General

NPN reached out to artists in New Orleans and nationally with the question, What do you need? Here are their responses.

Culture & Community in a Time of Crisis: A Special Edition of Culture Track is a new collaboration between LaPlaca Cohen and Slover Linett Audience Research, generously supported by The Wallace Foundation and The Barr Foundation with additional funding from The Terra Foundation for American Art and Art Bridges, along with other partners and collaborators (p.37). The study aims to shed light on how arts and culture organizations can address the hopes, fears, and needs of Americans during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.

This report offers early findings from the first wave of this national survey, fielded from April 29 to May 19, 2020, which became one of the largest arts and culture studies ever undertaken in the U.S. We offer these key insights to the field at a time of urgent need and will release deeper-dive interpretations and implications in late July.

The competencies that comprise arts learning are critical to solving the complex and ever-evolving needs facing our workforce. The artistic processes of creating; presenting, performing, and/or producing; responding; and connecting are not only fundamental to arts education, they are fundamental to student success across all domains. These artistic processes also increase learner empowerment, interest, and engagement; and students’ ability to make connections and transfer knowledge.

The education community has established that, for our future generations to be prepared to address global challenges, they must be able to think creatively and innovatively. By effectively integrating instruction for students in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics
(STEAM), educators can better help learners prepare for these challenges.

We developed this handbook for artists anywhere on the journey – whether you are just beginning to think about extending your artistic practice to working with community, or whether you’ve been immersed in community and want to deepen your practice. You might be an artist who draws inspiration from a group of people and transforms that inspiration into a performance, a mural, or a meal. You might be an artist who co-creates and co-organizes with your community to address an injustice or an opportunity. Your work may look like what most people think of as “art” or your work may look very different. Your work may look like conversations, food, or taking a hike. You might work within your “own” communities, or you might be a guest in another community. Or you might just be starting to think about how your creative practice could impact the people and places you love.

Whatever form your creativity takes, whatever communities you find yourself working with and in, there are practices that can make your work more successful and satisfying – for you and the people you work with. This handbook is a compilation of insights, practices, and tools from our collective experiences as artists, as an organization working with hundreds of artists in communities, and from a few of the artist practitioners whom we admire.

This handbook is a practical manual for individual artists who would like to begin or deepen this kind of artistic practice – work in and work with community. The stories, tools, and wisdom shared here were gathered from creative practitioners who regularly do this work: Springboard staff Jun-Li Wang, Michele Anderson, and Peter Haakon Thompson, with artists and creative practitioners deeply rooted in community.

Join the movement and help lead the change to disrupt invisibility and toxic stereotypes that fuel bias and racism against Native peoples. IllumiNative’s toolkits are designed to empower Native advocates and allies to start the conversation in your community, school, and/or institution about the importance of accurate and contemporary representation of Native peoples and inclusion of Native voices.

The National Endowment for the Arts published Creativity and Persistence: Art that Fueled the Fight for Women’s Suffrage as part of the centennial celebration of passage of the 19th amendment. The book commemorates how the arts were used to change the image of women in America and illustrate the importance of their full participation in society and politics.