Welcome to ICASC!

Judith Marcuse Projects (JMP) and Simon Fraser University have partnered to establish the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC), the first of its kind in North America.

ICASC is a global centre for networking, training, professional development, research and community outreach in the burgeoning field of art for social change. ICASC is also a hub where people working for progressive change in fields such as health, social justice and human rights, environmental education and community economic empowerment, can learn about the many ways that art for social change practices can be used as highly-effective tools in their work.

A letter from Judith Marcuse

August 2010
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It has been a very busy and productive year for us at ICASC...and high time to bring you up to date!

I have been on the road to Sénegal, Mali and to South Africa; to The Hague in Holland; London, England; New Orleans; and to many centres across Canada, to speak, teach and network for our Centre. It has been inspiring and energizing to meet so many extraordinary people doing wonderful work, often in very challenging situations. Here is some of our news.

• This fall, we are offering a 13-week Fall Institute, “Exploring Arts for Social Change: Communities in Action,” available for both credit and non-credit learners. Based in dialogue and experiential learning, the course is intended to be a “test run” for the eventual delivery of a Master’s-level, one-year program. One week after registration opened, we are full! Stay posted for information about a repeat offering in the spring.

• In April, we launched our new half-hour video, So What Is Art For Social Change?, which is designed to introduce the field to people who know little or nothing about it. It’s available for purchase. A companion piece, the shorter video, Despertar, contains footage from the international symposium we hosted several years ago and is free to download from this site in the Resources pages.

• Just about one year ago, we our new website went live. Around the same time, we completed a four-year strategic plan with the assistance of the MaRS Centre in Toronto. The plan has proven to be a valuable resource as we develop our activities.

• Over the last 12 months, ICASC has hosted and co-hosted public dialogues and presentations by Liz Lerman and Arlene Goldbard at SFU’s Wosk Centre for Dialogue and at the Vancity Theatre. .ICASC Co-Director, Dr. Lynn Fels, hosted a public presentation and reading by the playwright and scholar from Queen's University, Dr. Julie Salverson. We also convened a one- evening, national dialogue of educators, artists and social innovators at the Segal Centre, SFU.

• Two surveys, conducted by SFU Lead students and a student in the Semester in Dialogue, which I co-taught with Mark Winston, both indicated a high level of student interest in arts for social change and in our Centre, recently proven when our new course filled up within days of the opening of registration.

• On a more personal note, it was an honour to receive the Jacqueline Lemieux Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts and to be nominated a Fellow at SFU’s Centre for Dialogue. A new book for teenagers, Dynamic Women Dancers by Anne Dublin, published this past year, profiles my work and that of many other issue-engaged choreographers. When in London in April, I visited my old alma mater, Rambert Dance Company, and uncovered video of one of my earliest pieces of choreography, baby, as well as an archival tape of me in a performance in 1975!

• Last, but certainly not least...the lovely and very talented Jen Bodmer, who has been at the administrative helm of JMP/ICASC for two and a half years, is leaving us to pursue her yoga teaching career. Her thoughtfulness and support have been essential. We will all miss her warmth, intelligence and creativity...and wish her all good things with her new adventure. Thanks so, so much, Jen!
Some thoughts about arts for social change and social innovation

We are gratified that there is growing interest in the field of arts for social change here in Canada and around the world as we look for innovative ways to solve complex and urgent problems. But, as most of us are painfully aware, in many cultures, the arts are low in society’s hierarchy of values.

Increasingly, people live in consumer-driven societies in which the life of the imagination and creative exploration are often assumed to be irrelevant or, at best, a nice “frill.” Even when it is demonstrated through careful research that art and cultural practices are centrally important for well-being, policy decisions are nonetheless made that penalize both art and artists, marginalizing their power to contribute to society. (The interested reader is invited to take a look at a short position paper in response to the British Columbia government’s completely surreal, 70% cuts to arts and culture funding on the website of the Coalition for a Better British Columbia: www.betterbc.ca. For excellent information and advocacy tools, visit www.allianceforarts.com.

Arlene Goldbard, a good friend of the Centre is one of our best writers, thinkers and speakers in the field of community arts. (Her most recent book is the seminal Creative Community: the Art of Cultural Development.) In a talk recently given in Vancouver, she describes two ways of being-in-the-world – Datastan, she writes, is a place of quantifiable, bottom-line, statistical and logical systems; Storyland is an ever-changing place which operates through relationships, stories and exploration, all constantly in motion. I believe that many people are now looking for ways to merge these two “lenses” on life, using metaphor and new-old forms of exchange to share perspectives and strategies in order to create action for change. This shift in perspective is beginning to take hold, especially among young change-makers. (You can read more about Arlene’s work, and perhaps check out her fascinating blog at www.arlenegoldbard.com.)

Art creates dialogue. Whether the content for social change occurs in the work of an individual artist or evolves through collective processes, art offers a unique lens through which to see the world, a lens that brings together the head and the heart. Art can provide an effective forum for the exploration and dissemination of endless perspectives, but are too-rarely included in newer, cross-disciplinary social innovation strategies.

I am convinced that there is great opportunity for our field to become integrated into social innovation agendas if our work is better understood and valued by others. We must break down the silos that ghettoize us by opening up to knowledge-exchange and dialogue with others working for systemic change.

Stay posted for information about ICASC’s Chataqua Project, a new initiative which is designed to address precisely this issue!

I wish you all a restorative and peaceful summer.

Onward!

Judith Marcuse