VIVA!: Art, Education and Politics in the Americas
A Proposal for a Bilingual Book and DVD

Brief description

How is art being reclaimed by communities in the Americas to recover cultural identities and histories, to represent critical issues, to promote collective analysis, to mobilize for personal and social transformation? The VIVA! Project is a unique collaboration of eight groups in five countries who have crafted community art projects and shared them with other collaborators across differences of language, gender, race, nation, and institutional location. Whether it is Kuna children in Panama recovering cultural and ecological values through painting, music, and dance, or Somali women sewing and singing in a Canadian community centre, the projects challenge conventional notions of art as elitist, individual, market-driven, or focused on form, and promote the integration of art in its infinite cultural forms into daily ritual and movements for social change. The unique bilingual exchange between these projects has charted new ground and raised new questions about the potential relationship between art, education and politics.

Background

The VIVA! Project is a transnational collaboration between four universities and four NGOs in Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. Funded by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council between 2004 and 2006, VIVA partners undertook participatory action research with projects of community-based art-making in multicultural contexts. The common ground among collaborators was a history of practice in Freirean-based popular education, a commitment to social and environmental justice, and a belief in the power of community arts to engage peoples’ hearts and minds through transformative processes.

Several groups, such as CEASPA of Panama, IMDEC of Mexico, and the Catalyst Centre of Canada, have been exchanging methods and theories of popular education since the 1970s, but have increasingly challenged some of the Eurocentric and rationalist underpinnings of popular education. Other partners, such as URACCAN in Nicaragua, the Community Mural Project in Mexico, and the Personal Legacy Project in Canada, have emerged as postcolonial challenges to conventional education and art by deconstructing colonial histories, reclaiming cosmovisions, and creating hybrid practices shaped by Indigenous and diasporic populations. The analytical frameworks have evolved from exploring creative tensions of community arts to beginning to craft how we might decolonize art, education, and the research process itself.

Over the three years of exchange, VIVA partners met annually to shape and share their projects, to theorize on the concrete experiences, and to articulate and debate key principles and concepts. For the past year and a half, partners have been drafting chapters and producing videos on their local projects for a bilingual book with DVDs. These production processes in themselves have offered opportunities for project partners to reflect more deeply on their work. The transnational gatherings also included special events with popular educators and community artists in the host communities: a transnational conference in Toronto (2004) on popular education histories in the Americas, a popular theatre workshop with Afro-descendents in Panama (2005), and a dialogue with Indigenous students at the Universidad de la Tierra in Chiapas, Mexico (2006). The final meeting represented a unique collective process of reviewing the draft chapters and videos for this book, with 25 participants, including youth members of the projects, offering feedback to VIVA partners.

Audience

All contributors concur that the audience for this publication/production includes first people working directly with communities for social justice (artists, activists, educators), and secondly students, emerging artists, and professionals who could be inspired by these stories. The VIVA! collaborators have access to a broad network of potential readers, from popular education networks in Latin America (such as ALFORJA, a network of popular education centres in Central America and CEAAL, the Latin American Council for Adult Education) to burgeoning networks of community artists in North America (the Community Arts Network based in Virginia), from the university classes where some of us teach (such as URACCAN in Nicaragua, UAM in Mexico, UCLA in the U.S., and York University in Canada) to professional development groups (such as Community Arts Ontario) as well as conferences in all five countries and beyond.

Format

It is important that the format of this bilngual book be congruent with its content, i.e., that it reflect the kind of creativity that is being promoted in the projects featured. We envision a 224-page book that integrates many photographs and images to illustrate the stories of the projects. The language is accessible to a broader public than an academic one, and voices of participants are integrated into the analyses.

We propose that the bilingual dynamic of the book follow a format of English on the left page and Spanish on the right. Images would be integrated throughout but not repeated on the two pages, so that the visual flow of the book will be dynamic. The VIVA! project has used this format in previous internal publications, and it has worked well.

Checo Valdez, well-known Mexican graphic artist and co-coordinator of the VIVA project, has developed a proposed book design, with pages 8” X 7” and a wide outside margin for side bars and images. Heavier paper is required for quality reproductions.

Central to the publication will be two accompanying DVDs with eight short videos (12 – 15 minutes) on the featured projects, and a synthesis video (20 minutes) that brings them together in the context of the VIVA exchange, identifying the key features of community arts that they illustrate. The videos bring the projects alive and will inspire actions by communities who view them. They are the perfect complement to the book, offering a human face, images of the diverse contexts, and the voices and rhythms of the community arts projects. These two forms need each other: while the video brings the viewer into the dynamics of the work, the book more deeply probes its processes and impact.

Co-publication

Because of the scope of the project, and its unique collaborative nature, we propose a co-publication that is supported by several partner organizations as well as publishing houses. The central publisher will be URACCAN University in Nicaragua, which will take responsibility for coordinating and organizing the printing of the publication. Other organizations in Mexico and Central America that are have indicated an interest in co-publishing include:
• Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana – Xochimilco (UAM) in Mexico City
• Instituto Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario (IMDEC) in Guadalajara, Mexcio
• Centro de Educacion y Accion Social Panemeno (CEASPA) in Panama
• Consejo de Educacion de Adultos de America Latina (CEAAL) in Panama

It is hoped that publishers in Canada and the United States will also become co-publishers, through an arrangement with URACCAN, as principal publisher, that will allow them to purchase a certain number of copies of the book which will bear their logo.

Distribution

It is significant that this book/video has been collaboratively developed with participants from eight diverse institutional contexts that have their own networks. Partners feel an ownership of the process and product, that will ensure its dissemination. The proposal for co-editions in several countries as well as major cultural events launching the book/video will help to publicize it. In addition, the DVD of 9 short videos can be distributed and used on its own.

Outline

The book is organized around the eight projects as the central stories, while the exchange among the partner groups is woven around and between them. Projects are presented in pairs, one from the north and one from the south, both representing a theme that is relevant to popular education and community arts practice.

I. Introduction

Who is VIVA?
Remapping the Americas: The political context
Decolonization

II. Dreaming (2002-2003)

Gathering collaborators 2002 (Deborah Barndt)
Collective dreaming of the VIVA! project 2003 (Checo Valdez)

II. The Exchange: Framing and Naming (October, 2004) - Canada

Narrator: Christine McKenzie
Context: Toronto Islands and Native Canadian Centre, Toronto, Canada
Local Practice: Harvesting Stories Conference
Evolving analysis: Creative tensions
Evolving methodology: Popular education and participatory action research

III. Four Projects: Four Stories (south-north dialogue)

a. Recovering history: from Indigenous to diasporic contexts

Kuna Children’s Art Workshops: An experience of environmental education, popular education, and Indigneous identity
Jesus Alemancia and Jesus Colman (CEASPA, Kuna Yala, Panama)

Between 1993 and 2000, Kuna communities off the coast of Panama involved children in a diverse range of cultural activities, using painting, theatre, dance, music, song and poetry, to recover cultural values and promote ecological consciousness.

The Lost Body
Recovering Memory: A Personal Legacy
Diane Roberts (Legacy Project, Canada)

The Personal Legacy Project developed by theatre artist Diane Roberts draws from West/Central African dance and story traditions to involve artists in probing their ancestral memories in a physical/dramaturgical process where the teller/dancer and the story/event are in a dynamic and changing relationship.

b. Recreating identities: from the Atlantic Coast in the south to the Pacific coast in the north

Bilwivision: A Community Television Channel
with our Voices, Images, and Culture
Margarita Antonio and Aracelly Duarte (URACCAN, Bilwi, Nicaragua)

Bilwivision, the community television channel of URACCAN University, is developing an alternative practice of communications to reflect the cultural diversity of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua through their voices and images.

Connecting the Dots: Community Partnerships in Arts Education
Amy Shimshon-Santo (UCLArtsbridge, Los Angeles, USA)

UCLArtsbridge involves students in arts education residencies with inner-city schools in Los Angeles, nurturing the creativity of the diverse student bodies, cultivating mutually beneficial, respectful and responsive relationships between the schools, community arts centers, and UCLArts.

IV. The Exchange: Landing and Connecting (August 2005)

Narrators: Jesus Alemancia, Diane Roberts
Context: Tucan Centre, Achiote, Panama
Local Practice: Popular education and popular theatre workshop
Evolving methodology: Systematization
Evolving analysis: the spiral model

V. Four projects: Four stories (north-south dialogue)

a. Transforming public space: from marketplaces to neighbourhoods

Out of the Tunnel There Came Tea
Ruth Howard (Jumblies Theatre/York University, Toronto, Canada)

Informed by the British community play movement, the Bridge of One Hair Project of Jumblies Theatre has engaged many artists and residents in a culturally diverse west-end Toronto neighbourhood in exploring diverse histories, identities, and bridges across their differences.

Tianguis Cultural de Guadalajara
David de la Anda and Lalo Martinez Mayoral (Tianguis/IMDEC, Guadalajara, Mexico)

Organized 11 years ago by activist youth in Guadalajara, Mexico, Tianguis Cultural weekly draws over 200 exhibitors (counter-cultural youth, Indigenous and solidarity groups, NGOs, artists of all kinds) and 6,000 visitors to a cultural marketplace that offers a safe space for alternative urban identities and a non-commercial forum for interaction among groups that share a progressive social vision.

b. Nurturing new generations: extending artistic practice

Telling Our Stories: Training Artists to Engage with Communities
Christine McKenzie (Catalyst Centre, Toronto, Canada)

In 2005-2006, the Catalyst Centre in Toronto brought together artists educators for a popular education train-the-trainer process that led them to design and facilitate projects with youth to explore and express their stories in many different artistic forms.

Participatory Community Murals: Painting by Listening?
Checo Valdez (Universidad Metropolitana Autonoma, Mexico, DF)

Through a training program for young artists/animators, Checo Valdez is developing and extending a unique process of engaging communities in community mural production that comes from the people themselves, and has been applied in communities from the Zapatista autonomous communities to Munich, Germany.

VI. The Exchange: Deepening and Communicating (Dec., 2006) – Mexico

Narrators: Amy Shimshon-Santo, Luis Fernando Arana Gutierrez
Context: Universidad de la Tierra, an Indigenous university, Chiapas, Mexico
Evolving analysis: Systematizing and decolonizng our projects
Evolving organization: VIVA network takes on its own life

VII. Dreaming the future
Lessons Learned from the VIVA! exchange
Continuation of the project as a network

Timeline

January 2007: Revision of project chapters
February-March: Revision of exchange chapters
March-April: Send proposal to potential publishers
April: Final editing of videos
May-August: Editing of manucript by English and Spanish editors
September: Review of final manuscript by core partners (meeting in Montreal)
October-December: Final revisions by contributors
January-March 2008: Production
April 2008: Official launch at VIVA gathering in Bilwi, Nicaragua