art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

conclusion: la resolana 105
value sits and who’s [defining] what is valuable. Transformative
elements of cultural creation have value, but we are struggling to
define how that value is placed or quantified and qualified.
ken Found-object art forms are a staple of elite degree-granting arts
institutions, but don’t go over very well in different communities.
What is art? What is quality? What is relevant? What is valued by
some may be irrelevant to others. The participating children should
have the right to define beauty for themselves.
carmel The advocacy piece is very important. We talk about this work
out of the context of the institution. We talk about “community
arts.” We at Urban Missions talk about this—how do we infuse the
knowledge of community into the institution to advance the college’s
educational goals. We know art is transformative; we’re reverent to
it. These are powerful things that can guide what an institution
wants to do in terms of delivering education. This is an advocacy
to other institutions of higher learning. Some institutions have
engaged in service learning, but haven’t utilized the arts in that
process. We use the arts as a vehicle for [community empowerment].
Our discussions centered on the ways that our own values lead into
models of teaching. An assets model takes into account the values of
diverse cultural communities because, in this model, we recognize the
knowledge, experience, and resiliency of community as part of the
learning values in the educational setting. In this sense we are sharing
values with our partners. But to achieve this model of teaching and
learning we have to examine the higher education curriculum and
content. We have to be willing to include aesthetic and cultural material
historic to our diverse communities, or our students will never be
prepared to work in those communities.
Balancing the Needs of College Students and Community Youth
One of the most obvious dilemmas revealed in the cases had to do with
balancing the needs of university art students and the needs of community
youth. In a setting where there was insufficient planning, the conflict
between those needs could make it difficult for the college students to
engage fully in and learn from community arts, and to provide something
of value to the community youth. When the focus is on finding
balance/fit, using a community service/arts curriculum as a model,
the values of community youth also help more clearly to direct the skills
development of the college-level art students.