Inside Out, Outside In

Finally in LA and hanging out with my big brother! He has to work (he's a real person with a real job, not avoiding a job like me, ha), so I've been occupying my time with bike rides along the beach, yoga in the mornings, and leisurely lunches while catching up on reading (and blogging!). I've also set up a few meetings while here in LA, one of which I had yesterday...

Inside Out Community Arts is a non-profit based in Venice, CA that runs arts programs for kids throughout the LA area. As an arts organization, I felt it fell under one of the three categories of organizations I am talking with...environmental, art-based, and community-based. They run a performance arts program that teaches kids how to develop communication skills and to effectively deal with looming social issues in their lives. It was good to hear the work they're doing, but I mostly became interested in one particular, if small, part of their work...

The Community Action Project: A one-time day of action where the students involved in the program pick a controversial topic, approach people in their community about it, and say how they would work to change it. It is a lesson in activism and using art to provoke thought. I was interested in it because it uses art to engage a community, but what I was looking for wasn't exactly the main mission of that project. Whereas the CAP was created to start conversations and it is the kids approaching others, I was looking for more long term involvement of community. In my own life, I've come to realize that kids programs are secondary to my greater desire for an engaged and active community. That sounds harsh, but it shouldn't be...it's not that I don't care about kids...it's just that I feel that if the whole community is excited about learning and being engaged, then we have less to worry about not only in kids, but in relationships between generations, in drug use, gang violence, etc. If we really want to tackle all these issues, it needs to be a part of everyone's lives, not just the kids. The counterargument to this of course would be that it is easiest to reach parents and grandparents through their kids. Sure, but maybe then connecting with kids in programs like the one I interviewed shouldn't only be meant for their individual development, but also as a means to lift up and educate the larger community...?

Maybe we need to start thinking more laterally when it comes to communities. There is no step by step to an active community...it comes together from all sides with many different projects going on at once, and maybe only a few of those programs stick around in the long run, but they are more efficient and effective because they survived and outlived the other programs being tried at the time. We have to learn to be okay with potentially competing methodologies for community building, understanding that different methodologies work in different areas of a city, and trusting that the one that is successful in one community will outlive the others "competing" against it...