Artistry, Social Responsibility, and Ethical Praxis
This first-of-its-kind compendium unites perspectives from artists, scholars, arts educators, policymakers, and activists to investigate the complex system of values surrounding artistic-educational endeavors. Addressing a range of artistic domains-including music, dance, theater, visual arts, film, and poetry-contributors explore and critique the conventions that govern our interactions with these practices. Artistic Citizenship focuses on the social responsibilities and functions of amateur and professional artists and examines ethical issues that are conventionally dismissed in discourses on these topics. The questions this book addresses include:
How does the concept of citizenship relate to the arts?
What sociocultural, political, environmental, and gendered "goods" can artistic engagements create for people worldwide?
Do particular artistic endeavors have distinctive potentials for nurturing artistic citizenship?
What are the most effective strategies in the arts to institute change and/or resist local, national, and world problems?
What obligations do artists and consumers of art have to facilitate relationships between the arts and citizenship?
How can artistic activities contribute to the eradication of adverse 'ism's?
The arts are hubs of social, emotional, personal, and worldly interactions. Any values we derive from or experience through the arts occur because we engage in and feel the results/benefits of art making and art experiencing. So, “we make it true” that one or more values happen in/to us when we participate with the arts.
What values are possible? The chapters within this book yield a multitude of possibilities. And artistic citizenship is the concept we employ that connects and extends such possibilities. From illuminating public places to visionary activism through art-making to creating art that examines a world that isn’t but could be, artistic citizenship shows itself in a variety of ways.
What worlds are possible? Can art take us there? What gets in our way to create such worlds? Hear from one of our authors, Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre: