Animating Democracy

The following initiatives are designed to advance these goals.

Animating Democracy's Arts & Civic Engagement IMPACT Initiative, launched with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, advances understanding of the social impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change work among practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders. This effort produced: 5 case studies; a national working group of evaluation professionals, researchers, and practitioners; and an online storehouse of arts-for-social-change-specific evaluation tools and frameworks. Additional efforts include: a Funder IMPACT Forum, which is a convening of funders and practitioners who are concerned about issues of social impact evaluation with researcher/evaluators to examine what are meaningful and realistic expectations and support for evaluation activity; and the Evaluation in Action! webinars and workshops.

The Arts & Social Change Mapping Initiative, supported by The Open Society Foundations, and the Nathan Cummings, CrossCurrents, Lambent, and Surdna Foundations, documents the ways that arts and culture are being activated to engage and make change and heighten visibility for this work. This website is designed to enable arts practitioners, community organisers and movement builders, funders, and the media to find, connect to, and support creative activity that hopes to foster civic engagement and social change. Specifically, the site includes a body of resources that highlights the breadth and depth of work being done at the intersection of the arts and social change. The goal is that one may: get a sense of current funding support for arts that fosters civic engagement and social change; understand the many types of arts for change work through, for instance, papers by key players in the field that offer descriptive snapshots of segments of arts and social change activity - from cultural organising to environmental arts to community development to youth media and social justice; delve deeper into curated collections of projects, artists, and organisations working on issues such as immigration and health or outcomes such as community building or policy change; and find and learn about artists and cultural and community organisations in a growing searchable database.

Civic Dialogue, Community Development, Political Development, Artistic Expression.

In 1996, The Ford Foundation awarded a grant to Americans for the Arts to profile a representative selection of artists and arts and cultural organisations whose work, through its aesthetics and processes, engages the public in dialogue on key issues. This study's resulting report, "Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue", revealed roles that the arts can play in the renewal of civic dialogue as well as challenges faced by arts and cultural organisations as they engage in this work. Both the study and the Animating Democracy programme that evolved from the study are premised on the idea that a democracy is animated by an informed public that is engaged in the issues affecting people's daily lives.

When the arts and artists are intentional and integrated with practices of civic engagement and social activism, Animating Democracy believes that they maximise their contributions as catalysts, conveners, forums, and forms of social action to:

• Enhance awareness, knowledge, and discourse around issues;
• Clarify values and confirm or shift attitudes;
• Increase capacity - skills, resources, status - to engage in civic concerns;
• Promote effective participation and action; and
• Improve systems, places, and policies that ensure social justice.

Animating Democracy remains equally interested in the creation of "artistic capital" - that is, how creative skills contribute to social innovation and activism; and understanding “artistic effects” or how artistic investigation is advanced in work that is intentionally focused on contributing to social and civic change.

Since its inception, Animating Democracy has worked to strengthen the role of artists and arts organisations in improving and deepening civic dialogue and has evolved into a national resource on arts and civic engagement practice. For example, during two partnerships with the Ford Foundation, Animating Democracy provided field-wide technical assistance, significant funding, and a learning community for 35 arts-based civic dialogue projects that addressed a range of issues from race relations, gay rights, and economic and cultural inequity to gentrification and immigration. This phase, focusing on arts-based civic dialogue, resulted in seven books and many articles and major national field convenings. Click here for more information. The second Ford partnership sought to elevate the importance and build the capacity of 12 small and mid-sized culturally specific organisations as a locus of place-based social change. Community-Based Arts Organizations: A New Center of Gravity by Ron Chew documents the institutional and engagement models offered by Exemplar Program participants. It has been widely disseminated among private and public sector funders.