Making Place, Making Space: Examining the Role of Community Arts Education in Supporting Youth-Driven Cultural Work

• In Event: Places of Possibility, Cultures of Connection: Exploring Art, Design, Making, and Imagination in Enacting Educational Alternatives

Abstract

In the United States and beyond, patterns of migration and displacement amidst conflict and economic uncertainty have been accompanied by the rise of nationalist sentiments and hate-filled rhetoric. These forces have brought issues of belonging and inclusion to the fore of public debates, and borders now represent a hypervisible aspect of civic life. While borders may create a sense of safety for some, these same borders—whether physical, symbolic, or psychological—often marginalize others. In this context, a new sense of civic imagination is as important as ever before. As Jenkins, Peters-Lazaro, and Shresthova (2020) argue, imagining and communicating alternatives to current sociopolitical conditions is a key form of cultural work that sustains community-driven social change efforts. This paper draws on prior literature on civic education (Levinson, 2012) and arts education (Halverson & Sheridan, 2014; Hetland, Winner, Veenema, & Sheridan, 2007) as background for examining the role of community arts education in supporting youth-driven cultural work.
With this paper, I ask: how do young people involved in a community arts organization conceptualize their roles as cultural workers? What teaching and learning experiences in the community arts organization support young peoples’ identities as artists and cultural citizens? While recent scholarship has identified community arts organizations as promising sites for theorizing new forms of civic action (Kuttner, 2015; Dewhurst, 2014), there remains a pressing need to extend educational research to capture the patterns and complexities that arise as youth learn to mobilize the languages of art as an alternate means for civic participation. The data presented in this article comes from an ethnographic study of youth participation in community arts education programming located in an economically and ethnically diverse “gateway” community. As a method of social science inquiry, ethnographic projects aim to develop rich descriptions of how actors perceive and participate in their social worlds and theory on how patterns of participation and sensemaking are shaped by larger cultural, historical, and organizational contexts (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Data for this study include a series of artifact-based interviews with focal youth participants (N=25), interviews with organizational staff (N=8), and extensive participant observation conducted over a two year period.
My findings indicate that participants come to view representational work in the arts as a tool for placemaking—symbolic work that is intended to foster a sense of belonging and solidarity through the cultivation of shared public space. Analysis of fieldnote and interview data reveal that participants’ sense of cultural agency is supported by: (1) opportunities to pursue personally meaningful ideas; (2) opportunities to hold positions of authority in relation to creative work; and (3) opportunities to represent personal ideas and creative work publicly. By probing relationships between opportunity structures and artistic identity development, this article offers a window into the teaching and learning practices that sustain youth-driven cultural work and considers implications for supporting youth-driven cultural work through community arts education practices.

Author

• Raquel Jimenez, Harvard University