Building Community through the Arts

With New Orleans as the primary source, this course explores the theory and practice of community-based arts, civic engagement in higher education, and the relationship between art and community development or impact. The course is team taught by dance and visual artists who work in community and who teach at Tulane University and Xavier University. The course is grounded in community cultural development projects and community engagement practice is embedded in the course. Students work directly with local artists on community based arts projects - visual artists, dance and theatre artists, music artists, and visual and performance artists who work to build and rebuild community through the use of the arts. The chapters of the course are Introduction to Community Arts, Arts and Culture in New Orleans, New Orleans Community Partner Projects, and Evaluation/Reflection. With guest artists and excursions into the city of New Orleans, the course encourages students to understand the theory and practice of community-based arts and art-making, distinction between types of public service, working and collaborating with local artists and organizations, the relationship between art as a tool for social change and community cultural development, the form community projects take based on needs of community partners, how to enter, build and exit a community in a sustainable fashion, and responsibility as citizens and citizen artists.