art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

130 art / vision / voice
was to bring the students outside the safe
space of the classroom and to reconnect with
the world around them as art makers, a
regenerative cycle that encourages young
people to venture out into society and return
to their communities with new knowledge.
Perhaps this is at the core of the cap
program, and is the true measure of the
program’s success. Despite their efforts not to
pressure their students to make the choice to
become artists, I’d like to think that as part of
their role as educators, Antoine, Mary, and
Leslie were engaged in building a new
generation of community teachers and artists
who will reinvest in their communities just as
these three did. The real successes of a
community arts program, even if these can be
counted on only one hand, are the
individuals who are transformed by the
experience and, like the young cap staff, are
able to give this experience back to others. But
the final challenge will most likely be the
juggling act that a life with one foot in the
community becomes.
Giving voice to the young people who
organized and designed the cap program, and
looking at both its accomplishments and its
shortcomings in a careful and critical way
will be extremely constructive. I hope that
this casebook will advance the cause of
community art. We need to be reassured
that we are on the right track, even if we run
up against bureaucratic resistance.
Community art may be inherently
threatening to the establishment, but
“good” community art is going to be
thought provoking. It’s going to make you sit
up and notice. A truly diverse and inclusive
approach to art making will have a
tremendous impact on the art world and
open up the possibility of great changes in
the way we teach and appreciate art.