To most of us, the arts are a source of pleasure, enlightenment, diversion, contemplation or all of the above.
But to a growing number of organizations, the arts have begun to take on a provocative new role: catalyst for social change.
Of course, the arts in America always have addressed great issues and looming crises in society, whether through the left-leaning plays of Clifford Odets (who responded to the tragedies of the Depression) or the radical musical statements of jazz artists Max Roach and John Coltrane (whose work summed up the ferocity of the ’60s civil rights movement).
Similarly, Works Progress Administration muralists of the ’30s, beat poets of the ’50s, and protest folk singers of the ’60s and ’70s helped express the tenor of their times.
But in recent years, social advocates have taken a bolder tack, using the arts specifically to change the world in which we live, or at least to try. In other words, several groundbreaking organizations have been staging performances and exhibitions not simply to inspire and entertain audiences but also to improve their lives, schools and communities in concrete ways.
Consider a few recent developments:
– Last year, the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park made national news launching its Jazz Mentors Program, which brings top-notch Chicago musicians to inner-city public schools, where the pros teach aspiring young players–at no cost to the school system.
– Also last year, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and corporate executive Sidney Harman (who heads stereo makers Harman Kardon, JBL and Infinity) unveiled an unprecedented project, which brought an arts appreciation curriculum, state-of-the-art stereo system and compact disc library to selected schools in four major American cities (beginning with Chicago).
– In recent years, the Detroit Symphony has been purchasing land adjacent to its Orchestra Hall, with plans to expand its home, build a performing arts high school and attract a medical center with parking facilities that could be used by concertgoers at night. Civic planners hope that this fusion of cultural and medical institutions will promote urban renewal in the city’s long-devastated downtown.
– From Tuesday through Friday, the 4th International Congress of Educating Cities will converge on Chicago, offering workshops, panel discussions and lectures on a single theme: “The Arts and Humanities as Agents for Social Change.”
Those are just the highlights. Add the Chicago Young Playwrights Festival that Pegasus Players has been producing since 1988, the Gallery 37 arts activities that the City of Chicago has organized for the abandoned Block 37 in the Loop since 1991, the wide range of political causes that Chicago’s HotHouse has championed through poetry readings and performance events over the years, and the trend is apparent.
The most bang for the buck
“There’s certainly an increasing interest in the ways that our commitments to the arts can reinforce our commitments to the civic good,” says Nick Rabkin, program officer for the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation.
“So many foundations–and the MacArthur is among them–have deep social commitments and would love to find synergies with their arts commitments.”
Ah, yes, there’s that buzzword of the ’90s, “synergy,” in which several forces come together to make a greater impact than any could achieve alone. In the case of the arts, the emerging synergy between artistic and social causes apparently has come about more from necessity than from design.
With debt-ridden federal and state governments cutting support to the arts and social programs, there’s clearly less cash to go around. As a result, foundations and corporations are being besieged by an ever-growing list of worthy causes.
“This whole idea of the arts playing a role in social change is happening, in part, because there’s a lot of pressure on philanthropy to get more done, to get more bang for the buck,” says Rabkin. “For most of us, this means we’re engaged in a serious exploration of what these synergies may be–it’s an emerging school of thought.”
The concept is so new, however, that when the Ravinia Festival launched its Jazz Mentors program, “I had no idea what might come out of it,” says Ravinia executive director Zarin Mehta, who created the unique partnership with the Chicago Public Schools.
“I had seen what happened when we brought kids from the Merit Music Program (a tuition-free music school in the South Loop) to our concerts–they were in heaven. So I met with William Johnson, music specialist at the Chicago Public Schools, and we started to plan.”
Specifically, Johnson, Mehta and Ravinia jazz director Ramsey Lewis came up with a program in which a group of top Chicago musicians would teach inner-city students, with several of the best young players forming a band that would perform at the Ravinia Festival.
“It’s too early to tell whether the kids’ grades have improved, whether their school attendance has improved” significantly, says Mehta, “but there’s no question that the program has made a change in the lives of the students who have been in it.
“To see them the first day of the program, when we brought them to the Harold Washington Library under sufferance, and then to see them in the spring, when they had a graduation ceremony at (Ravinia’s) Bennett Hall, where they were smiling, smartly dressed and confident–that was something.
“Our hope is that if this program is successful, other kids will see it and start to make a change in their lives. It’s important to expose the kids to arts experiences–it shows them that someone cares.”
More than that, the arts–especially the fine arts–offer youngsters an alternative to the heavy doses of pop culture that inundate them via TV, radio and movies.
Offering an alternative
Marsalis, keynote speaker for the Educating Cities conference, for instance, bemoans “the celebration of worthlessness in our culture,” as he writes in his book “Sweet Swing Blues on the Road” (W.W. Norton & Co., 1994). Bombarded with “gangsta” rap music that often promotes misogyny and violence, “very few youngsters have the opportunity or desire to develop their taste, or accept the fact that there is such a thing as refining sensibilities,” Marsalis writes.
“The means of expressing their lives has been corrupted by cultural celebration of the insignificant.”
To counter these forces, Marsalis, pianist Marcus Roberts, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other stars of jazz and classical music take pains to visit schools across the country, spreading the gospel of the fine arts wherever they can.
But the idea of using the arts to elevate lives is not aimed only at students.
Chicago’s Pegasus Players, for instance, for years has worked with dozens of social service agencies to give free tickets to senior citizens, public housing residents, immigrants, the disabled and others marginalized by society.
“For some of the groups, going to a play at Pegasus is the only large social exchange they have in the world,” says Pegasus founder and executive director Arlene Crewdson. “For a lot of people, just being able to take part in live theater is so moving. You find out you’re not alone.
“A lot of immigrants come into the theater, and it makes them feel that they’re part of the culture in a way that they haven’t felt before.
“With the senior disabled program, 90 percent of the participants have no other access to the performing arts.
“In a way, using the arts to change the lives of seniors is a lot like bringing the arts to kids. In both cases, it’s about making the individual see his or her worth as a human being, about helping them connect with others.”
Mehta, who has made outreach programs a hallmark of his administration at Ravinia, acknowledges that the early efforts are but a first step on a long and difficult road.
“With the Jazz Mentors, it’s only 400 kids out of I don’t know how many thousands, and that’s the part that makes me sad,” Mehta says.
“If that little bit can mean so much to those few students in our program, why aren’t we doing it for everybody?”
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The 4th International Congress of Educating Cities runs Tuesday through Friday in the Chicago Cultural Center, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Palmer House Hilton. The ticketed event is open to arts, business and social service professionals; phone 312-744-1426.
