This is an educational and interactive Community ARTS Resource Exchange. Please feel free to download any information that may benefit a community arts program in your area. We would love your input... Introduction Mission and Goals Guiding Practices Events Peace Event Documents Links Click on images to see a larger version. Pages Created by: Paul Hillman 20159 hits since 08/9/2010		The Mission of the Cultural Arts Coalition, Arizona: 501 (c) 3 Identifying, supporting, promoting, celebrating, and documenting those community arts practices that stimulate social awareness and honor diverse cultural values, and develop the critical thinking skills necessary to be creative and solve problems. As a networking group, the coalition strives to provide a safe place for persons of all ages and backgrounds to gather and achieve a sense of belonging and respect within a larger community and to explore arts-related skills in a facilitated environment. The Goals of the Cultural Arts Coalition are to: Provide spaces and opportunities for persons to engage in dialogue, experiences, and research that expand the definition and understanding of the role of the arts in enriching our daily lives in community and academic settings. Examine and explore "guiding arts practices" of programming that meet the needs of an integrated community. Celebrate and feature projects and programs at regular meetings as well as larger, community focused forums. Our intent is to help others, whether children, teens, people of middle age or older adults, to use the arts as a mean by which they can explore "the human condition" (including her or his own condition) in and through time. Document and publish methods and examples of successful cultural arts delivery in academic and community settings. Generate connections across an expanding network of individuals and groups who embrace the mission and goals of the Cultural Arts Coalition. Since ancient human history, people have had a need to represent their beliefs, values and emotions in physical, artistic forms taking the shape of symbols, symbolic objects and performance. These metaphors can be more powerful than language as a means of communication. The Cultural Arts Coalition believes that everyone can use the arts to Reflect, Express and Discover. Every person can Create, regardless of age, economics, social position, education, geography, gender, culture, or any other aspect of human existence. In this purposeful manner of art making, the value of the created object is in the one who created it. The object is a representation of its maker. Practitioners with the Cultural Arts Coalition use art making and cultural forms as modalities to enrich the life journey of every person, individually and in community. "Many community cultural development projects are built around learning experiences. Overall, the aim is to transmit particular arts- related skills while helping to develop critical thinking and establish a clear link between the two capabilities, thought leading to action." Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development. D. Adams & A. Goldbard, p.28. The communities the Cultural Arts Coalition honors are sustained by your participation. Please contact: judy butzine - jhb6@mindspring.com or Melanie Ohm - melanie@conceptsconsultinggroup.com to answer questions.