Inquiry and Research in Arts-Based Community Development 2
Day 2 / Apr, 13 @ 2:45 pm
Lower Level : Room D
This session is a series of inquiries briefly presented by fellows in an arts-based community development training. Each was asked to create a 10 minute presentation about their research.
LINDA M. NANCE: Leadership by Design: What are the merits of intentionally enhancing the leadership skills of artists and other creatives? How can access to civic leadership training improve opportunities to effect positive community change through the arts?
LESLIE HOLT: Art and Disability: How can art dispel stigma about disability? How can an artist meld socially engaged community arts work with personal studio practice?
EMILY HEMEYER: SPORE Projects and the Web of Influence: Reflecting on years of intuitive community building through collaborations, temporary projects, public forums, and artist-run-spaces; Hemeyer is creating an evolving Web of Influence based on personal documentation of her own projects. Developing questions include: What is the impact of these types of projects on community development creative ecosystems? Is it measurable? How are relationships intertwined and how can further inclusion be achieved? How can this apply to other fields of inquiry?
KAVEH RAZANI: What does gentrification mean? How can we develop artist’s communities without displacement?
CON CHRISTESON: Confronting and Configuring a Community Art Practice: 12 years of documenting the arts-based program at Peter & Paul Services for men who have been homeless. What worked? Why? Is it transferable?
The Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission created a one year pilot training program that further builds on the the CAT Institute’s cross-sector training in arts-based community development. The Institute’s Graduate Education and Research Program – referred to by the fellows and faculty as TIGER – is an expansion of the Institute’s training with an inquiry-based curriculum for artists and for community/social service practitioners to examine and go deeper into their arts-based work.
TIGER Fellows are CAT Institute graduates and experienced practitioners who have indicated they are ready to expand their scope of practice and become more assertive in their approach to significant community challenges to create positive social change. TIGER aims to produce graduates who will apply arts-based tools and strategies to specific issues and have a more honed, intentional focus for effecting change. The TIGER Fellows are tasked to engage in meaningful research in an area of inquiry of their own choosing with the intention of deepening their individual effectiveness and influencing the field of arts-based community development.
TIGER is underwritten by RAC and the Kresge Foundation. TIGER Faculty: Kathryn Bentley, William Cleveland, Elizabeth Goebl-Parker, Jane Ellen Ibur and Roseann Weiss (Director).
Speaker(s):
Emily Hemeyer
St. Louis, Missouri
St Louis based artist and educator Emily Hemeyer, founder of SPORE Projects, has been exploring socially engaging endeavors for a decade. Largely collaborative her projects are rooted in human relationships and community development. Projects have included the city-wide Chautauqua Art Lab, a nationally touring mobile gallery, Ghosts I Have Been, temporary spaces, events, and public forums. As an educator she’s worked with many organizations throughout St Louis and nationally. Currently she’s the artist-in-residence at St Frances Cabrini Academy and a teaching artist through the South City Open Studios and Gallery (SCOSAG).
Kaveh Razani
St. Louis, Missouri
Kaveh Razani has been an organizer and activist for 10 years. His work began in campaign organizing, youth and student organizing, and radical politics. He has participated in candidate campaigns ranging from the St. Louis Board of Alderman to the national House of Representatives and President. His community work has focused on workers’ rights, urban sustainability and greening, legislative reform, and educational advocacy. Kaveh also sat on the national board of the oldest radical youth organization in the United States
In 2007, Kaveh graduated from the Community Arts Training Institute fellowship and has since been organizing and promoting arts and music shows in St. Louis. Together with Stan Chisholm and Ryan Powell, Kaveh co-founded Lane 4, a multi-faceted event design company committed to building community through arts and culture. He recently secured a commercial building in St. Louis’s Cherokee neighborhood where he hopes to develop a community arts space with the direction of collaborators and local residents.
Leslie Holt
St. Louis, Missouri
Leslie Holt is the Executive Director of VSA Missouri, the state organization on arts and disability. She is a visual artist, educator and advocate with extensive experience in social work and advocacy for people with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and low-income college students. She is represented by galleries in St. Louis, Memphis and Washington, DC and has taught art for over ten years at community colleges and universities.
Leslie has a BFA in painting from Washington University in St. Louis, an MFA in painting from Washington State University, is a graduate of the Community Arts Training Institute (CAT) and a current TIGER fellow. Her area of research examines how art can dispel stigma about people with disabilities.
Con Christeson
St. Louis , Missouri
Con Christeson identifies herself as a community artist. She also works in the ceramics studio, in public art planning and design, in community collaborations, and teaches at the college level.
She is the co-founder and managing artist for the community collabARTive of Peter and Paul Community Services in St. Louis. Christeson has presented nationally and internationally about community arts advocacy and evaluation, designing and selling a liveable streetscape, service learning/civic engagement, international student cultural/language integration, integrating arts and artists into cultural development process, and exploring effective arts and activism.
She serves on the board of Blue Drum Inc., an arts support agency in Dublin, Ireland. In 2010, they designed an Irish-American artist research and residency exchange between Ireland and St. Louis with 5 artists in several locations. Christeson is a graduate of the Community Arts Training Institute and currently a fellow of that institute’s graduate education research program [TIGER] at the Regional Arts Commission in St. Louis.
From Con: “I am fundamentally oriented toward community development and engagement, privileged to be influencing the process, living in possibilities.”
Linda M. Nance
St. Louis, Missouri
Writer, Community Organizer, Fundraiser
Linda is currently enrolled in the TIGER Program of the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission. Her fellowship research examines the impact of leadership training on the creation of arts-based community development opportunities. She is a CAT Institute graduate, member of the Sister’s Ninety Writing Group, a published writer, and talented vocalist.
An active community participant, Linda has served as a member of Citizen for Missouri’s Children, President of the Webster Groves Board of Education, member of the Missouri School Board Association, and is a member of the John E. and Regina S. Nance Memorial Scholarship Fund. She has opened two cafes, secured Tax Credit funding, run a successful challenge grant campaign and coordinated the activities to organize the second largest African American parade celebration in the country. She and her husband Harreld have four delightful sons and five fantastic grandchildren.
