Where We Fit

Ethnoarts Roles

Arts personnel normally fill one of three roles in SIL: 

Arts Worker: Designed primarily for people already on the field, who have some skills and interest in the arts. Fewer training requirements.

The Arts Worker role is an entry-level role designed primarily for personnel already on the field, national coworkers who are highly motivated and skilled but lack the formal training requirements, and others who have some skills and interest in engaging with the arts. This job has fewer training requirements. The Arts Worker may be a person skilled in another domain who also wishes to serve the community through EthnoArts.

Major Job Responsibilities

The Arts Worker serves a community and its artists through encouraging them in their journey towards the community’s spiritual and social goals. They uncover and affirm the communication forms that communities connect to their own experience, emotions, and identities. The Arts Worker focuses on learning, exploring, and encouraging the community through expressing interest in culture and arts as well as organizing, assisting, and/or co-facilitating some relevant and/or requested EthnoArts activities. 

Arts Specialist: Entry-level position, after about one to one and 1/2 year’s training 

Overview of an Arts Specialist's Preparation and Service

The first few years of an Arts Specialist’s work normally consist of university training, an anchoring internship, then entry into his or her first assignment. 

The Arts Specialist works alongside local communities and their artists to help them reach the community’s spiritual and social goals. He or she focuses on the integration of the arts into language development programs in coordination with related efforts in Scripture Engagement, Literacy, Community Development, Translation, Language Assessment, Sociolinguistics, Language and Culture Learning, Anthropology, Linguistics, Trauma Healing, Orality/Storying, and Sign Languages.

Major Job Responsibilities:

Working with local artists, other community members, church leaders and/or other relevant stakeholders, the Arts Specialist is responsible to do research, encourage autogenic research, and facilitate the creative process. Research consists of gaining experience in identifying, documenting, and analyzing indigenous arts in a local community, according to their structural  characteristics and meanings. The Arts Specialist will work alongside the community members and/or relevant stakeholders to apply the results of the research to develop and implement strategies for facilitating creation and evaluation of indigenous songs, dances, dramas, stories, visual creations, and other expressive arts, in response to community goals and needs. Arts Specialists also share what they learn with organizations,  academic societies and other communities.

Arts Consultant: Wider responsibilities and skills than Arts Specialist, the natural progression with time and experience

The Arts Consultant has foundational experience as an Arts Specialist. The Arts Consultant uses the expertise acquired through hands-on experience in research and facilitation in language development programs to provide leadership and advice to field staff, churches, communities, and partner organizations.

Major Job Responsibilities:

In the area of assignment (entity, area, international), provide leadership and advise others with regard to artistic communication issues during the initiation and development of language development programs; establish or contribute to partnerships with SIL teams, governments, NGOs, INGOs, churches, and other organizations to plan and help implement measures to make full use of local artistic forms; train and mentor Arts Workers, Arts Specialists and partners; help identify funding for EthnoArts endeavors; participate in scholarly and missions communities by attending conferences and publishing in appropriate journals; represent SIL or Wycliffe Bible Translators externally in relevant committees, task forces, and conferences.