art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

The Importance of Listening/Knowing
The capacity to know and understand the community was a theme that
surfaced in several cases—either as a successful strategy or as a deficit
that needed to be addressed. The willingness to adapt one’s own vision
of a project was a critical aspect of many of the cases.
ken mica college students in cap are expected to serve witness—to
listen, see, and make a concerted effort to set aside entrenched
stereotypes and programmed ways of thinking. When a child isn’t
showing up to art class, there’s a reason. When a child is physically
agitated, there’s a reason. One must ask, are we striving to give the
child something that we feel he or she should have (perhaps against
a child’s will) or to draw something out? Respecting children’s
rights and wanting the best for them, we must interrogate our own
vision, mission, and goals. It takes a tremendous amount of effort
and practice to critically analyze our own ideas, opinions, and
feelings and acknowledge how they might impact others.
The ability to listen and know can be directly related to how wellprepared
students are for work in community. In the ruap case, as at
mica, the college students struggled with their own desires and
interests. The youth survey was the first time that the csumb students
participating in the ruap project began to realize that the needs of the
Watsonville youth did not match their own. The metaphor of weather
opened a creative space that university student and community youth
could share. The knowing and listening began when the university
students realized that their social analysis of the youth violence issues
was not as important to the community youth as they had suspect and
that the concept of the windows, for the youth, was one of hope and
imagination. With this realization, the university students were forced
to let go of their original designs and work one-on-one in partnerships
to create for each community youth a window into his or her dreams.
Knowing and listening had become the first step to reciprocity.
Power Struggles
conclusion: la resolana 103
The dilemmas faced by several of the partnerships often centered on
power struggles. The team leaders at mica negotiating to create an
arts curriculum for youth were hampered when one member refused
to give up on a fine arts teaching model that was not working in the
community setting. In the Columbia College theater class, a mentor
“took over” a class from his mentee when he perceived the younger