.What is Community Arts Development. - Cpunty Galway Community Arts Network

What is Community Arts Development.

Patrick Overton, Ph.D. Director, Columbia College Center for Community & Cultural Studies

I am very careful when I use the term community arts development because it is understood in many different ways. During my Ph.D. work at the University of Missouri, I was very fortunate to have as one of my advisors, Dr. Lee Cary, founding president of the Community Development Society of America. I found myself fascinated with the community development process, but I continually found myself challenging what I saw as an inherent weakness. Community development process is just that, process oriented. It is not that it isn't product oriented, it's just that the process takes precedence over everything else.
During my work in rural and small communities, I have found that most people are very "product" oriented. This is especially true regarding the arts in the United States. We are very product oriented. During one of the many discussions I had with Dr. Cary, I proposed that the term community arts development might be a nice way to bring the community arts product and the community development process together. From that point on in our relationship, everything I have done has been oriented toward this goal. What I thought was a unique term I thought up was actually a very essential term used by one of the first community arts development thinkers and practitioners, Bob Card. In fact, I became profoundly affected by his work and came to know and love this man. He had a tremendous impact in my life. You will note the introduction to Grassroots and Mountain Wings is written by Dr. Cary and the first major article is written by Bob Gard. The weekend we gathered all of these people together to examine the grassroots and mountains wings of community arts development will go down as one of the great three days of my life.
County Galway Community Arts Network	So, what exactly do I mean by community arts development. Well, for starters, I do not view it as a means to an end. In fact, when the arts are used as a means to an end, namely community development, economic development, tourism, etc., I think it jeopardizes the very nature of what is happening with the arts. The arts must, by definition, point to initial expression by an individual. Everything else that comes about is therefore considered an "indirect benefit" of this experience.
That is why I do not use the term community development through the arts. I realize this might make some community developers uncomfortable, but my experience, especially in the rural and small community, is that whenever the arts are used as a means to an end, the people involved come out on the short end. The key is to find an effective product that has a positive process that keeps the two in a good balance. I think the arts can do this. I also know that arts don't always achieve this balance.
How do we do community arts development?
County Galway Community Arts Network.	Well, we focus on individual artists and arts/cultural groups. In fact, I am increasingly using the term community cultural development as opposed to arts because the term cultural refers more to the essential elements of a community's cultural and spiritual center. Second, we find ways to help these organizations function more effectively, and finally, hopefully can find ways to get funding that works. But, I must express a concern at this point. We need to recognize that funding can be a real problem, especially if a large percentage of it comes from outside the community.
In 1993, I delivered a paper at the Fourth National Conference on Ethics in America entitled "Public Trust or Public Trough: The Ethical Crisis Facing Nonprofit, Tax-exempt, Cultural Institutions in America." I address this issue of outside funding circumventing and taking precedence over organizational and community values. I think it is one of the great crises facing rural and small communities today. I am convinced the dependence on public funding is crippling our cultural institutions from being able to adhere to their core values and assume independent leadership.	County Galway Community Arts Network.
	I think rural and small community cultural institutions are even more at risk because so much of their budget is dependent on outside funding. Let me make one thing clear, I am not opposed to government or public funding for the arts. What I am opposed to is a reliance on this funding so that an organization loses its autonomy and is forced to adhere to a set of values that is imposed upon them from outside their community. Throughout the history of the United States this has been used frequently as a means of controlling communities.

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