Beginner's Guide to community-based ARTS

In the book Beginner’s guide to community based art, I chose a story from the category Research, the technique Community sounding. I think I chose this one because we are at the beginning of our work with the communities and we still don’t know them very well. This story highlights the process of learning about a community and explains the importance of listening, observing and questioning. I agree with this fact. I believe that in order to understand a community’s or a social group’s interactions, issues and working, statistics and theoretical researches are not sufficient. I find it crucial to immerse myself in that community and learn about it directly from its members. 

If one wants to take the most of this process one has to be sensitive and be really aware of verbal and nonverbal communication. Artists are said to have an increased sensitivity and I think it is one of the reasons of the success this project. 

Even if we are not artists, we will have to do the same and try to be as attentive. I think we have already started when we interacted with residents from Marlow Heights at the National Night Out last Tuesday. Attending the community’s meetings could be also very useful!