Community Arts List

The first step in helping communities use their arts to reach program goals is identifying their arts. 

Initial Community Arts Lists will help you do this.

Introduction

SIL's Ethnoarts community has been developing tools and methods for gathering information on artistic genres of communication for a number of years. The two primary forms of such a list that we currently use are the Initial Community Arts List, and the more extensive Community Arts Profile. Here are some resources available now, and description of further development. 

Initial Community Arts List (ICAL) - for use by both arts and other program personnel

The ICAL provides a conceptual and practical foundation for efforts to wisely and effectively draw on a community's arts to reach program goals. The act of making a list helps program personnel—both expat and community—manipulate the idea of communication genres. Once people can think in this gently abstract way, they can explore how each genre could potentially be used for a new purpose. So the ICAL is most powerful when presented on one or two pages, with minimal information about each. Then planners and budgeters can say,

"We want people to reach goal x, so what resources do we have? Ah - this spreadsheet shows we have x amount of money. This list of personnel shows we have x number of people with particular gifts and roles. This ICAL shows we have x number of communication genres that can help us meet our goals. How can we draw on all of these resources best to meet this goal?"

The two tools we have been using thus far are Guide for Making an Initial Community Arts List, and ICAL for COMMUNITY blank entry form. You'll find the latest versions of these attached to this page.

We are also developing electronic tools that allow associating particular genres with recordings, field notes, and other data. Contact Matt Menger for the latest on this.

Community Arts Profile (CAP) - for use primarily by arts personnel

The CAP is a formatted text document containing outlines and headings for you to input all the data you gather about a community's arts.  It is organized in terms of the seven steps found in the Creating Local Arts Together Manual. See this page for more information.