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Past JNBC Fellows
Outside-in >> Inside-out: Audience Engagement with the Core of a Creative City
Margie Butler
Where are all the artists? This question has remained with me from the time when I began working on cultural economic development in New Bedford, Massachusetts. By the summer of 2003, a portion of visitors to New Bedford had read about the city’s growing arts scene but could not always find it while walking the city’s downtown cobblestone streets. Like many revitalizing post-industrial centers, New Bedford is an authentic and rapidly evolving Creative City. Still I observed during my years there how its core arts scene – organized around studio buildings, local artist enclaves, and grassroots organizations – can be several layers removed from the cultural city visitors encounter. What this scenario really highlights is the cultural tourism gap between the formal and informal experience of a creative city. Or expressed in terms of people, the gap between a city’s outside audiences (visitors and some portion of its residents) and inside creative scene (local and regional individuals connected to the arts).
Is such separation the necessary status quo, or is this experiential gap between tourism and the creative city’s core one that can be bridged? Furthermore, is it advantageous to do so? The answer is not an easy one, but it involves continued innovation around how the arts are presented and what can be defined within the cultural tourism footprint.
Click here for a synopsis of Margie's research.
Click here for Margie's complete paper.
Download a list of sources and related links.
Beyond Conversations: Collaborations Between the Academy and the Museum
Teresa DeFlitch
Cultural institutions of all kinds are coming together to produce innovative partnerships that emphasize education, community engagement, and social responsibility. Museums are very much a part of this endeavor recognizing that “collaboration is some of the most important work of democracy, especially in making resources available to public education.” Still, collaborating is hard and there are many museums, particularly small museums, which stand on the outskirts of this initiative and are hesitant of letting in the various voices of an external chorus. The reasons for this are complex but one way that museums can enter into collaborative work is to connect with local colleges and universities, who are themselves embracing interdisciplinary collaboration. The objective of my fellowship was to explore the state of museum/academy partnerships and propose additional ideas that would allow these two institutions to more fully realize the potential of each other’s harvest.
Click here for more on Teresa's research.
What I Learned in Islamic School: The Role of a Private
School as a Public Cultural Institution
Robin Pringle
With the support of the Public Humanities Fellowship, Robin Pringle,
a consultant in school and community development, is exploring
questions raised by her experiences of working with the Islamic
School of Seattle from the fall of 2001 to the spring of 2005.
As she seeks deeper understanding of issues of diversity within
and around Muslim communities in the United States and the implicit
responsibilities and possibilities of asking children to take
a role in educating the wider public about their faith, cultures,
and American experience, she is researching the implications for
cultural competence education and identity formation in both private
and public education. This project is the initial phase of a larger
endeavor to develop a series of dialogues on decision-making and
design for education in pluralistic communities along with resources
to support those dialogues.
Click here for more on Robin's research.
Academy to Academy: Humanities, Community and Policing
Pamela Steager
The fellowship funding for Academy to Academy: Humanities,
Community and Policing will allow Pam Steager--a Rhode island-based
public humanist, writer and prevention specialist--the time and
resources to continue her research and writing for the To Protect
and Serve project. The project is a collaborative effort of the
Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) and the Providence
Police Academy intended to enhance the Police Academy's diversity
curriculum with a humanities perspective. Funding from RICH, the
police department and private donors in the pilot year (2005)
resulted in a 55-hour, humanities-infused Cultural Competency
curriculum which was well-received by recruits and staff at the
academy, but which raised as many questions as it answered. Ms.
Steager will utilize her three month fellowship to explore those
questions and to delve even deeper into the fascinating intersect
of humanities and community oriented policing.
Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance
Kenneth Yellis
If exhibitions are indeed a form of theater in which the visitor is the actor, how can we best
develop exhibitions that enable them to recognize and equip them to play their parts? Like
theater, exhibitions are a ubiquitous and venerable medium and, like theater, they can have a
profound effect upon us at many levels. Beyond their practical and didactic functions,
exhibitions, like theater, can change the way we feel and the way we see.
Click here for more on Ken's research.
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