VISUAL ARTS PROGRAMS

Josephine by Louise Gadban Oil on Canvas		Leucate by Louise Gadban Oil on Canvas

THE POWER OF ART
Art is a creative process that can lead us to a cultural space outside of our normal experience. In this space, the frontiers between thought, feeling and spirit can dissolve.

Art can engage the passions and motivate us to become even more creative. In this creative state, we are more likely to think critically about the social and cultural forces that influence us.

With an enhanced sense of what is creatively possible, we are more likely to be able to access any racist, classist , sexist and other assumptions that we may hold and have hidden from consciousness in our unconscious minds.

This compartmentalization allows us to avoid discomfort when we pursue courses of action that may benefit us at the expense of others. It implicates us in reproducing the existing inequalities in society.

With an enhanced sense of what is creatively possible, we are more likely to recognize how the dominant cultural scripts that define the mainstream waters of society work together to reproduce social hierarchies.

Art, then, can be a vehicle to arrive at greater knowledge of the social, cultural, political and economic influences on our consciousness, feelings and spirits.

Through art, we may gain a sense of greater agency over our lives and our communities. We can develop awareness of ways to collaborate with others in the quest for greater equity in the world.

Seeds of Change: Background Assumptions
Educultural Seeds of Change is the Educultural Foundation’s newest program. Like all educultural programs, Seeds of Change is based on the belief that art can be emotionally, intellectually and spiritually transformative.

Educultural Seeds of Change is also based on the assumption that the vast majority of low-income parents—who are disproportionately of color, immigrant, and English language learners—are deeply interested in their children’s lives, and have valuable cultural knowledge from which we all may learn. However, such parents do not always have time, energy or cultural access to participate fully in the U.S. society’s dominant educultural, socio-economic and cultural institutions.

Seeds of Change: Goals
Seeds of Change aims to help adults to recognize their cultural strengths and potential economic and social power, develop a sense of empowerment, and take practical steps to begin to create more viable social and economic lives.

Seeds of Change: Description
Seeds of Change offers participating parents and other adults hands-on, creative, musical, visual and/or performing arts experiences, interwoven with self-reflection, oral history, research, and dialogue about their social/cultural lives, and their roles within them.

Through Seeds of Change, adults access their multiple identities and cultural resources, and transform them into viable economic practices and educational resources that they can use to support their own and their communities’ lives and their children’s education in critical ways.

Seeds of Change addresses the following challenges in fresh and exciting ways…

• The need for parent engagement in their children’s learning, especially in economically challenged communities;
• The need for external arenas in which students, parents, and teachers can make connections, create relationships, and navigate the vast expanse of cultural, academic, economic and social knowledge;
• The opportunity to explore, draw on, and expand the existing the socio-economic resources and strengths residing in individuals, families, and communities;
• The opportunity for active and collaborative learning between homes, communities, and schools resulting in the creation of more sustainable intellectual, social, and economic interactions and futures.
• The need for each participant to be stimulated and revitalized by making learning experiences their own.

Seeds of Change: Program Details
Seeds of Change consists of an eight-week program. During the first stage, participants will be invited to express their identities, interests, and passions by engaging one or more artistic pursuits including: Music, Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Dance, Performance, Story Telling, Martial Arts, or Film and Video. The artistic mediums that we choose and the ways in which we express ourselves indicate what is culturally relevant to us, and where our identities, interests, and passions lie.

Following this stage in the program, participants will be introduced to examples of art and cultural forms that represent aspects of the dominant culture that may have contributed to their own marginalization. It is this critical dialogue that makes visible the dominant culture and the ways it shapes our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and practices.

Our artistic expressions contain the “resources” that may be harnessed to create economically viable pursuits that utilize individuals’ existing creative cultural energy and resources. These resources may be translated into industries that serve individuals and their communities.  Hence, in the final stage, we will invite economists and economic advisors to join us and work with participants to facilitate the transformation of their personal and cultural resources into viable economic plans.

In sum:
Parents/participants will:

• Develop a working knowledge of their own cultural strengths and resources using educultural tools;
• Develop knowledge and confidence in ways of interacting with their children’s schools so as to empower their children academically;
• Feel confident in their ability to express greater agency to shape and transform their socioeconomic futures.
• Take steps to build alternative socio-economic futures.

The Educultural Seeds of Change Program responds to the community’s needs by:

• Enabling all participants to build on their own cultural strengths and capacities;
• Enhancing the potential for parent/student/school/community collaboration;
• Conducting research into the kinds of parent, student, and community cultural resources that are available to schools that wish to engage in critical, creative and culturally responsive school practices;
• Creating an Educultural Foundation Seeds of Change Program Evaluation Manual for each participant community as a means to map and structure plans for personal action and development;
• Providing follow-up support from the Educultural Foundation Seeds of Change Program personnel to assist in the implementation of participants’ economic plans.

An additional goal of this program is to form the Educultural Foundation Seeds of Change Program Network to encourage local, state and national replication of this program by the sharing of resources, evaluation methods, collaborative efforts, technical expertise, financial opportunities, and mutual support.

Program/Service Information Inquiries should be addressed to: educultural@educulturalfoundation.org or 707-649-0414