Art in Other Places
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Better Together: Buy this book with Art and Upheaval by William Cleveland!
Art in Other Places profiles 29 institutional and community arts programs across the Untied States that have pioneered the field of arts-based community development. It describes how creative processes have been used to address some of society's most pressing issues—how writers, performers, media and visual artists help build healthy communities. These histories show the positive effects the arts bring to the elderly, prisoners, people with disabilities, hospital patients and others.
The following is an excerpt from the book's foreword by historian and educator Page Smith:
"In our modern world," wrote Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, "we easily think of the genius of an artist as existing on one side of the fence" while we stand on the other, "gaping or staring at his work, admiring him...In this conception the artist embodies all the energy and vitality reaching to the stars; the public passively looks on as we do when we sigh dreamily at the movies." In consequence the artist is tempted simply to do stunts in order to attract attention. But the true task of the artist is to discover her or his relationship to a community, a community often in desperate need of the artist's power to see the world anew. In this book, the accounts of "art in other places" are, in fact, stories of the relationship of artists to communities. These communities are, in their various forms, communities of troubled and sometimes despairing individuals. The artists bring light and hope and the joy of creation to these communities and they are themselves remade in the process.
Author Bill Cleveland is founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Art & Community and the former director of California's Arts-In-Corrections Program. He is author of Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World's Frontlines (New Village Press, 2008).
Art in Other Places is an important addition to the expanding body of work on community arts...Cleveland has collected some heartwarming stories from the deeply committed people who should be our role models. This book is about people who have found the strength to change their lives through the arts that have escaped the white walls into those others places where we all live.
—Lucy R. Lippard, Writer, Critic
Bill Cleveland made it possible for me to produce Prisoners, a documentary about the lives of men and women behind bars in California. This book and his work in other places show, not only concern for the human condition, but how we can improve it. He is one of our unsung heroes.
—Jonathan Borofsky, Artist
Bill Cleveland has crafted a work of art in this book—not an object that you hang on a wall or place on a shelf, but a piece of process art that you can take into the streets and use to change the way people live their lives. He makes me feel again my own sense of purpose, a sense I felt myself, working in these same settings. Art in Other Places reminds me of why I am in the arts.
—Robert Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts
Bill Cleveland's passion for this pursuit, his understanding of this brave territory, and his respect for its heroes frame and direct these inspirational narratives.
—Jessica Davis, Harvard Project Zero
When I was Chairman of the California Arts Council, we entreated artists to contribute their creativity and imaginations to the broadest spectrum of public life. Art in Other Places tells the story of these artists. Bill Cleveland tells it well and truthfully.
—Peter Coyote, Actor, Director