Celebrating the Powerful Connection Between Art and Community

• In Event: Room to Grow: Examining How Schools Can Cultivate Successful Culturally Relevant Arts Initiatives

Abstract

This paper shares what happens when a university promotes collaboration with schools and school families on the streets and on the stages of the local community. The framework for community-based collaboration that emerged under the CULTIVAR project identifies the social, cultural, and historical events that have influenced student’s cultural identity and become factors undergirding the student’s Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005). Thereafter, the framework uses those events as both the site and strategy for family engagement. In doing so, the events, as well as the local art and artists associated with those events, make the cultural values more accessible to the students so they can identify the influence of the events on themselves and their families.

This is exemplified in the collaboration with a local performing arts venue and the ballet presentation of “Valentina” wherein the historical events during the Mexican American War have become evidence of factors that influenced the social and resistance capital of the families. Further, as that influence becomes visible to the university, school, and community at large, CCW is reframed and more accessible to the schools as instructional content. The three-way result includes a) students gaining a deeper understanding of how their cultural identity came to be, b) families seeing their child/ren in new ways, visible because of their participation in the event, and c) art and artists of the community, including Ballet Nepantla, are elevated through increased visibility and explicit recognition of their impact.

Author

• Melissa M. Jozwiak, Texas A&M University - San Antonio