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 33911 hits since 08/9/2010		The Mission of the Cultural Arts Coalition, Arizona: 501 (c) 3, is a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization in existence since 2005, identifying, promoting, celebrating, and documenting community arts practices that stimulate social awareness and advocacy, honor diverse cultural values, and develop creative and evaluative thinking skills for personal transformation and collective change. Vision: Individuals of all ages, cultures, and walks of life explore arts-facilitated practices and experiences aspiring to personal and collective creativity, innovation and problem solving. The nurturing of belonging and respect within a larger community recognizes the value of each individual and advocates for social and economic justice. In Practice: The Cultural Arts Coalition builds upon individual and community capacities and resources through core values and guiding practices (http://artsCARE.org/cac3.text.shtml). Coalition work is collaborative, egalitarian, relationship-oriented and celebrative. Through arts programming, the Cultural Arts Coalition provides safe spaces for reflective thinking, dialogue and action, using the arts, symbolism and metaphor to explore universal human themes. Experiences are focused on personal growth as well as community action, toward an enhanced quality of life for all. 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.