Chris Smith on Betsy Peterson's "A Working Guide to the Landscape of Arts for Change"

Betsy Peterson's "A Working Guide to the Landscape of Arts for Change" is provided online by "Animating Democracy: A Program of Americans for the Arts," an organization whose mission statement may be as salient as any of Peterson's theorizing: "Animating Democracy inspires, informs, promotes, and connects arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change" (2012). With funding from a variety of sources including the National Endowment for the Arts, this organization—a critical component of Peterson's work—may reflect a new and increasing value for the arts, as a means of nurturing individual and collective creative expression.

Following a discussion of our shared language for differing levels of understanding, skill, and experience we hold within our creative pursuits, Peterson admits "such terminology debates will always be with us" (p. 3), but still seeks to better define the difference between the supposed 'amateur' and 'professional.' What are the "folk arts," anyway—the arts that grow out of the lives of the untrained, yet still seeking to express themselves? Once upon a time, a truck driver stopped in a recording studio in Memphis, and recorded a love song for his mother—not because he was aspiring to change the world. "Some [artists, musicians, etc] do not necessarily label their work as "social change," even though concepts of social and cultural capital are at the core of folk arts and traditional culture" (p. 4). Elvis, I believe, never wanted to be King.

Peterson wants to further hone the theoretical context and case for the administration of public arts programs, and champions ethnographic methods for doing so: these range from advanced 'hanging out' (while bearing "sharpened skills of listening, interviewing, and observation" (p. 8)), to the full, systematic, and organic embrace of people's stories ("personal narratives, oral history, cultural traditions, and ritual often provide the raw material or basis for other related artistic projects and products"). Peterson cites the Surviving Katrina and Rita Project in Houston, a project funded as a behavioral/mental health program through the United Way, led children and adults to explain their narratives in frank and concrete ways. The capacity for what Peterson calls "capacity building" may, in other circles, be named "the construction of social capital," is illustrated by the examples she cites. One of my favorites is The Arts Bus, a central Vermont 501c3 non-profit organization whose mission is to provide creative experiences with both the visual and performing arts, for children in central Vermont.

Arts Bus, The. (2012). About the Arts Bus. Retrieved from http://artsbus.org/about-the-arts-bus.html

Animating Democracy (2012). Goals. Retrieved from http://animatingdemocracy.org/about/goals

Peterson, B. (2012). "A Working Guide to the Landscape of Arts for Change." Animating Democracy. Retrieved from http://animatingdemocracy.org/webfm_send/39