Let’s make a better world: policy implications of the cultural work practice of Jane Wilburn Sapp

Abstract

How can policies align K-12 arts education with urgent needs of students, their communities and our interconnected world? How can they nourish capacities for empathy and moral imagination? Inspiration can be found in the oeuvre of the African American music educator, cultural worker, and activist Jane Wilburn Sapp. This article demonstrates how she elicits songs from students, integrates the home cultures of students into the arts curricula of schools, and invites school communities to benefit from their diversity. Sapp’s international work is instructive for cultural policy at the level of the municipality: meaningful lifelong learning in a diverse society can take place only when marginalized communities contribute their talents and knowledge to planning processes. Also, researchers should ensure that knowledge generated by communities not be extracted for the exclusive use of the academy; it should rather support communities “to look at what they know…and how to take that knowledge and recognize in it the building blocks for change.” Jane Sapp’s songs, stories, and reflections are in Let’s Make A Better World: Stories and Songs by Jane Sapp, (Jane Sapp, Brandeis University Press, 2018) and a related podcast. These resources, along with a documentary film Someone Sang For Me, can be accessed through www.janesapp.org