Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts [Paperback]

Mat Schwarzman (Author), Keith Knight (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0976605430 | ISBN-13: 978-0976605430

Ten transformative local arts projects come alive in this illustrated training manual for youth leaders and teachers. This energetic guidebook demonstrates the enormous power of art in grass-roots social change. It presents proven models of community-based arts programs, plus techniques, discussion questions, and plentiful resources.

Writer Mat Schwarzman directs the Crossroads Center at Xavier University, which trains youth leaders nationwide in community-based arts activism. He holds a PhD in transformative learning.

Graphic storyteller Keith Knight is an award-winning cartoonist, rapper, and hip-hop musician with two nationally syndicated comic strips.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts is a rich combination of life stories, curriculum ideas and insights about the importance of nurturing creativity to confront the difficult circumstances many people find themselves living in these days. Cartoonist Keith Knight ("The K Chronicles" and "(th)ink") and author Mat Schwarzman (Crossroads Project for Art, Learning and Community of New Orleans) crisscross the country profiling ten community-based arts projects that encourage people with little recognized power to share their perspectives, ideas and images with broader publics to effect change. Through the Village of Arts and Humanities in Northern Philadelphia, “Big Man” Maxton discovers his ability to make beautiful mosaic sculptures and kicks a 22-year addiction to drugs and alcohol. Big Man's personal recovery and public art inspire old timers and young children to collectively join the Village's efforts to transform their struggling neighborhood. The women of Mujer Artes in San Antonio, Texas, make ceramic altars to honor and raise awareness about the women murdered at the U.S.-Mexico border. Together the women of Mujer Artes build a valuable intergenerational learning community while bringing national attention to an issue often untouched by the media and public officials. While in college, Tom Hansell sees an Appalshop (Appalachian multimedia cultural organization) film about the people who live in coal mining regions. To him, "the film was like a good punk song—raw, strong and from the heart.” Shortly thereafter, Hansell moved to Whitesburg, Kentucky, to join Appalshop’s staff and made an award-winning documentary about the challenges and dangers of coal-haul trucking through narrow mountain hollers."
—Erica Kohl, CommunityArtsNetwork

"Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts: Ten Graphic Stories about Artists, Educators & Activists across the U.S. is an amazing educational collection of thousands of social change artists of varied, diverse backgrounds and locations. Committed to the concept of transforming communities through information as art, (or art as information), Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts is organized on the CRAFT principle. CRAFT is a conceptual map that stands for five territories of the community-based art process: Contact—"Cultivate trust, mutual understanding and commitment as a foundation for creative partnership." Research—"Gather information about the people, places and issues you are working with." Action—"Produce a new work of art that benefits the community." Feedback—"Spark community reflection, dialogue and organizing to spread the impact of the new work." And Teaching—"Pass on new community-building skills to others to sustain the impact" (p. xxv). Many amazing comic illustrations are quoted and reproduced in black and white in the chapters of Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts. The book ends with a list of resources, inspiring quotations, artist's profiles, and a Craft Activities Table that shows how "art, learning and social change take place in each of the CRAFT territories" (p. 159). The ideas of CRAFT began at the East Bay Institute for Urban Arts, a teen program in Oakland, CA from 1994-2001."
—Nancy Lorraine, Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

Fifty percent of proceeds from the sale of this book will go toward arts-based programs for New Orleans youth. See the Crossroads Project of New Orleans.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: New Village Press (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976605430
• ISBN-13: 978-0976605430
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #211,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars a terrific resource November 14, 2005

By beanqueen

Format:Paperback

This book can be used to formulate a grant, jazz up the funders, get students to learn about community work through comics, to teach college art students how to get out and get to work. I am so excited about this book because of how it outlines and lays out in simple forms the organizing process. They want you to be able to repoduce the processes. It's not high falutin art or theory gobbldigook. It is, on the other hand, a highly engaging funny cool and groundbreaking book about art. Comics of real artists doing real art. Great for artists, teachers, organizers, and people who work for social change.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read and Superhelpful, Inspiring February 6, 2006

By shana

Format:Paperback

Great stories that provide models for meanigful arts programs. One reviewer here on amazon referred to the book being political and not arts centered. I found that to be way off base. What I got from the book is how art becomes a reponse to the struggles of different communities, and in turn helps to address those challenges. So, art is both an end in itself as well as a tool for articulating and facing the world. The drawings and the approach itself is grounded in how art is practiced with everybody, how art is powerful for everybody to engage in (not just those who get to call themselves "artists' and lead the "artistic life" of writing grants to arts councils). Keith Knight's comics in particular rock!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars isangmahal September 23, 2005

By Tyson Marley

Format:Paperback

a great "community based arts guide for dummies." Light approach yet informative. a must have for artists, educators and community activists.