Publications
Click on the title of any of the publications below to access a downloadable PDF.
A Culture of Peace: Emerson Elementary School
In this collaboration between the Cultural Arts Coalition and Emerson Elementary in Phoenix, students drew and wrote their thoughts and feelings about what brings them peace when they are sad, stressed, and frightened. Everyone can find a practice here to restore joy and peace.
The Cultural Arts Coalition's Nine Guiding Practices for Community Arts
The Cultural Arts Coalition's Nine Guiding Practices for Community Arts are the result of a public participation process involving artists, educators, and community activists during 2005-2006 in Arizona. These core values and guiding practices are used for program development and evaluation.
A step by step, photo by photo guide to folding a paper crane.
This photo collage was created by Mitra Kamali in 2020 as a reflection of our people, mission, and Nine Guiding Practices in action. Thank you Mitra for your years of service as a CAC board member and collaborator. To see an enlarged version of the photograph, click here.
Community Arts in Dialog & Action 2006
Artists, educators, business people, community activists, and policymakers have the capacity to work together within communities to build awareness about shared issues, acknowledging that the arts and art making are integral to community and can serve as a public vehicle for social change. Community art making provides a safe environment for the exchange of ideas, hopes and concerns, fostering communication and new ways of working together, and providing a space to develop fresh perspective on public policy and civic engagement. This report documents such an endeavor in 2006.
Capturing Community in Animated, the community dance magazine (U.K.)
Melanie Ohm and Judy Butzine, co-directors of the Cultural Arts Coalition, describe how they capture the whole story for whole communities through purposeful documentation.
Best Practices or Principles of Practice? Reflecting on Language & Roles
In this article, Melanie Ohm suggests a differentiation of best practice from principles of practice, separating practices that define a standard for a field of endeavor from those that define the functional practices of an organization. The Cultural Arts Coalition’s “Nine Guiding Practices for Community Arts” (2006) were the early catalyst for this thought process.