Arts For Change

Beverly Naidus shares her passion and strategies for teaching socially engaged art, offering, as well, a short history of the field and the candid views of more than thirty colleagues. A provocative, personal look at the motivations and challenges of teaching socially engaged arts, Arts for Change overturns conventional arts pedagogy with an activist's passion for creating art that matters. How can polarized groups work together to solve social and environmental problems? How can art be used to raise consciousness? Using candid examination of her own university teaching career as well as broader social and historical perspectives, Beverly Naidus answers these questions, guiding the reader through a progression of steps to help students observe the world around them and craft artistic responses to what they see. Interviews with over 30 arts education colleagues provide additional strategies for successfully engaging students in what, to them, is most meaningful.

Many businesses try to change...but few succeed. At best, a few buzzwords and new reports become part of the company's structure. At worst, programs crash and burn, and everyone becomes irreparably disillusioned with the revolving door of new-mission statements. According to David Shaner--a business consultant with a 100% success rate of change at companies including Duracell, Frito-Lay, Ryobi, and Gillette--the problem is that the implemented changes don't address either individuals or the corporate culture. They're only on the surface.Combining lessons drawn from four decades of Aikido with knowledge gleaned from his 30-year consulting career, Shaner merges Eastern philosophy with Western business savvy to present his Seven Arts of Change (including the Arts of Preparation, Relaxation, and Compassion), showing how individual adjustments from CEO down can transform a company. Using exercises, strategies and real-life examples to show how to awaken the untapped potential in any organization and every person within it, Shaner shows how to create change built to last.

Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas addresses the growing number of communities adopting arts and culture-based development methods to influence social change. Providing community workers and planners with strategies to develop arts policy that enriches communities and their residents, this collection critically examines the central tensions and complexities in arts policy, paying attention to issues of gentrification and stratification. Including a variety of case studies from across the United States and Canada, these success stories and best practice approaches across many media present strategies to design appropriate policy for unique populations. Edited by Max Stephenson, Jr. and A. Scott Tate of Virginia Tech, Arts and Community Change presents 10 chapters from artistic and community leaders; essential reading for students and practitioners in economic development and arts management.

In the resistance to the violence of gender-based oppression, vibrant – but often ignored – worlds have emerged, full of nuance, humour, and beauty. Correcting an absence of writing about contemporary feminist work by Canadian artists, Desire Change considers the resurgence of feminist art, thought, and practice in the past decade by examining artworks that respond to themes of diversity and desire. Essays by historians, artists, and curators present an overview of a range of artistic practices including performance, installation, video, textiles, and photography. Contributors address the desire for change through three central frames: how feminist art has significantly contributed to the complex understanding of gender as it intersects with sexuality and race; the necessary critique of patriarchy and institutions as they relate to colonization within the Canadian nation-state; and the ways in which contemporary critiques are formed and expressed. The resulting collection addresses art through an activist lens to examine intersectional feminism, decolonization, and feminist institution building in a Canadian context. Heavily illustrated with representative works, Desire Change raises both the stakes and the concerns of contemporary feminist art, with an understanding that feminism is always and necessarily plural. Contributors include Janice Anderson (Concordia University), Gina Badger (artist, writer, editor, Toronto), Noni Brynjolson (writer, San Diego), Amber Christensen (curator and writer, Toronto), Karin Cope (NSCAD), Lauren Fournier (artist, writer, and curator, York University), Amy Fung (curator and writer, Toronto), Kristina Huneault (Concordia University), Alice Ming Wai Jim (Concordia University), Tanya Lukin Linklater (artist, North Bay), Sheila Petty (University of Regina), Kathleen Ritter (curator and writer, Vancouver), Daniella Sanader (curator and writer, Toronto), Thérèse St. Gelais (UQAM), cheyanne turions (curator and writer, Toronto), Ellyn Walker (Queen’s University), Jayne Wark (NSCAD) and Jenny Western (curator and writer, Winnipeg).

Art as an Agent for Social Change explores through original research, experiences, and personal narratives the role of the arts in bringing forth social change within three interconnected themes: community building, collaborations, and teaching and pedagogy.

With a focus on socially engaged art practices in the twenty-first century, this book explores how artists use their creative practices to raise consciousness, form communities, create change, and bring forth social impact through new technologies and digital practices. Suzanne Lacy’s Foreword and section introduction authors Anne Balsamo, Harrell Fletcher, Natalie Loveless, Karen Moss, and Stephanie Rothenberg present twenty-five in-depth case studies by established and emerging contemporary artists including Kim Abeles, Christopher Blay, Joseph DeLappe, Mary Beth Heffernan, Chris Johnson, Rebekah Modrak, Praba Pilar, Tabita Rezaire, Sylvain Souklaye, and collaborators Victoria Vesna and Siddharth Ramakrishnan. Artists offer firsthand insight into how they activate methods used in socially engaged art projects from the twentieth century and incorporated new technologies to create twenty-first century, socially engaged, digital art practices. Works highlighted in this book span collaborative image-making, immersive experiences, telematic art, time machines, artificial intelligence, and physical computing. These reflective case studies reveal how the artists collaborate with participants and communities, and have found ways to expand, transform, reimagine, and create new platforms for meaningful exchange in both physical and virtual spaces. An invaluable resource for students and scholars of art, technology, and new media, as well as artists interested in exploring these intersections.

Teaching martial arts is not merely the development of skills and techniques in others. Teaching martial arts is a life-changing transformational process for both the students and teachers. The Zen expression of "pointing at the moon" acknowledges the inherent difficulties in bringing other people to a higher level of personal understanding. This book describes the issues and considerations involved in teaching martial arts to change lives.

What terms do we use to describe and evaluate art, and how do we judge if art is good, and if it is for the social good? In How Art Can Be Thought Allan deSouza investigates such questions and the popular terminology through which art is discussed, valued, and taught. Adapting art viewing to contemporary demands within a rapidly changing world, deSouza outlines how art functions as politicized culture within a global industry. In addition to offering new pedagogical strategies for MFA programs and the training of artists, he provides an extensive analytical glossary of some of the most common terms used to discuss art while focusing on their current and changing usage. He also shows how these terms may be crafted to new artistic and social practices, particularly in what it means to decolonize the places of display and learning. DeSouza's work will be invaluable to the casual gallery visitor and the arts professional alike, to all those who regularly look at, think about, and make art—especially art students and faculty, artists, art critics, and curators.