Click here to visit the UCLA ArtsBridge website.
ArtsBridge, the education and outreach program of the School of Art and Architecture at the University of California in Los Angeles, links students to community arts and social justice groups and schools for community learning through the arts.
This program challenges many dynamics of power in the multiethnic and polyrhythmic context of Los Angeles: it addresses the root causes of underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos in postsecondary education and develops student skills in teamwork, arts curriculum development, presentation, social critique, curation, and organization building. It also offers artist's creative skills to underresourced community partners while making universities more accountable to communities usually excluded. It creates space within the public university to prepare, create, and reflect on social justice through the arts.
There are many tensions and contradictions which this project engages. First of all, the tensions between participants (both students and community members) involving racist and sexist stereotypes, class and educational privilege, interfaith issues, and educational justice issues. Secondly, there are contradictions related to space (segregation, lack of public transportation), time (academic schedules limited by terms while community arts requires long-term commitments), and money (little financial investment in community arts and popular education).
The creative tensions identified by the VIVA! project are also reflected in this project.
Process/product: the experience for students is a life-changing consciousness raising process.
Aesthetics/ethics: high quality artistic production can draw on multiple ways of representing diverse truths and notions of beauty.
Cultural reclamation/cultural reinvention: How can we reclaim communal space for creation and expression in ways that better reflect the real diversity in our neighbourhoods and families that often crisscross the city and the nation?
Spiritual/political: Reclaiming our connections to our ancestors and our legacies of cultural resistance are both a spiritual and political act.
Body/earth: Movement and dance are deep and intricate forms of learning and expression.
