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Community engagement is important to the long-term viability of arts organizations and to the well-being of the communities they serve. If you don’t believe that, you may stop reading here. All of what follows discusses “how,” not “whether ” or “why?”

Community engagement
Activities undertaken by an arts organization as part of a mission strategy designed to build deep relationships between the organization and the communities in which it operates for the purpose of achieving mutual benefit. This results, over the long term, in increased ticket sales and financial support as well as more arts-friendly public policy. The arts and community are equal partners. Principal beneficiary: community and arts organization. 

the basics

What is Community Engagement?

Let's dispel some myths before moving forward:

1. Community Engagement is Expensive
The premise for Community Engagement is rooted in community awareness through programming, for which budget already exists.

2. Charity
Equating community engagement and charity work might be reasonable if the only communities the industry needed to address were the homeless or those subsisting on incomes below the poverty line, but there are plenty of other non- or under-participating communities with whom it can be valuable to build relationships.

What Community Engagement is not

Mythbusters

In order to encourage discussion and promote the value of community engagement, Arts Engaged offers workshops, distance learning courses, consultations, and books. 

Workshops provide beginner to advanced opportunity to learn more about Community Engagement combined with the ability to ask questions of the founder of the method. Doug Borwick has written Building Communities, Not Audiences, and Engage Now to help advocates learn from the experience of others and to the basic knowledge necessary for Community Engagement.

We are very proud to offer Distance Learning Courses, in which individual and group course components allow for a . Consultation offers the opportunity for detailed, tailored support to ensure a smooth pathway to Community Engagement.

What we offer?

Arts Engaged Services Include:
1. Workshops
2. Resources
3. Distance Learning Courses
4. Consultation

Before you jump right into Community Engagement, I would like to share insights and guidance that I have learned to help you design a successful path to engagement.

I believe it is important to tailor your pathway to engagement to your unique community, and cannot wait to help you get started.

Workshops can be tailored for boards of directors, staff members, donors, artists, or students. 

workshops

Topics related to Community Engagement
and the Arts.

Arts Engaged Community Engagement Training provides various levels of training–beginning, advanced, and “trainer training”–in the “how to” of community engagement.

• Understanding Engagement
• CET Cohort
• CET Trainer

Course content can be delivered either entirely via video conference or in a combination of face-to-face workshop with video conference follow up. 

distance learning courses

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