Art, Culture, & Community Power
Art and culture can meaningfully contribute to and help ground community power building efforts.
For example, they can help communities connect to their histories and heal; help bridge across interests, generations, politics, race, and class; create systems of mutual aid; generate community pride and joy; and help people to envision more just futures. The presence of thriving arts and cultural activity that is of and by (not just for or in) a community is often an indicator of strong, persistent community power.
Through previous investments we have seen glimpses of how this can work. What we have not seen through these project-based interventions is how community power can be built and sustained over time; how community power can be enduring, not episodic.