This is my second conversation with arts producer, choreographer, teacher and mentor Judith Marcuse, who among other things is the founder of Judith Marcuse Projects and the International Centre of Art for Social Change. Marcuse learned about community engaged arts practices by following/assisting experienced practitioners at work and also doing extensive reading. Many resources are currently available at https://icasc.ca including about Futures forward, a national mentorship program that partnered with over 20 environmental NGO’s; the results of a six-year national ASC research project, and a diverse range of videos and texts exploring this work in Canada and abroad. Our first exchange was on October 24th, 2021, e73 judith marcuse – finding the energy to keep moving. You’ll hear a lot of passion and energy in Judith’s voice and words, and I wouldn’t be the first to call her a force of nature, in the best sense of the term. We spoke at her home in West Vancouver.
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Feeling lost in a world of negativity? Discover how art can reignite your imagination and connect you with your community. Explore the transformative power of creative expression and its role in shaping a better future.
Chapter Summary
00:00 Finding Energy in Despair
01:12 Introducing Judith Marcuse
02:36 The Innate Artist in Everyone
04:40 Art as a Reflective Process
05:41 Reimagining Art and Its Hierarchies
06:49 The Power of Imagination
07:36 Defining Community Engaged Arts
10:07 Creative Publics: A Case Study
12:11 Creating Safe Spaces for Expression
Featured Quotes
Behind the Story
[00:00:00 - 00:00:55] Judith Marcuse
In a time when it's easy to become defeated, when one can succumb to despair and negativity. A question I use when I reflect on the state of the world right now is what gives me energy, what animates my imagination, and what do I need to defend in that context? So many, many questions. A lot of self-reflection, but then reaching out, reaching out, looking for colleagues, for spiritual strengthening, for courage.
[00:00:56 - 00:01:36] Claude
This is my second conversation with arts producer, choreographer, teacher and mentor Judith Marcuse, who, among other things, is the founder of Judith Marcuse Projects and the International Centre of Art for Social Change. You'll hear a lot of passion and energy in Judith's voice and words. And I wouldn't be the first one to call her a force of nature in the best sense of the term. We spoke at her home in West Vancouver. Episode 227 Spiritual Strengthening those of us.
[00:01:36 - 00:07:34] Judith Marcuse
Who are around kids know that they draw, they paint, they sing, they dance about their world. But what matters to them? Drawings of their house and their mom and their dad and their cat. So they relate directly to the outside world in their creative impulses. And we also know that everyone, or I believe everyone, is an artist. Only they don't know it, to quote Martha Graham, except she said that about dance.
Everyone's a dancer. And when I think about resources, what kind of resources do we have in the world? Well, we have our environmental resources, we have our political, our economic resources, but we also have resources of the imagination. And I think in our culture we devalue that unless it's focused on some sort of transactional or economic gain in our capitalist society. My experience with community engaged art is that when you give permission to think about, to reflect, to share ideas about what matters to people in the room, no matter what form of art expression you're using as one of your tools in a dialogic process, collective process, people amaze themselves with how creative and imaginative they are. And I think what we've done to kids because of our education system is we've denied them the opportunity to explore the riches of their own imaginations, of the visions of the creativity that they have innately in themselves. And I think that has an effect on how we view art and culture in our country.
Another thing that art creation does is it requires us to reflect. Why am I putting that dot there? Why is my arm not six inches higher? Who's my audience? Why should they care? What matters? One of the first things we did in our master's program at SFU in Art for Social Change was We asked people to take a walk in their own neighborhood, whether it was their work neighborhood or where they lived, and identify things, that aspects of their environment that stood out for them, that made them think about not only themselves in relationship to their environment, but also larger questions about the world.
And it proved to be a very productive, experiential first step into thinking about and artist's relationship to the rest of the world. And I believe that we have put art into boxes of professional art, amateur art.
I mean, I don't need to. Everyone who's listening to this knows this is a problem. And there's a hierarchy with the so called professional arts. But being at the top of that hierarchy and institutions being at the top of that hierarchy, I think it's done a great detriment to our ability to imagine where we're going, what we can do about it, and most importantly, where we are right now. We're not incapable of changing the world. We are dead, definitely capable of doing that. And we're facing so many crises right now that it becomes, in my estimation, imperative that we step back as artists and ask ourselves those questions.
Take time to figure out what matters to us right now, what we can do about it. Whether we want to work as an individual or as part of a collective. Who are our allies, what kind of networks and coalitions, what kind of conversations with people who don't agree with you need to happen? Who can I connect with so that collectively we can at least understand each other or begin to understand each other and think about the world we want to see. And I think right now we're in such a pool of despond, I don't know if that's the phrase, that it becomes very difficult to drag ourselves out of that black hole, mixed metaphors, to realize that we have enormous power. And the power we have is of the imagination, of the ability to create visions, to reflect reality with other people, to other people, in ways that others who may not have that way of thinking about things might really appreciate and that might be useful.
[00:07:36 - 00:08:11] Claude
I want to focus today on Community Engaged Arts or Arts for Social Change, because I've been talking about that with Robin Sokolowski and others. And I think it's an art form that will be particularly useful, so to speak, in the next decades of life on Earth because of regionality, bioregionality, cultural regionality, and you've written a lot about that, and those things are available. So let's talk about community engaged Arts, for those who don't know it well, how would you Describe it and how do you see it fitting now and future forward and for humans on earth.
[00:08:13 - 00:13:16] Judith Marcuse
Thank you, Claude. Well, let's try and define what we're talking about here. When we were doing a six year research project on art for social change, which is what we call it, we found about a dozen different names for a field and each of them with their own nuances of practice and goals. In the definition that we have been using for the last 30 years or so, it's groups of people who may or may not self identify as artists, usually not making art together about what matters to them. That process facilitated by a specially trained artist. So it's a very defined area of practice. The flow of information comes from the community, the art comes from people.
Oh, I'm not an artist, but there are dozens and dozens and dozens of arts based games and exercises and facilitative processes that can draw people out, drawing people out to express themselves in various ways, whatever discipline, arts, design, discipline they use. But then to look at what they've made and talk about why they made it, why they made it that way, that creates dialogue, that creates aha moments, that creates understanding across difference, it creates energy for change and it also often creates the possibility of action for change. I'll tell you about one project that we did with an election coming up here in Canada. It was called Creative. Creative, sorry, Creative Publics. It was called Creative Publics. It was a little van that went around Vancouver and the lower mainland.
Inside were little. Okay, I'm going to start again with the election coming up. I think there's one project that illustrates sort of the power of very simple process art process. And it was about how people vote, why they vote, if they'll vote. So there was a pre and a post look, it was a research project. A van went around to various centers and offered coffee and tea, always on the street. And people were offered pieces of cardboard and a whole bunch of little stickers, a tree, a house, food.
And they made collages. And they were asked in those collages to illustrate what matters to them. What we found was the simple process of making these little art pieces and, and looking at other people's art pieces impelled them to think about voting when they weren't going to vote because they realized they were actually attached to issues that affected them directly or did not. So that's just one little example of community engagement. There was conversation while people were making their collages. And so people were exchanging ideas during that process. In a time of individualism, art for Social change encourages people to be in the same room together, to talk to each other.
But they don't have to reveal themselves. They can express themselves through an art medium. It's a relatively safe place. And they can talk about what they made either with somebody else in the room or the whole group or by themselves in ways that feel comfortable, but also. And they can talk about what they made in ways that are relatively safe because you're speaking through metaphor. And the potency of those practices and those experiences through the practices is something that I rarely see in other contexts. People are not constrained by an agenda.
The only agenda is to express yourself in ways that mean something to you.
[00:13:17 - 00:13:19] Claude
But we're almost out of time already.
[00:13:19 - 00:13:19] Judith Marcuse
Oh my God.
[00:13:19 - 00:13:31] Claude
Unbelievable. What do you recommend people think about or do if they want to become more engaged in community art?
[00:13:31 - 00:14:58] Judith Marcuse
There are all kinds of possibilities. Ally yourself with the non arts organization that's doing change work. Just go see what they're doing. If it's something you could be passionate about or already passionate about in health, in ecology, in immigrant settlement. This work is seen in almost every sector of Canadian society. Celebrate what matters in whatever context you're operating. Reflect. Take time to think about what matters and what you might be able to do as an individual and as part of a coalition or a network.
There is a network called the Art for Social Change Network. It's got hubs in every province and territory. Very easy to get online with us. But there are also lots and lots of other coalitions and networks where people are making positive change. And often arts based methods, arts based visions are not part of their agendas. I think. Look outside your normal circles and see who's doing really interesting work.
Don't be passive because as an artist you have a very particular view of the world and it's badly needed right now.