art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

82 art / vision / voice
Our program provides students with the opportunity to think
about what it means to be an artist, what it means to stand between
private and public enterprises, and how an artist is capable of creating
work that activates, propels, and gives vigor to people’s daily lives.
We designed the Reciprocal University for the Arts Program to
work with community-based organizations that serve youth. If we reach
young people, particularly in their adolescence, we hope they will
eventually be able to give voice to their own communities. From labor
organizing to community murals, manifestations of cultural citizenship
draw upon funds of knowledge that are intimately connected to the
history, values, and struggles for social justice in each community. We
have built our program on a respect for this community experience and
knowledge. Respect is the core element of reciprocity.
Making relationships with the diverse communities around the
university and winning their trust began with the process of asking
community members to appraise the best aspects of their communities.
We learned what they really believed in; we also learned that institutions
seeking to work in these communities had never asked those questions.
Respecting the community and believing that community members
have something to teach the artists, faculty, and students in our
institution changed the nature of the usual relationship between
institution and community.
The result is true reciprocity. Every partner becomes, in a way, a friend.
And these deep friendships are at the core of building a community.
Through these relationships, we discover that we share common goals and
can influence one another through our different values and practices.
The service-learning model gives us pedagogy and provides a
certain direction in the curriculum, focusing on the notions of justice
and compassion, of analysis and reflection as strategies and directions
in the practices of service to the community.
The objectives of the Reciprocal University for the Arts Project can
be summed up in this way:
v To enhance accessibility to and awareness of arts and arts education.
v To support cultural citizenship or those practices and ways of being
that sustain communities and contribute to the larger society.
v To integrate our curriculum and the expertise of community artists
via an exchange that brings community youth onto campus and sends
our students, faculty, and visiting artists into the community.
v To increase the number, quality, and diversity of arts programs for youth.