Comments on: Stop Advocating for the Arts: Start Advocating for People

By: Charles Burchell

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 04:40:00 +0000

This is the reason I am in graduate school. Because the arts are marginalized in communities of color. As an African American who grew up in New Orleans I have seen how the arts have keep people from bad life paths and provided kids with a “way out” of a dire situation. The marginalization of the arts in communities of color is a very subtle but still very powerful tool of oppression. If you don’t think children in low income communities of color how to exercise their creative capacities then how will they discover the solutions needed to help their communities? ]]>

By: Anonymous

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:06:00 +0000

In our core AIE course, we watched an NEA video that advocated for the teaching of Shakespeare across the country (and it was an arts advocacy video in general). A question I brought to the class is how arts advocacy is targeted differently for various communities: for urban communities, arts are seen as a tool for addressing and “fixing” situations, people and problems. For WASP communities, it is seen as a source and means of enrichment. For me, that is a huge problem. It also factors into the question of how some arts organizations may exploit communities–as other classmates posited–in order to get funding, and STAY funded, championing themselves as humanitarians in “at risk” communities. I think your post well defines a very large deficit in arts advocacy rapport. ]]>

By: Lauren Elmore

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:10:00 +0000

After our conversation, my whole idea of “marginality” and the “arts” shifted a bit. Many advocates and lobbyists frame the argument in such a way that it can sound like a “First World Problem” (It’s sort of a joke term: http://first-world-problems.com/). I even used it in my presentation about the arts in higher ed…at Harvard. How “First World” can I get!

Anyway, the language we use around the purpose of arts for children is very telling of the value we place on different children. Perhaps part of the discussion can expand on that idea, and not solely on the context discrepancies between the majority of arts educators and their learners. What would that new conversation look like?

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