The Essential (Art)ivist Reading List
Today we are featuring a list of articles, books, and resources focused on art, activism, social justice, and community process originally shared by TNA Artistic Director @LilyRaabe in a 2-part series:
Although Lily posted this list before, we feel that it's an amazing community resource.
And, since she was just starting out on steemit when she first shared it, we're bringing it back so that more steem artists and community organizers can have access to these resources easily!
Before we go any further -- what's an "artivist" exactly?
Here at TNA we define the term as someone working at the intersection of art and activism. Artist + Activist = Artivist!
Okay, now that that's out of the way, on to the reading list!
The Essential (Art)ivist Reading List
ARE MIRACLES ENOUGH? SELECTED WRITINGS ON ART AND COMMUNITY
1983-1994, Liz Lerman. Takoma Park, Md.: Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, 1995. Essays on art and community, including "Toward a Process of Critical Response," a description of Lerman's six-step process for critiquing works-in-progress and community based artworks.
ART IN OTHER PLACES: ARTISTS AT WORK IN AMERICA'S COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
William Cleveland. Amherst: Arts Education Service, U. of Massachusetts, 2000. First-hand accounts of the histories of institutional and community-arts programs across the U.S. describing how creative processes have been used to address pressing social issues. Update of the 1992 classic, with new introduction.
ART IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST
Arlene Raven, ed. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, new edition 1993. Anthology documenting and analyzing new public arts forms. Writers Gómez-Peña, Roth, Becker, Kuspit, Lacy, Durland, Burnham and others look at Greenpeace, the AIDS quilt, the La Lucha murals, TheatreWorkers Project, the Electronic Café and more.
BUILDING AMERICA’S COMMUNITIES: A COMPENDIUM OF ARTS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS.
Washington: D.C., Americans for the Arts, 1997. Profiles 130 arts programs in communities across America, with statistics on the use of arts for social and economic change. Topics include crime prevention, arts and healing, cultural tourism, youth at risk, jobs and economic development, education and arts and older Americans and innovative funding mechanisms.
CHALLENGING THE HIERARCHY: COLLECTIVE THEATRE IN THE UNITED STATES
Mark Weinberg. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992. Looks at collective theaters as socially conscious and politically oriented, often aligned with the people's theater movement. Examines collectivization as a way of successfully challenging the hierarchy and ideology of traditional theatre and of society. Includes El Teatro de la Esperanza, United Mime Workers, Dakota Theatre Caravan and Spilt Britches.
THE CITIZEN ARTIST: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM HIGH PERFORMANCE MAGAZINE, 1978-98
Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland. Critical Press, Gardiner, NY. 1998. Anthology of articles from High Performance magazine, exploring the development of art in the U.S., from the conceptual art of the 1970s to the community-based art of the 1990s.
CREATIVE COMMUNITY, THE ART OF CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT
Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard. The Rockefeller Foundation, New York City, NY, 2001. A report to the Rockefeller Foundation, taking stock of the work supported by the foundation’s PACT program through 2000. Provides historical context, assessment of the field, suggestions for future directions. Proposes using the phrase “community cultural development”to call the category of social action involving the arts.
THE CRISIS OF CRITICISM
Maurice Berger, ed. New York: The New Press, 1998. Essays including and in response to Arlene Croce's landmark 1994/5 New Yorker articles, "Discussing the Undiscussable," attacking contemporary issues-based art. Articles by Berger, Brenson, Hoberman, hooks, Oates and others look at critics as activists, consumer advocates, sycophants and artists.
FREE PLAY
Stephen Nachmanovitch. Lovely poetic book about improvisation in life an art, the creative practice, with theory that draws from Buddhism.
FRIENDLY FIRE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF 3 PLAYS BY QUEER STREET YOUTH
(Los Angeles: A.S.K. Theater Projects, 1997), Norma Bowles, editor. The texts of three performance-art pieces written and performed by homeless, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teenagers living on the streets of Los Angeles. Includes introduction by Peter Sellars, plus commentaries, reviews and workshop exercises.
FROM THE GROUND UP
Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective, edited by Dudley Cocke, Harry Newman, and Janet Salmons-Rue.
GAMES FOR ACTORS AND NON-ACTORS
Augusto Boal. Theater of the Oppressed work, packed with activities!
GENERATING COMMUNITY: INTERGENERATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS THROUGH THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS
Susan Perlstein and Jeff Bliss. New York: Elders Share the Arts, 1994. The founder and intergenerational arts coordinator of New York’s Elders Share the Arts outline successful models for using the arts in planning and sustaining meaningful connections between generations and between cultures living in the same communities.
GRASSROOTS THEATER: A SEARCH FOR REGIONAL ARTS IN AMERICA
Robert Gard. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1999. New edition of the seminal 1954 book by Wisconsin Idea Theater Director Robert Gard (1910-1992), a spiritual autobiography recounting Gard's travels across North America discovering and nurturing the folklore, legends, history and drama of each region. Includes a new introduction by Gard's daughter, Maryo Gard Ewell, herself an influential community-arts advocate in Colorado.
IMPROVISATION FOR THE THEATER
A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques (Third Edition) Viola Spolin
LEARNING AUDIENCES: ADULT PARTICIPATION AND LEARNING CONSCIOUSNESS
Nello McDaniel and George Thorn. Washington, D.C.: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing arts and the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. Study by two arts consultants that explores the premises and imperatives of adult learning, cites real-life programs and projects that have advanced our understanding of the techniques that work, and provides insights into the qualities that contribute to the "learning consciousness.”
LOCAL ACTS
Community-Based Performance in the United States (Rutgers Series: The Public Life of the Arts) by Jan Cohen-Cruz
MAPPING THE TERRAIN: NEW GENRE PUBLIC ART
Suzanne Lacy, ed. Seattle: Bay Press, 1995. San Francisco Bay Area-based performance artist and scholar Suzanne Lacy presents an anthology of original essays by artists and critics, exploring what happens when artists directly engage and address "real-world" audiences in public sites and use public art as an instruments of change. Writing by Baca, Gablik, Jacob, Kaprow, Lippard and others. Include compendium of 90 "pioneering" artists.
MIXED BLESSINGS: NEW ART IN A MULTICULTURAL AMERICA
Lucy Lippard. New York: The New Press, 2000. Update of the 1990 classic, with new introduction, discussing the cross-cultural process taking place in the work of contemporary Latino, Native, African- and Asian-American artists. Topics: uncertainty of exile, the confusion of identity in attempts to climb out of the melting pot. and art that speaks for itself, reversing stereotypes and reclaiming history and memory.
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED
Paulo Friere
THE PENELOPE PROJECT
An Arts-Based Odyssey to Change Elder Care: Basting, Towey & Rose
THE PERFORMER’S GUIDE TO THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS
by Sheila Kerrigan
PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
An Inquiry into Ensemble Theater Deeply Rooted in Eight US Communities. Located on the CAN Website www.communityarts.net. Click on Icon in Right Column of Home page!
PERFORMING DEMOCRACY
International Perspectives on Urban Community-Based Performance, Editors:Susan C. Haedicke and Tobin Nellhaus, University of Michigan Press
PLAYING BOAL
Theatre, Therapy, Activism. Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz, editors. Routledge, New York City, NY, 1994. Examination of the techniques and applications of Brazilian theatermaker Augusto Boal, political activist and creator of Theater of the Oppressed. Looks at uses of and modifications of Boal's exercises by scholars and practitioners in Europe, the U.S. and Canada. Includes a Boal glossary.
THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE: RADICAL THEATRE AS CULTURAL INTERVENTION
Baz Kershaw. London: Routledge, 1992. Addresses fundamental questions about the social and political purposes of performance through an investigation into post-war alternative and community theater. Analyses in detail the work of key practitioners in socially engaged theatre during four decades, setting each in the context of social, political and cultural history and demonstrating how they may have had a significant impact on social and political history.
PRESSURE ON THE PUBLIC
Hirsch Farm Project 1992. Hirsch Farm Project, Northbrook, IL, 1992.
PURSUING DEMOCRACY’S PROMISE
Craig McGarvey, Grantmakers concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (also a website)
RAINBOW OF DESIRE
Augusto Boal.
REBUILDING THE FRONT PORCH OF AMERICA: ESSAYS ON THE ART OF COMMUNITY MAKING
Patrick Overton. Columbia, Mo.: Columbia College. By the founding director of The Front Porch Institute, dedicated to exploring the role of the arts and culture in the community-making process, especially focusing on the essential role the arts play in engaging citizens in the democracy of civil discourse.
REIMAGINING AMERICA: THE ARTS OF SOCIAL CHANGE
Mark O'Brien and Craig Little, editors. New Society Publishers, Santa Cruz, CA, 1990. Anthology of articles about the impact of the arts on social movements, documenting such projects as Kids of Survival, Galeria de la Raza, Los Angeles Poverty Department, Goat Island, Teatro Pregones, Voices of Dissent, Gran Fury and more. Fifty contributors include artists, critics and community activists.
SITTING IN THE FIRE
Arnie Mindell. Conflict Facilitation.
STAGING AMERICA
Sonja Kuftinec. Book on Cornerstone Theater Company.
THE SUBVERSIVE IMAGINATION: ARTISTS, SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Carol Becker, editor. Routledge, New York City, 1994. Contributors from South Africa, the Czech Republic, Iran, Poland, Mexico and the U.S. discuss the role of artists in their own societies and analyze their activist identities as a basis for their own work. Writers include Fusco, Ehrenberg, Ndebele, Dyson and Sadri.
SUMMARY EVALUATION OF THE ARTISTS AND COMMUNITIES PILOT INITIATIVE
M. Christine Dwyer and Susan L Frankel. Portsmouth, N.H.: RMC Research Corp., 2000. Professional evaluation of a government funded initiative in Canada during the late 1990s. Looks at 12 arts-and-community partnership projects, reporting findings about the structure of the overall grantmaking initiative and the design and outcomes of the projects. Useful evaluation model for the field.
TAKING IT TO THE STREETS : THE SOCIAL PROTEST THEATER OF LUIS VALDEZ AND AMIRI BARAKA
Elam, Harry J., Jr. Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press, 1997. A comparison of the performance methodologies, theories and practices of Luis Valdez (El Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers' theater), and Amiri Baraka (Black Revolutionary Theater) during the 1960s and ‘70s as examples of social protest theater during a tumultuous historical period.
TEACHING TO TRANSGRESS
bell hooks. Short articles on radical pedagogy.
THEATRE FOR COMMUNITY, CONFLICT & DIALOGUE: THE HOPE IS VITAL TRAINING MANUAL
Michael Rohd. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998. A blueprint for the Hope Is Vital interactive theater techniques for creating dialogue and emotionally safe space for dialogue with young people. Includes exercises, scene work and theatermaking.
THEATRE FOR YOUTH THIRD SPACE
Performance, Democracy and Community Development by Stephani Etheridge. Woodson http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo22230202.html
THEATRE OF THE OPPRESSED
Augusto Boal. London: Pluto Press, 2000. New edition of classic work on radical drama, brought up-to-date with a new introduction by the Brazilian author and director. Depicts theater as a popular form of communication and expression and instrument of social change, drawing on theories of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Brecht and Marx.
And that, my friends, is The Essential (Art)ivist Reading List! We'd love to chat more with anyone interested in finding resources for their work and projects, find us in Discord or leave a comment.
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Hi friend! Thanks for stopping by, I’m really glad you’re here!
I’m an artist, writer, and creative consultant based in the Pacific Northwest. I'm also the Artistic Director of The New Alchemists! You can check out my intro post, read more about the theatre projects I work on, or follow me! I’m especially interested in finding other performing artists on this site. If that’s you, please say hello! See you around the steemosphere! @lilyraabe
This is a very good reference. And this is a guide for everyone
Thanks a bunch @alhidayat. :)
you are welcome
Thank you for the list. But it is moslty about theater and performing arts, am I right?
Hey @balabastic -- it's pretty performance focused because that's my primary field--but some of the stuff transfers really well + there's quite a lot of it that is talking about ART (in general) in community settings. So that might be more relevant for more folks. :)