I’ve been reading an excellent book entitled Community Building: What Makes It Work by Paul Mattessich and Barbara 
Monsey, a book that aggregates over 500 studies of community building techniques and summarizes what can be gleaned from them. There I have found much clarity.
On my Theatre Ideas blog, I was constantly challenged to define community, which of course is very difficult because there are so many different defnitions. Usually in peoples’ heads there was a Norman Rockwell vision of what “community” meant, which of course bore no resemblance to reality and therefore was used as a straw man for opposition.
Mattessich and Monsey define “community” simply and effectively:
“People who live within a geographically defined area and who have social and psychological ties with each other and with the place where they live.”
Yes, of course there are things like the “theatre blogging community” and the “artistic community” and the “gay community” and so on, and those are perfectly legitimate ways to think about community, but for my purposes the above definition is entirely effective — it combines geography with social psychology, propinquity with interaction. Furthermore, the authors assert that a “small geographic area” is an important factor in the success of community building activities. Now, this could be a neighborhood in a major city, but what is important is that people develop the interactions necessary to developing a sense of shared identity and social cohesion. You want people to run into each other on the street or in the store or at the diner, and you want them to recognize each other, and share a sense of being part of a place.
The chapter that is most rich, I believe, is the one about the characteristics of community building organizers. I’m going to list these briefly, and will perhaps elaborate in future posts, but as a structure for the education of community arts leaders, I think this list is an excellent starting place:
- Understanding the Community: the culture, social structure, demographics, political structures, and issues.
- Sincerity of commitment: interest in the long-term health of the community, not personal status (it isn’t about you).
- Relationship of trust: strong relationships based on personal trust in the integrity and good intentions.
- Able to be flexible and adaptable: an ability to adapt to changing situations, people, politics, and social climates.
In addition, the authors draw a distinction between leaders and organizers: organizers are the people who “design, implement, and manage the community building project,” who may come from outside the community (in this case, the central CRADLE organization might be the organizer of an arts organization); a leader lives in the community and assume roles managing or directing the entire initiative (in this case, the artists who make up the staff of the arts organization and who live in the town).
The goal is the creation of “community social capacity,” the “extent to which members of a community can work together effectively.” Now wait a minute – isn’t the goal the creation of quality works of art? While that is certainly important, it is actually the tool for increasing social capacity, not the goal. A CRADLE organization would be focused on getting people interacting together as often as possible, creating and strengthening social and psychological ties, through the creation and enjoyment of artistic events.
The ramifications for this shifting of the focus is crucial for understanding CRADLE. I believe that the “quality” of a work of art does not sit within the art work or performance itself, but rather is created through its interaction with an audience. For instance, a play might be well-written and brilliantly performed, but if it doesn’t find an audience who can connect with it, then to my mind it lacks quality. On the other hand, the performance might be barely competent, but if the audience connects with it powerfully, then the performance possesses excellence.
I know that many of my artist-friends will object to this, since they have been taught the opposite throughout their schooling. But an attitude that places quality within the art work instead of within the interaction puts the artist at the center of the experience instead of the audience, and privileges the commodity instead of the connection. This is an important point that CRADLE artists will have to come to terms with in order to be successful and fulfilled within the CRADLE system.
I recommend Community Building: What Makes It Work to anyone who wants to place their art within a community setting.
I absolutely agree with the notion that the essence of art lies in enhancing community, and that mastering your art means to develop your tools to do so.
Even more so: I believe that this concept is actually at the heart of our Aristotelian / Platonic tradition – only that we have forgot about it: In antique Athens, everything was about community.
We instead have internalized a merchant’s point of view, who looks at a piece of art the same way he looks at a can of tuna: “can I buy/sell this with profit?”
We won’t be able to stop the art’s slide into irrelevance or create a sustainable way of practicing our art, unless we are able to show that our service to the community goes beyond providing the commodities of entertainment, distraction, and spectacle – or a platform to sell popcorn.
Perfectly said. Artists have allowed themselves to become merchants selling a commodity. And you are exactly right about Aristotle — in fact, at least until the Renaissance artists were deeply connected to their community and providing spiritual sustenance. Another example would be the Medieval Mystery plays.