogue and democracy. But, for someone who's out there saying, “Look. I just vote. What's this all about?” Could you say a little more about the underlying thinking that has the creative process? And community and democracy all in the same basket.

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[00:15:03] BSB: I think Pam just really got to the essence of it. So, at Americans for the Arts, we are all thinking about the fact that we know the arts are doing that, creating public conversations. And we look at this as an opportunity. to raise the visibility and to explore the questions about how that works and when it works and how far can it go.

So, we are excited about the opportunity to really lift a lot of practice that we see out there already.

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How does an artist animate a dialogue or a conversation? That's useful or helpful, or productive.

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And I think that, when you look at what art is or what artists employ in their work, it's about story. It's about sometimes humor. It's about generating, the kind of human side of what might be an issue that a community is facing. And so, those things are the tools or the devices that artists bring into space that makes it a different kind of setting, a different kind of environment for people to engage with each other. And then, also go a step further into conversation, which, in our context was really creating an intentional space through artists and art to get at those things that communities need to talk about.

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[00:17:56] BC: Part Two: Some Iconic Stories.

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Someone with, who died of AIDS, the funeral parlor didn't want them. The cemetery didn't want them. Families didn't actually have public places to mourn or celebrate lives. And along comes the Quilt Project. And so, the first thing is they get to engage in a creative process. They're going to memorialize their loved one in this thing, and the creative process of bringing those symbols together and making that Quilt square, is important.

But then they end up on the National Mall, and on the National Mall, they become a platform for policy. We see the AIDS crisis in the country as not being just a small group of problematic subcultures. It's now affecting families across the economic line, across religious lines. And the families see each other, and it literally brought the issue to a broader place

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“Jose Sales.”

From all over the country, the families and friends of the victims had gathered to watch the unveiling of a huge quilt the size of a football field.

Each panel bore the name of an AIDS victim. Often groups had made the panels trying to catch something of the spirit of their lost friends in the design. When it was done and laid out in front of the Capitol building, the quilt was, as it were, lying at the feet of the American Congress. The government here is much criticized by the gay community for not doing enough to educate people about AIDS.

Congressman Jerry Studds was among those taking part.

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[00:20:14] BSB: Vagina Monologues, same thing.

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That event ended up to be the most extraordinary evening where 2, 500 people came and all these fabulous actors from Glenn Close to Susan Sarandon to Lily Tomlin to Rosie Perez.

Rosie Perez: My vagina is angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina is furious and it needs to talk.

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[00:21:25] BSB: Domestic violence finally is talked about in public spaces. It's, it changes, it really changes the national conversation. Not just, at the small or local level.

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[00:22:17] PK: Right?

BSB: With the Washington Monument behind it. Yeah. Totally. Laramie Project is another huge example. It's one of the most produced plays in the country still.

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Here's Kaufman talking about his approach.

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When the news reports do a piece on Laramie, the camera becomes the curator. As actors and as theater people, the body of the actor, the spirit of the actor, that is the recording device, and that is the playback device. And so, how do we use theater to advance a kind of humanistic conversation.

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And then there are these scaling up kinds of projects where like with the Laramie Project. That play is being performed all over the country by people in community with dialogues and, and with resources behind it. So, one of the issues that has been, often talked about is how do you scale up some of these models that have been really productive in a local fashion...

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[00:25:04] BSB: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yes, and I think some things have had the ability to scale because something gets the national attention there are things connected. I think other things folks say, “How can we scale that?” And it isn't always easy because

it is also all the local and contextual elements that make a project work, and they're not always easily enlarged or transferred. there, you can learn from them, but you can't always do that.

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So. Here's my own historic soapbox on this. In the broadest sense, these kinds of creative community stimulants that we've been describing here are not a new thing. It's a return to something that we homo sapiens, sapiens have been doing for most of our history. Gathering together around the fire, the sacred space where a spirit leader helps us with our songs, our dances, our story to help us make sense of the mysteries, and the hard edges of the confounding world to help us turn our attention and focus on the work that we have to do to survive together.

And here now in the modern world, Ford and Americans for the Arts and dozens and dozens of communities that you've touched decided to return to that.

So. In a practical sense. How did that unfold?

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So Eugene, Oregon, where they're performing St. John's Passion. And the Jewish community gets upset at the anti-Semitic language in the text. and Neil Archer Rowan, sets out to say, we're not going to not do it, which has happened to a lot of work in a lot of communities. We're going to talk about it.

And we're going to find out and hear and have exchange, which culminated during the performances in a, condoned, act where some people stood and turned their back on the chorus during certain passages of the work.

I mean, I literally right now in, as we're talking about difficulties in how we're thinking about Israel and Gaza, the ability to do what Oregon Bach did would be a gift in many communities right now. So, we saw examples of that from a wider lens than Ford was initially thinking It was thinking about institutions like operas, museums, ballets, orchestras. We brought in public art. We brought in dance.

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[00:28:18] BC: So, yeah. A shout out to all those incredible artists and to CETA. The Comprehensive Employment and Training Agency and Act. That put more federal money into art making across the country on an annual basis during its three plus years. Than has ever been invested in the history of the United States to this day.

hat was way back in the early: 1970

[00:28:45] BSB: Yeah, but that's what one of the things that happened through the scan, which was that we surface groups whose practice was this? As you were saying, we're coming back to... So, we had institutions that want to, and are in some ways positing themselves in, the space of civic dialogue, but they're learning, they're new, they're interested, but it's not a deep practice in a way that it was for other groups that we brought in.

So, when those two married, I think that's where the concept of our lab, which was what did we do, came about. Where could, how could we not just fund projects, but create a place where there could be intentional experimentation. We were going to entertain the fact that it might not all work.

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[00:29:46] BSB: So, we did two things together. We released guidelines for funding, and we broadly distributed this study, to really take a look and to add some context and some framing for what it was we were talking about. For instance, we weren't as interested in a project that was going to drive a new housing project away from an advocacy project about gentrification. Yes. We were interested in the project that was going to bring developers and residents together to talk about what to do with the neighborhood.

So, we were somewhat intentional, we started with a fairly narrow space of suggesting that art would be the neutral space, the center, that there's action over here and all talk over here. And we were interested in art that was really an art making that was really creating some new opportunity, new possibility, new space of how people could come together and begin to talk and grapple with issues.

But there didn't have to be a policy outcome. an action. It wasn't assumed at the beginning. So, one of our more successful strategies was releasing that report, really getting out, getting people talking about it. And then we gave a fairly long frame for, applications to come in.

We received 600 applications for the first round of money.

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[00:31:16] BSB: Yeah. and the highest percentage of those in 1999 was about race and diversity.

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[00:31:53] PK: Yeah, and it was pretty stark in looking at those 600 applications... that a lot of them were still fixed in, audience development as their interpretation of what we were aiming for. And so that's about, getting butts in seats and getting people to, engage in your institution. But the shift to what you're talking about is really what we were after. And the other thing that I think we noted is that a lot of folks were at a very high nebulous level of “the arts change lives. And...”

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[00:32:30] PK: And while we can say that's true, we were really looking for, the intentionality and more specificity, about what was being addressed in a community. And, and so I think putting together the panel, really digging into these 600 and... and it was a process of learning, where the field was at the time, which was instructive.

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[00:33:23] BSB: Correct. And, uh we only had technically two rounds of funding, but one of the things that happened is that we didn't really have any kind of strict 12 months rule on it. And so, we were in connection and communication, with our groups and they had a lot of room to say, “We need more time.”

We're changing what we're doing, but, more important is that, over the course of what turned out to be five years, we convened 15 learning exchanges. And the intention of those learning exchanges was to bring the practitioners together, and some of their community partners into the mix. And to add to that mix, other folks who were looking and thinking about the field, like yourself.

And they were really designed as deep case-based, opportunities for sharing and exchange. and then from that, a few other things kind of, grew as areas of inquiry. And we tried to support the groups to take those, ideas and take those further as well.

And, we had an additional layer, which was group of folks we called “liaisons.” And their job, was to be, a liaison to each project and to be, a camera and a mirror --- to hold a mirror so they could help them reflect on what was happening, and to keep taking snapshots along the way to see what, was happening. And that turned out, I think, to be generally very effective in our, learning for everyone. No assumptions.

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That's number one. And number two is you gave them explicit permission to use what they were learning to modify, or even change course. So, you change the relationship from static and predictable to dynamic. Which, as you say, was a field building lab experiment.

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And another thing that I think was important in what you said is that this notion of permission to fail and learn was key. And it was a learning for us, too, because we didn't realize we would be perceived as funders when we walked into our first learning exchange with people.

And it was, it was a shock to us that there was a dynamic there where people either wanted to please us, or they were skeptical of what we, might have as our own baggage and assumptions. And so, we learned that this notion of failing in public or being vulnerable was important in these learning exchanges so that people didn't feel they were on stage presenting, but that they were really in a process of revealing, and wrestling, and questioning. And hopefully having the benefit of others in the room who knew more than we did in a lot of cases because we weren't on the ground practitioners.

And that was a real learning for us and I think that other funders, are more and more wanting to be in partnership with their grantees that it's not just about giving the money

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And I think, so much of what is being funded now, what is appreciated now, is the work that was being done in this framework.

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Thinking back when you consider the different projects, the people, the organizations that were part of this initial process, are there any of them with a story that really personifies both a deep impact on a community, and its issues and deep learning for you folks? Anything that comes to mind?

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But she came into it with the understanding that white people need to reckon with this history and that the film, by having a white family, the descendants of this slave trader, reckon with their own history, their own family history and its role, would really provide a kind of route into dialogue about race and about, white fragility and privilege and so forth.

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[00:40:24] PK: This is early days. And, and there was a lot of conversation about, well, should we be granting money to a white person or a white entity, the Rhode Island, Foundation for the Humanities, her sponsoring organization. Or should we be responsibly giving that money to, black artists who might be addressing the issue from their own perspective?

And it was a very contested discussion. But in the end, we decided to risk the money and her film has contributed significantly in ways that we couldn't have even imagined.

Last year, we had Katrina, the filmmaker in an online dialogue with James Scruggs, a black artist, about the role of art in race dialogue. The National Episcopal Church used it as a frame for dialogue about its own role in the slave trade and making reparations. And she presented it to Congress...

Katrina Browne had to say in: 2019

[00:41:48] Katrina Browne: Thank you, Chairman Cohen and Ranking Member Johnson, and Representative Jackson Lee for the opportunity to speak this morning. I grew up in Philadelphia, six blocks from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. I am a deep-seated patriot, so it was devastating learn that our ancestors had been slave traders.

And to discover that the DeWolf's were in fact the largest slave trading family in United States history, bringing over 12,000 Africans to the Americas in chains. That these were my Rhode Island ancestors, and that Rhode Island turns out to be the state that sent more ships to Africa than any other, required me to reorganize my brain.

The amnesia in my family matched the larger amnesia of the North. The self-serving myths of being always on the right side of history. I could no longer carry a sense of moral superiority relative to white southerners, nor a sense of innocence vis a vis black claims on the white conscience.

I decided to initiate a family journey to retrace the triangle trade. Nine relatives joined me, two of which are here today, and the documentary Traces of the Trade is the result, the subtitle being A Story from the Deep North. What we learned, how we stumbled, how we grew during that journey led me to become a passionate believer in the importance of reckoning with the history and legacy of slavery, a believer in personal and family reckonings, institutional ones, and larger national reckoning.

And with that in the need for repair or reparative action, which can and should take many, many forms. I express wholehearted support for HR 40. And I've met countless people of all backgrounds who believe in this form of national effort as well.

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So that's just, that's one example that I think of where, the risk-taking paid off. And it wasn't without its issues. It took 10 years for Katrina to complete the film and that was beyond our original timeframe, but hey, it's what happens.

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So, after we, said, “Wait, we're not funders.” So, the the groups were sharing what their work would be, and the trailer for this was, presented, Traces was part of that cohort. The Art Center in Amory, Wisconsin, with, Lemoine McLaughlin and, his mayor, were there, and, and so was Esperanza Center for Peace and Justice in San Antonio, Texas. And, the trailer was played and the mayor had, come-to-Jesus-meeting moment that he stood and said, “Oh my God, there's Confederate stuff in our attic.”

And, that was followed very closely by folks from Esperanza saying they were totally insulted that money led to a white person to create this film. This film was... should not be made. It's not the way the story should be told. Followed by lunch where, there are papier mâché sleeping Mexicans poised on the tables and, immigrant servers with sombreros.

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[00:45:43] BSB: Glen Cove, New York. on Long Island. It's a long story, but we're not telling that story.

So, Wayne Winborne had arranged for Sekou Sundiata, just a profound spoken word artist, to be our speaker that day. And Sekou comes in just after lunch and the tension in the room is described to him. And then he performed a piece called Reparations (Come on and Bring on the Reparations), and he did what we talked about.

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Come on and bring on the reparations.

Oh master of the perfect word universe, Trychnological forked tongue, riddle me this. If the Chinese can come from China and the French can come from France, what made you think you could get niggas out of Africa in the first place? Just because you put puppies in the oven, that don't make them biscuits.

Reparations on GP. Come on and bring on the reparations. For all the unrequited home runs, brothers be burning up the bases, the crowd be going mad, brothers be crossing over home plate, go outside and can't get a cab. For Little Richard teaching the Beatles how to scream like Aunt Jemima without their pancakes.

And all the other dark and unknown rockers electrified the republic, sanctified, shaking that cold war out the booty body politic. Come on and bring on the reparations. For the beat in Beatnik, white negroes and such Gettin off up under that great music in them little ass five spots For the jazz in the jazz age, makin your women wiggle and squirm And you tryin to twist and do the worm Your abstract expressionism, jizz and drip And you might say, if I was you, I would go on the road and howl too Jimmy Dean and Elvis, they can go to wherever they went Marilyn too, except she got caught in a trick And got bent out of that cute little shape she had goin And Come on and bring on the reparations.

For the Birmingham Gospels, for Little Girls Come Sunday, for the Jesus remix in those redneck streets, firehose, mad dog, crucifix, and what exactly did you say you was doing at the time of our soft shoe on the Rock of Edges? For the privilege in your skin, a wounded knee, a trail of tears for the Indian in the Come on and bring on the reparation.

For the spook with the metal detector sittin by your door. Open just enough, probably a moon full of cocaine on the table. Monica on her knees doin secret service. You hummin mum munder raps, and what about all those flags we so proudly hailed? Marvin Gaye singin “oh say can you see?” Wearin shades like mirrors at the All Star Game so you can reflect.

Relaxed and feeling good, the dark looker doing his looking like he was blind Bearing witness to the whiteness of whiteness, pretending you was the only one who could see Tears after all about thee, just like you like it Mercy, mercy me, and so on and so forth For the missing royalty checks, and so on so forth for VD and Tuskegee called syphilis and so on and so forth.

Think of it, think of it as a down payment on the interest compounded them 40 acres. Notwithstanding that mule, notwithstanding multiplied quantized, digitized what to say about forgiveness between you and your God. Come on and bring on the reparations.

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[00:49:33] BC: That was powerful story and probably a good place to end part one of this two-part animating democracy saga.

In Part Two Pam and Barbara going to take us on a journey of places and stories and issues that include. Lima Ohio. Flint Michigan, the history of lynching, King Kamehameha, and Holocaust studies. We'll also explore the long-term prospects for the growing number of artists and arts organizations involved in arts-animated democracy initiatives across the country. At a time. when both the definition, and the desirability of democracy is being debated in the land of the free.

So, thanks to you folks out there who've taken the time to tune into these stories and conversations. And of course, if you really dig it and want more, please follow or subscribe for free in your preferred podcast listening app.

And if you are totally obsessed with what we're up to, you can explore our entire archive based on your specific interests like youth arts, cultural organizing, prison arts, change making media, and nine other categories in our Change the Story Collection, which you can find in our show notes and at www. Art and community. com under the podcast drop down. Change the Story. Change the World is a production of the center for the study of art and community are. Theme and soundscape spring forth from the head, heart, and hands of the maestro Judy Munsen. Our text editing is by Andre Nebbe. Our effects come from freesound.org, and our inspiration rises up from the ever present spirit of UKE 235.