Community Arts Caucus (CAC) Column: Summer 2023

Four Recent Transitions: A List of Happenings

This column briefly introduces four recent transitions that the Community Arts Caucus Co-Directors anticipate will help shape and inform what happens during this coming year and those to follow. We have listed each transition below. We hope you will take delight in getting to know our new members, plans, and future possibilities as you continue reading.

Transition One: Introducing Two New Co-Directors as of April 2023

After several years of service to the Community Arts Caucus, Paulina Camacho stepped down from her leadership position; CAC elected two new Co-Directors at the town hall meeting. Tim Abel is excited to be part of the caucus as a Co-Director, as it aligns with his own interests in collaborative and collaged notions of working and learning together. Jennifer Bergmark is looking forward to working more closely with the Community Arts Caucus and building a community of educators, practitioners, and scholars who are working with art and communities. After working for 7 years in a community art center, Bergmark returned to school and focused her research on community-based art education. As a community arts educator and an assistant teaching professor at the University of Illinois, her current work preparing future art educators includes conversations between community arts practice, social practice, community-based art education, and K–12 art education.

Transition Two: We Visited SAY Sí, a Community Arts Space That Has Recently Transitioned Into a New Building

Members of the Community Art Caucus were welcomed by staff, teaching artists, and students when visiting SAY Sí in San Antonio, TX. We were given a tour of the exhibit Stories Seldom Told: User Interface, in which youth artists explore the effects of drugs within the community, and witnessed the immense power students wielded in creating the various installations. We also got to walk through the first phase buildout of SAY Sí’s new facility located in the culturally rich West Side of San Antonio, where we had the opportunity to see students at work in their classes and learned about the various off-site and on-site programs being offered to high school and middle school students for free. After the tour, we got to hang out with staff and teaching artists to hear more about the amazing work they have been building on and were excited to learn that the SAY Sí Union has been recognized by the National Labor Relations Board; SAY Sí staff will have support to continue creating nationally recognized community-centered arts programming in a sustainable way.

Transition Three: We Are Transitioning Into a New Multidimensional Membership Plan to Be Announced Soon!

During our town hall meeting in San Antonio, we discussed possible changes to our membership plan that would make our caucus more sustainable in ways that support our current members, recognize long-term supporters, and reflect the real cost burden of (at times both) national and local membership fees for students and emerging professionals. After discussing a variety of practices other NAEA interest groups and caucuses employ, we were excited to rethink our current structure. We are currently reaching out to NAEA to see if we can create a more responsive plan. The hope is that we can make our caucus more visible as a connective thread, since it was clear from this past conference that community-specific and community-responsive teaching practices were important topics within and beyond our caucus.

Transition Four: Considering Minneapolis

Next year, the NAEA National Convention will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our plan is to continue following some of our hopes for this year’s conference and improve upon their feasibility by contacting local community art organizations soon—well in advance of the conference. We wish to establish some connections with people in Minneapolis and invite members to get in touch with the CAC Co-Directors if they have a suggestion about who to contact or where to go. Please direct your correspondence to the CAC email, communityartscaucus@gmail.com. Additionally, we plan to organize a site visit similar to this year’s visit at SAY Sí in San Antonio. In this year’s town hall, we discussed planning the visit on the day before most conference presentations (Wednesday). Stay tuned for more information about these plans.

In summary, these are only four of many transitioning parts. We promise to continue to reflect on what we do and what we might be doing as we continue to grow, shift, and change together.

Column by:

William Estrada, Tim Abel, Jennifer Bergmark, Carina Maye, and Angela Baldus, CAC Co-Directors