Abstract
Communities around the world struggle with weakening social bonds and political, racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural divides. This article argues the arts can be a means of raising public consciousness regarding such concerns by catalyzing conscious, thoughtful dialogue among individuals and groups possessing diverse values and beliefs. Change can only occur when people become aware of and actively reflect on the ontological and epistemic-scale norms and values that so often underpin their divisions, and the arts can help them do precisely that. We examine the dynamics of participatory performing arts and mural-making in diverse contexts to contend that the dialogic character of community art-making can be valuable for practitioners and scholars in a variety of efforts in international community development. We conclude by sharing lessons that we believe will aid artists and practitioners in devising more inclusive and participatory approaches to their international community change or development projects.
Highlights
As communities around the world face numerous challenges—key among them political, racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural divides in their populations—scholars and practitioners in the fields of arts, development, governance, leadership, and social change are engaged in a constant search for ways to catalyze dialogue to address those concerns and secure positive social change
We offer three vignettes to highlight how community art-making across genres may help spur dialogue to identify, shape, and press for positive social change
The short vignettes sketched above offered insights into the ways that the arts may promote social change processes that are often difficult to prompt via more conventional strategies
Summary
We adopt Choi’s conception of dialogue as a process of building mutual understanding and relationships that involves both reason and emotion [3]. Such understanding, Choi has contended, may help individuals to comprehend each other better in terms of their fundamental cultural values, interests, and self-expression. We employ international examples and arguments to suggest five lessons for professional artists and development, governance, leadership, and social change scholars and practitioners interested in fashioning more inclusive and participatory approaches to their community development projects
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