PUBLISHED
QUARTERLY
BY THE
GUILD
NOTES
ISSUE 2, 2015
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY TOWARD
SOCIAL JUSTICE BY RENÉE WATSON
Baltimore. Charleston. Ferguson. How do arts education leaders respond?
IN THIS ISSUE
1 Beginning the Journey Toward
Social Justice
2 Guild News
6 Member News
8 New Members
11 2015 Conference for Community Arts
Education
12 Toolkit: A New Approach to Raising Real Money with Businesses
14 Forum: Developing the Next
Generation of Arts Education Leaders
To help answer this question, we recently spoke with Renée Watson, former
associate director of professional development for DreamYard Project in
the Bronx, who now works with organizations that are hoping to align their
internal structures and practices with a justice-driven mission.
While Renée was at DreamYard Project – a creative youth development
organization that provides project-based arts learning – the staff intentionally
started applying a social justice lens to all aspects of its organization. Their
work started in the classroom – with a focus on offering extensive professional
development rooted in social justice principles to teaching artists and classroom teachers at their partner schools. But it grew to include a deep focus
on examining and transforming the organization’s internal systems, policies,
communication practices, and staff relationships in ways that fostered greater
equity. Drawing on her experience at DreamYard, Renée discusses ways in
which systemic oppression can manifest within our institutions and why a focus
on organizational change is critical to achieving social justice more broadly.
Why is it important for organizational leaders to apply a social justice lens to
all areas of their organization (e.g., fundraising, professional development,
hiring practices, board recruitment, etc. as well as to curriculum/programs)?
In Beverly Tatum’s Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
she writes, “prejudice is an integral part of our socialization, and it is not our
fault…[W]e are not at fault for the stereotypes, distortions, and omissions that
shaped our thinking as we grew up. To say that it is not our fault does not relieve
Chicago High School for the Arts (ChiArts), Chicago, IL
(continued on page 5)
(continued from front cover)
BEGINNING THE JOURNEY TOWARD
SOCIAL JUSTICE
us of our responsibility, however. We may not have polluted the
air but we need to take responsibility, along with others, for
cleaning it up.”
The air is polluted. In 2015, African American churches are still
burning; police brutality against unarmed black men and women
is still happening; women are still being paid less than men;
LGBTQIA youth are being bullied; the school-to-prison pipeline
is real.
The smog is thick. It always has been and artists have always responded. Through poetry, song, dance, photography—artists have
been the rebukers, the remakers. We hold up a mirror to society,
show it its blemishes, praise and celebrate its beauty. If we can
encourage this in the classroom—encourage budding artists to
use their art to talk back to the world, to engage with the
world—then we as arts administrators must do the same. Arts
organizations need to practice what we teach. We can’t hold our
students and participants to a higher standard in the classroom
than we do in our boardrooms and cubicles.
I believe that even if we don’t work with under-resourced
communities or marginalized groups, we ought to ask ourselves—individually and through our professional work—“How
am I working to interrupt injustice?” This is because oppression
is in most cases not an individual act; it is the result of the biases,
practices, and assumptions that are engrained in existing social
systems – social systems that we are often actively a part of. Arts
educators everywhere can improve their organization as well
as their community by embracing inclusion over exclusion and
pushing back against systemic oppression.
How does systemic oppression manifest in our organizations?
Systemic oppression refers to the ways in which institutional
policies and practices create different outcomes for marginalized
groups. The institutional policies may never mention any racial
group, but their effect is to create advantages for whites and
oppression and disadvantage for people from other racial groups.
Examples include:
• Salary differences between white staff and people of color with similar responsibilities and titles;
• Silencing and/or overlooking people of color at meetings and giving more value to the opinions and ideas of their white
counterparts;
The Actors’ Gang, Culver City, CA
PAGE 5. ISSUE 2. 2015
• Setting the norm for appropriate employee and participant behavior based on a dominant cultural understanding of what appropriate and respectful behavior looks like; and
• Serving and working with ethnically-diverse communities
without having a diverse representation on their board.
These manifestations are sometimes subtle, like the difference
in language used to describe the behavior of people of color
versus their white co-workers for similar attributes (“sassy and
angry” instead of “confident and passionate”). As administrators,
we must check our assumptions, biases, and stereotypes and be
mindful of how they may taint the way we see our co-workers.
What are specific things arts education leaders can do—
at the institutional level— to move toward equity and
organizational change?
I think the first step is to assess where you are. At DreamYard
we used an assessment tool called the “Continuum on Becoming
an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution.” The tool is designed to
help organizations identify where they are in terms of developing anti-racist, multicultural practices – actions that include a
commitment to dismantling racism within the organization and
the community, a restructuring of institutional rules to promote
multiculturalism, and recognition of racial and cultural
difference as valuable assets. The continuum includes six
organizational categories – ranging from “exclusive” to “fully
inclusive” – and details the practices that differentiate an
exclusionary institution from a transformed, anti-racist
organization. Each staff member rated where he or she thought
we were and, as a group, we discussed and brainstormed what
steps we needed to take to continue to move towards being a
fully inclusive organization. Developing shared language and
goals was crucial to the buy-in and commitment of our staff, and
the continuum tool helped us reach a group consensus on the
terms that identified both our current organizational approach
and the future that we hoped to build toward.
I also recommend setting aside time for mandatory professional development workshops that explicitly talk about the history
and root causes of oppression, the ways in which organizations
can work for equity and justice, and most importantly, how staff
can collaborate with one another to better understand cultural
assumptions and build internal trust.
DreamYard regularly brings guest facilitators to lead social
justice workshops for both teaching artists and administrators.
Year-round social justice pedagogy workshops for teaching
(continued on page 9)
Turtle Bay Music School, New York, NY
University of Puget Sound Community
Music Department, Tacoma, WA
(continued from page 5)
artists help them use art-making in the classroom to respond
to injustice and celebrate and honor cultural heroes that are
often ignored by the mainstream media and traditional
classroom curriculum. Workshops for administrators include
sessions on understanding white privilege, what it means to be
an ally, and understanding how to advocate for institutional and
programmatic change.
At DreamYard, my former colleague Ama Codjoe, director of the
DreamYard Art Center, and I also developed a shared learning
model called the Learning Community focused on building
knowledge about social justice as a staff. A group of administrators met regularly, on a volunteer basis, to read articles, watch
documentaries, and do research on social issues with the responsibility of turn-keying the information and developing a workshop
for the rest of the staff during our monthly staff meetings. The
Learning Community impacted our organization in profound
ways. Through these regular, focused learning exchanges, the
organization’s co-executive directors, development staff,
program directors and coordinators, and our facilities manager collaborated and grew together in new ways. New leaders
emerged, a stronger community was forged, and a renewed
commitment to our mission of igniting the transformative spirit
of youth was catalyzed.
Alongside working with organizational staff, it’s also critical to
engage your trustees in meaningful dialogue about issues of
social justice and equity as they relate to your organization and
programs. Over the past several years, DreamYard has invited
its staff and teaching artists to facilitate art-making and social
justice workshops with its board. A workshop about Ferguson
and the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, used poetry
and other artistic disciplines to open up key conversation about
racial justice, while also demonstrating the power of DreamYard’s
programs to do the same with the communities it serves. Site
visits or field trips for board and staff also inspire and inform.
On a recent staff trip to Studio Museum in Harlem, DreamYard
administrators engaged in art-making and discussion about an
exhibit focused on the overrepresentation of African American
men in the prison population. The opportunity to get out of
the office and have this shared cultural experience helped us
bond and gave us language/inspiration to talk about the topic’s
relationship to our own work. Providing these kinds of opportunities helps unite the organization and provides an opportunity for
stakeholders to learn, grow, and move towards a unified goal in
a thoughtful and intentional way.
What challenges has DreamYard faced in doing this work?
What advice do you have for other community arts education
organizations for meeting these challenges?
One of DreamYard’s biggest challenges has been meeting
everyone where they are without judgment and with grace and
PAGE 9. ISSUE 2. 2015
Urban Gateways, Chicago, IL
patience. The staff has varying degrees of awareness and
experience in talking about race, class, and gender issues so
setting up workshops that took this into account was important.
My advice is to remember that there are no quick fixes, that even
as your organization makes progress, there will be setbacks.
Reminding myself that this is a process helps when I’m feeling
defeated or overwhelmed with the gravity of what we’re up
against. I recommend starting small and setting concrete goals.
Sometimes, it’s fitting for the organization to have one big goal
that everyone is working towards; other times it makes more
sense for each department to set its own goal. Whatever you
decide, commit to doing the work for the long haul. This can’t
be a fad or a theme for the year. There is too much at stake.
Understanding that this work takes time and courage, what
advice do you have for arts education leaders for sustaining
their motivation?
I encourage leaders to look to another organization that is
further along in this work and willing to mentor and share best
practices. The wonderful thing about living in the age of technology is the many ways we can connect across the country and
around the world. Through Google Hangout, Skype, and of course,
the old fashioned way—the telephone, organizations are able to
“meet” each other and engage in conversation about the work at
hand in meaningful and productive ways.
I also think taking a break from heavy conversations is important.
Self-care is crucial. Setting aside time for the staff to create or
experience art together has sustained many of the organizations
I’ve worked with. These moments help to build community and
also remind us to pause and reflect, to create and share.
About the Author
Renée Watson works as a consultant with nonprofits, including
DreamYard Project and the Community Word Project, to support
their efforts in establishing social justice practices and
curriculum. As an author of picture books and young adult
novels, Renée explores social issues and works to help young
people cope with trauma. www.reneewatson.net
Resources
Beverly Tatum, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in
the Cafeteria?” And Other Conversations About Race
http://amzn.to/1x2ir3S
Bread for the Journey: An Online Companion, “Continuum on
Becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution”
http://bit.ly/1h6x1rE
ag o, IL
Ar ts ), Ch ic
ts (C hi
fo r th e ArStory”
Chimamanda Adichie, “The Danger
of a Single
gh Sc ho ol
Ch ic ag o Hi
http://bit.ly/U5t0Hy
Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible
Knapsack” http://amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html