Cultural Arts Direct Action: Our Methodology
We believe transformation and justice is actualized through a combination of community-based action, intentional leadership, holistic knowledge, cultural and creative arts. Our method has guided the creation of "radical expressiveness in communty" and successful collaborations in numerous communities around the country.
Caron Atlas offers in “Cultural Organizing: A Conversation at the Intersection”, “Our intention is to make cultural organizing visible by sharing its principles, demonstrating its rigor, and creativity, and illustrating its diverse methodologies.” We directly engage our constituents by offering arts-based programs, training, workshops, performances, residencies, and consulting experiences that place cultural practice at the center of building awareness, transformation and sustained change.
Betty's Daughter Arts Collabortive believes performing, visual, and healing arts are direct vehicles for self-actualization and sustained transformation. By placing cultural practices at the center of our organizing work, we address the holistic concerns of our constituents to shift and sustain transformation of communities.
1. Holistic Knowledge-Sharing- Allows our participants and collaborators to harness individual and collective knowledge to address issues in their communities. This method presences intuitive and experiential expertise and supports the notion that “we are all experts of our own experiences”. Our process encourages participants and collaborators to harness individual and collective knowledge to address issues in their communities. Through Holistic Knowledge-Sharing, each participant and collaborator is an expert and brings their expertise into the room. Together we create a body of knowledge to benefit the group and the individual.
2. Cultural Practice-The corner stone of our method is cultural practice. We believe that the legacy of performing, literary, and visual arts has been integral to systemic change in community. We believe that through cultural arts practice participants explore the radical potential of creative expression.
3. Civic Action- We believe that the heart of civic action is an authentic understanding that “we have everything we need” to liberate our communities. To this end, we function at the beginning to the spectrum of direct action utilizing door-knocking, resource dissemination, and letter writing, primarily. We educate communities about direct action activities and utilize innovative approaches that we believe to communities of informed decision-makers and policy shifts.
4. Grass Roots Media Making-We believe that we have the power to tell our own stories. Through digital storytelling, pod-casting, zine-making, blogging, independent radio, and public access television, we harness the tools to broadcast to our community our truths.
5. Community-Based Collaboration-We believe in the power of community. We believe in the power of community action. We believe a community that collaborates and activates their vision is more willing to sustain the change they want to see.
6. Africana Women Leadership-We believe and practice the theories, approaches to leadership, and change-making methodologies, developed by women of the African diaspora. We believe in the power of the porch, the kitchen table, the living room, the sista circle, the quilting bee, the book club, the walking group as firm and viable tools to affect change for the African diaspora and beyond.
