We value people. We value the planet. We value integrity, responsibility, ingenuity and respect. We value innovation, creativity, accountability and love. We value family. We value community. We value our country and we value our membership in the global community. These are the values that shape us. These are the values that guide our politics, our practice and fortify our work for a bright and sustainable future for all people. These values drive our commitment to art, culture and the power of creative process as well as our commitment to fairness, equity and the power of democratic process. We are creatives and cultural workers. We are organizers and strategists. We are media makers and philanthropists. We are transformation, we are hope and we are change. Art is change.
Art and culture are both beauty and power. While they enrich, beautify, and entertain, they also inform, innovate and connect. Engaging in creative process allows access to; the language needed to build community across difference; the tools needed to inform, engage and mobilize; and the imagination needed to create new political, social, economic and technological solutions to the challenges we face as a nation in a changing world. For the last several years, those who recognize this power have come together to network, strategize and generate new ideas towards a common end. Inevitably, these gatherings have resulted in brilliant ideas, plans and connections. More often than not, however, participants have returned to their studios, communities and organizations to find themselves immersed in their critical day-to-day work and unable to find the time, energy, resources or infrastructure to manage or manifest those ideas.
In 2009, building on its mission to work with individuals, organizations and alliances to build a transformative movement for social, racial and economic equity the Movement Strategy Center launched Art + Culture + Transformation (A+C+T). A+C+T is designed to expand MSC’s transformative work building movements that are simultaneously creative, strategic, collaborative and sustainable, by bringing cultural organizing and creative process methodologies to its organizing and advocacy partners in local and national alliance building work.
While MSC has spent significant time engaging A+C+T as an opportunity to strengthen the use of creative process within its transformative movement building work, the centerpiece of the A+C+T and its focus in 2010 is the incubation of Art Is Change. Art Is Change is a growing network of community, independent and popular culture artists, cultural workers, organizers, philanthropists, strategists and other practitioners exploring cultural transformation in dialogue and action, and elevating the critical relationship of the strategic infusion of art, culture and creativity to transform public policy and community practice.
The Work of Cultural Transformation
The spectrum of values that are embodied by the culture of the United States is quite wide and often in conflict with itself. As a community, we ascribe to the ideals of freedom and democracy and also those of self-indulgence and myopic individualism. Unfortunately, too often our social policies and practices are generated based on values that lie on the less desirable end of that spectrum. When that happens, we become mired in policy and practice that serve only a privileged few and leave the masses to deal with a failing public education system, crisis in the economy and healthcare, inadequate housing, a threatened environment, and a general disregard for community wholeness and human dignity.
Art Is Change is engaging existing networks, large and small, in dialogue and action for cultural transformation. Cultural transformation is a dynamic process where not only the policies and practices change, but a community’s values, culture and ways of being change as well. For the Art Is Change network, the need to build sustainable long-term cultural transformation reaches beyond the work of incremental change to generate a grounding that makes sustainable transformation possible. Cultural transformation operates at the root of change, creating shifts in the values from whence a community functions and insuring the concrete expression of progressive values for years to come
As members of the Art Is Change community, whether we engage in the work of advocating for progressive policies, organizing communities for better conditions or engaging the electorate to ensure equitable representation; whether we identify as strategists, philanthropists, artists, organizers, cultural workers or simply concerned members of the community; the tie that binds us all is the vision we share of a transformed nation. We share a vision of a country and a world where we are collectively guided by our commitment to democracy, fairness, community, innovation, and opportunity for everyone.
With all of us working together, a world of fairness, equity and opportunity for all is possible. But it will take more than a change in policy or even a transformation in the practice of communities to realize it. It will take a change in the hearts and the minds of all of us. It will take a shift in what we have faith in, what we believe in and how we engage with each other and with the rest of the world. Simply said, this transformation of culture requires unprecedented innovation and the reawakening of our collective capacity for radical creativity and imagination.
Art, Culture and Creative Process
Regardless of whether one considers him or herself a part of the creative or cultural community, cultural transformation is possible only when art, culture and creative process are acknowledged, engaged and present. Therefore, while the goal of this work is to expand the discourse and praxis of cultural transformation, its specific focus is to infuse art, culture and creative process in transformative social change work at all levels.
Art, as an expression of values and intentions is the most powerful way to engage any community. When strategically engaged, art challenges, educates and informs to create awareness. It also communicates and frames to generate alignment and empowers and activates to stimulate participation in a way that no other methodology can. The use of music as an organizing tool in the United States during the movement for civil rights in the 1960’s and the movement for peace in the 1970’s as well as in South Africa during the anti-apartheid movement, made those movements powerful and dynamic for those outside of traditional political and organizing circles. Organizations like the historic Highlander Center built organizing strategies around the sharing of songs like, “We Shall Overcome”, sharing and teaching the song across the South giving everyday people powerful common language to drive, sustain and unify them. For millions in the United States, and all over the world, songs that elevated the merits of brotherhood, equality and peace were simultaneously an entry point, a rallying cry and a gentle yet shrewd source of a compelling and undeniable political argument.
Culture is a complex web of behaviors, beliefs, expressions and ways of being. To fully acknowledge culture is to acknowledge that we simultaneously exist within a collective culture that we are constantly co-creating and in cultures that are specific to our individual communities that which we inherit based on our heritage, background and traditions. Its inclusion is to acknowledge that we must find ways to honor and appropriately interact with both, acknowledging that they may sometimes be in conflict and finding resolution in those moments. Article 27 of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community…”, therein providing the argument that being in alignment with progressive values and those of human rights means that the right to express ones culture must remain in tact.
For many change makers, the thought of engaging in creative process is daunting. Never the less, no matter how intimidating, this engagement is critical to our success. Our collective disconnection to our own creative abilities, however limited, has stifled our ability to envision and achieve powerful victories. As people who have made ourselves responsible for the transformation of our culture and for creating what has never existed, we must be able to engage in a creative process to imagine and innovate not only where we want to go but also how we will get there. We must be able to re-imagine our communities, our organizations, our work and our lives to achieve such a transformation.
Cultural transformation gives us the power to change. It gives us the power of a common frame that opens natural pathways for strategic alignment and uncommon collaborations; strong tools to reach those with whom we have been unable to connect; a deep practice of mutual respect and innovation; and the clear vision to set a course for our work. This is all possible inside of cultural transformation.
Building meaningful collaborations between artists, organizers and others and giving everyone access to engaging art, culture and creative process are paramount in creating the world that we imagine. To integrate the acumen of organizing and the innovation of cultural work is to engage the best of who we are in bringing forth cultural strategies that will powerfully engage a broad spectrum of people for the long haul.
Art Is Change: is a space designed specifically for such collaborations. It is where the members of the artistic, cultural and organizing communities have the time, space, resources and support to be generative. They can participate in collective action to take new and existing ideas generated inside the convening space out to organizations and communities to create greater immediate impact and sustainable long-term cultural transformation.
As a network of artist collectives, arts organizations, intermediaries, community organizing groups and other existing cultural and organizing networks, Art Is Change is convening working collaborations amongst a diverse set of peers to build the network by focusing on three specific and foundational areas of work; ideology, infrastructure and campaigns. These collaborations will build an inclusive, transformative cultural message, with vision and strategy. They will also connect with, shape and support each other’s work, share innovative ideas, participate in collaborative action, and establish a strong yet flexible infrastructure to support collaborative and decentralized, self sustained cultural work.