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Notes from _ReBuilding the Front Porch of America_ by Patrick Overton

 pg 8 "Community arts aren't about art as a sign -- a noun, an object. They are about art as symbol -- a verb, a process. Those of us engaged in community arts work understand our work is about creating a process that invites individuals to participate in and experience the arts on a personal basis. It is, in essence, a paradigm shift from "art as product and citizen as patron" to "art as process and citizen as participant." 


"Community arts development is and always has been about relationships. It is people-oriented. It has a long and valued history of individuals taking the initiative to promote self-improvement through self-expression and self-education." 

pg 9 "Art is an invitation for people to tell their stories and to listen to the stories of others. Community arts experiences create places where people can gather together and celebrate their story as a community." 

pg 49 "Remembering our heroes, organizational and community, reminds us we did not get here on our own. Others cam before us and their stories are a vital part of re-membering our community. When we forget our stories, we lose a very important part of the cultural connection we need to keep us together." 

pg 58 how does the fact that Prof Koch came out of North Dakota to UNC in 1914 correlate to the creation of Little Theater in North Dakota by Alfred Arvold in the 1920s? 

pg 67 Who We Are as Community Makers "Another significant contributing factor may be the fact there is no single career preperation route one takes to enter the field of community arts development. In fact, many of us had no formal education and/or training for the entry-level positions in which we started. This has always been primarily a practice-oriented field." Growth/proliferation of arts administration degrees (undergrad and graduate). How has the specialization helped/hurt the field? 

pg 70 "These two definitions identify two types of communities we serve in community arts development. The specific community of those individuals and collections of individuals involved in the arts, and the larger, geographic locality in which we live." 

pg 76 "Community arts development focuses on encouraging, developing, and celebrating the unique gifts and creative abilities of individuals. In this process, the arts are not viewed as product, a performance, or an event, that citizens attend or support. They are viewed as a process, providing an opportunity for citizens to participate in and experience them on a personal basis. What this does is invite individuals to discover who they are, what they believe, and why they believe it."

"This doesn't reduce the importance of the arts product/performance or the importance of the quality of those products, whether they are imported from outside the community or produced by the community itself. It just recognizes that the quality of the process will have a direct impact on the quality of the product.

pg 94 "Our job as administrators is not to drive the organization, but to promote the shared values that drive the organization. ... Ethical leadership keeps the process and the product of an organization in a1 healthy, creative balance. I also believe ethical leadership engages in the "leadership of discomfort," inviting and enabling individuals and organizations to face conflict and resolve it. Finally, I believe ethical leadership is grounded in the organization's values and manifests the courage to take risks, to innovate, and to try new things to meet the growing needs of the communities we serve." 

pg 104 list of functions generalist arts admins are capable of doing

pg 109 "From my perspective, there is nothing more important we can do in our field than to find ways to design effective community arts agency organizational systems. To do this, we have to create ways to talk to each other. Open and effective communication is the key. this will help us identify our values, refocus our vision, and determine our mission."

pg 115 "What we need are effective intercultural communication skills to help our organizations and members address issues of diversity. We need to understand diversity in all of its challenge and possibilities. It will do us no good if we rebuild the front porch of American and it ends up not being inclusive. We have already been there -- it doesn't work. The hew front porch must be a place for all people in our community to gather and celebrate who we are. This is the only way the community making process can be authentic. We must view this challenge as one of the most important issues we address. Both as community arts agencies and as professional community arts administrators. And to do this effectively, we need to create effective community partnerships with other cultural organizations. We cannot do this alone. We need to be working with libraries, schools, museums, historical organizations, and institutions of higher education to find ways to address these issues together. We have something significant to offer this process but we need to work with others to get it done. we we find ways to accomplish this task, our communities will be better for it." 

pg 123 "We know that the way we go about doing this is as important as what it is that we are doing. Everything -- from volunteer committee work, to presenting outside performances, to participating in community arts productions -- is based on the commitment that the quality of the process is just as, if not more than, important as the quality of the product. When we forget this, we run the risk of becoming little more than a commodity, a product, and the people with whom we work, little more than a means to an end -- producing that product." 

pg 138 "When art fulfills the ascendant function, it connects with the human spirit in such a way as to help us transcend the limits of our humanity. When art fulfills the descendent function, it confronts us with the hurt and wounds of a world of injustice and oppression. It connects us with the human spirit in such a way as to transcend the hurt and invites us to healing. They are both essential parts of the human experience and the arts are intimately connected to both experiences. The relationship between art and spirituality is not new, but it is something we have seriously neglected."

pg 152 "The only thing more powerful than theater that tells someone else' story, is theater that is created by us to tell our own story. IT gives us permission to acknowledge who we are. It also provides us with an invitation to be someone different than who we are. And accepting this invitation can give us the courage to act on that invitation."

"Whatever it is, art is the voice of the soul struggling to express what it means to be human." 

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