Introduction: Background and Context

Trained as a K–12 theatre educator and a theatre for young audiences specialist, I teach in the School for Film, Dance and Theatre (SOFDT) in the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts at Arizona State University (ASU), where I specialize in community-based practices. I approach my work in theatre by, with, and for children with a focus on youth embedded in communities, rather than top-down instruction aligned with institutional hierarchies. I feel fortunate that both ASU and the Herberger Institute understand their missions as fundamentally and practically rooted in publics. In fact, my school understands the praxis of working in community cultural development as a core competency for our MFA and PhD students, and therefore my graduate course, Projects in Community-Based Theatre, is required. I also teach institute-wide undergraduate courses in community-based/socially engaged work, enrolling students from music, design, architecture, arts management, art, museum studies, and digital culture.

Having to articulate the "why" of community-based theatre as well as the "how" across multiple arts specialties requires specific attention to the cross-curricular learning and skill sets developed. In traditional theatrical production formats, once theatre artists learn the general scope and process of bringing a work from conceptualization through to formal production, they can apply those understandings to other performative contexts. Community-based artists, in contrast, have to design how to work and how to apply their art form and creative practice to the ever-changing cross-disciplinary contexts in which they work.

To help students understand the underlying skill sets used in community-based projects so that they can integrate core principles as they learn to adjust them to diverse contexts and communities, I adapted a project-based skills taxonomy developed by Julie Ellison, founding director of Imagining America (IA). I tried to create a comprehensive list of skills necessary for multiple kinds of community-based projects in multiple settings. In a seminar at IA's 2012 conference, I brought up Ellison's inventory and discovered I was the only individual in the room familiar with the tool. Recently revising the inventory for my graduate class, I offer the resource here for conversation and comment.

Imagining America published the original proficiencies taxonomy in a 2005 IA newsletter as a list called "Specifying the Scholarship of Engagement: Skills for Community-Based Projects in the Arts, Humanities, and Design," within an explanatory essay titled, "From the Director: The Naming of Cats." Ellison and several of her students compiled a list of abilities they believe university students practice in community-based, project-learning environments. Ellison wrote in her introduction:

"Specifying the Scholarship of Engagement" identifies the elements of three dimensions of public scholarship: a commitment to the arts of translation needed to work towards a common language for the project team; an ability to think organizationally and to work sociably; and the willingness to adopt models from disciplines such as architecture and urban planning that have a tradition of project-based, culturally complex work with material outcomes and products. (2)

The taxonomy has been helpful in my teaching and curricular administration duties (most recently in the creation of undergraduate and graduate certificate programs in socially engaged practice). Like Ellison, I believe learning-in-context or project-based activities provide unique modalities integrating procedural and propositional knowledge (knowing facts and knowing how to accomplish something). My pedagogical training concentrated on constructivist philosophies and I understand authentic learning as social and contextual. Biggs (2003), for example, argues that a focus on declarative or propositional knowledge separated from situated practice results in shallow or irrelevant understandings. While I believe Biggs's criticism true for multiple fields, in the creative arts—and I would argue community cultural development—we cannot separate facts from processes. So I depend on the taxonomy to categorize highly complex environments and to help structure learning and teaching methodologies as well as assessment and evaluation protocols. A taxonomy supports structured intentionality.

Over time I adapted Ellison's inventory specifically to address performance, design, and civic engagement with children and youth. Four principles guide my revision of the skills classification:

1. Project-based learning. Project-based courses facilitate learning in domain-general and domain-specific skills sets while providing experiential grounding. Although projects change semester to semester, the taxonomy articulates applicable skill sets that remain constant.
2. A framework of collaborative studio practices. Theatre is and always has been project-based; I treat the class as a company, and we develop projects collectively. There are always real-world outcomes and real-world risks involved, and our common language revolves around articulating creative practices within civic environments.
3. Praxis. The interconnections of theory, ethics, and action.
4. Focus on civic engagement with children and youth. My scholarship concentrates on childhood and youth studies, particularly the social construction and circulation of performed childhoods. I study how cultures create and enforce the meaning of "child" and "youth." Using Amartya Sen's capabilities approach (1999), my work generally focuses on children/youth as artists, as citizens/publics, and as community/civic assets. Although not all of our class projects involve children and youth, my adaptation includes necessary area understandings.

I have expanded Ellison's original 18 skills to over 60 while eliminating Ellison's original organizational categories in favor of skill domains as conceptual sets. I crafted an organizational graphic to help structure my thinking (below). In my multiple iterations of the skills domains, I have tried to craft a taxonomy that is nonhierarchical, necessary, complete, and irreducible. The taxonomy attempts to list all skills/learning possibilities grouped within a categorization schema structured through the above four philosophical principles. By its nature, a taxonomy attempts inclusivity; thus, part of each learning experience includes thoughtful adaptation and implementation of the particular skills used. I do this differently in my undergraduate and graduate course work, but in each case I foreground metacognitive processes in order to move through the listing of skill possibilities. In my undergraduate courses I edit the taxonomy to include only those skills/knowledge domains that we will address in our course projects. For my graduate theatre and dance students I include the entire taxonomy and we decide together which skills and knowledges are addressed. I provide the graduate course example here as it includes all skill/knowledge domains and the exhaustive list.

 

How I Use the Taxonomy in my Graduate Course

I use the skills inventory pedagogically. I arrange different projects every time I teach my graduate course. We have partnered with schools, mental health facilities, a children's hospital, museums, retirement homes, crisis shelters, etc. Each semester, the short-term residency component (generally six weeks) has different contexts, collaborative needs, and partnership parameters. For example, in one museum residency we crafted a non-linear narrative structure for use with fourth grade students visiting an Arizona History exhibit. In a hospital residency, we created individualized digital stories with bone marrow transplant patients. The student cohort functions as an artistic team and creates unique art actions for each site. We spend the first half of the course building ensemble, literacy, and ethical engagement structures, and the second half in residency at the site. The course always results in some form of public artistic production or art happening: performances, street theatre engagements, a digital storytelling showcase, or a community discussion/workshop.

Evaluation in a course like this one can be particularly fraught as it integrates process learning, specific data, creative processes, and collaborative skills. If I had my druthers I would eschew grades altogether, but ASU does not allow that option, particularly in a required core course. I use a modified form of Montessori reporting, framed through the skills inventory. Montessori reports are individualized, highly detailed evaluations focused on the learner's strengths as well as areas for further development. Thus summative assessments are understood as grounded in individual capacities, not competitive achievement. Additionally, I facilitate lateral responsibility and evaluation—e.g., among the students—as well as personal control over the learning environment. Students keep learning journals and evaluate themselves periodically on their personal learning-in-context. Here, too, they use the taxonomy to structure their thinking. I ask them to engage thoughtfully within each conceptual category to address particularized learning or skills they used in the experiential processes. At the end of the course, I have one-to-one meetings with each student to discuss and evaluate their performance and learning progress, again using the skill domains. Final grades are equally weighted as an average of the students' self-evaluation, my assessment of each student, an average of all the students' assessment of each other, and our community partners' and/or project director's assessment.

We use the taxonomy/skill sets to structure thinking through and in community cultural development with the following criteria: preparation and personal responsibility, thoughtfulness and insight, and creativity and professional conduct. I include the skills taxonomy on the syllabus and frequently refer to it during the course in order to bring the skills into consciousness. The metacognition necessary to process their learning helps engage students' strategic thinking. The course takes as a metafocus:

Thus the taxonomy frames skill possibilities and contextual knowledge, and structures learning intentionality within a professional development framework. The MFA students tend to be highly practical individuals who continually want to know why we are asking them to learn something and how they can use the information in their career paths. Highly motivated, ambitious, and overworked, our MFAs perform best when we help them understand skill/knowledge transferability. The taxonomy helps me structure conversations to include why as well as how. In many ways, the taxonomy helps students structure skill/knowledge "portfolios." What do they know how to do? And how can they apply that knowledge within multiple contexts to accomplish diverse goals?

 

The Taxonomy in Action at the Graduate Level

I worked two summers in a row with the San Solano Youth exchange on Tohono O'odham (TO) Reservation at Topawa in southern Arizona. This program partnered youth from St. Pius parish in Tucson with Topawa youth from the San Solano Missions community. Living together for a week in the San Solano mission dorms, they focused on leadership training, service, and cultural exchange.

The first year I was asked to participate, adult leaders wished to address a community problem. The parish school at Topawa—which had for almost eighty years been the only school in the village—recently had burned down from arson linked to young people in the village. Many adults and community elders received their K–12 education at the Topawa School and were distraught by the physical destruction. The burned building contributed to ongoing tension between families, elders, and youth. Many elders in the community felt the arson as a slap in the face as well as representative of young people's casual attitudes towards education itself. The youth exchange leaders wanted to focus on the Topawa School to acknowledge the school's history in the village as well as to explore youths' attitudes toward education. Participants in this problem-solving residency created a digital story documenting the history and meaning of the Topawa School while also exploring education itself.

The adults approached me with a well-developed plan of action; the young people had little involvement in subsequent planning. However, we built the engagement and facilitation structures such that young people developed and explored understandings of education through their own capacity, desires, and lenses. We did not shy away from controversial discussions such as the discordant and pessimistic views the youth aired on the value of education provided at the local school and for their futures. Youth engaged in substantive conversations with their community elders and spiritual leaders. Using this example, I note how we moved through community cultural development process and engaged the skills taxonomy.

 

Skills Taxonomy Discussion

 

Civic Skills

The project integrated several groups of people: facilitating artists, youth from St. Pius, St. Pius adults, Topawa youth, parents, religious leaders, and community elders. The project engaged youth in exploring the meaning (defined contextually) of education and place. The Topawa School was built in the center of the village square and near the historic location of the primary well for the village. We explored conceptions of "center," "public," and "participation" through place and the memory of place. Youth and adults understood the function of education and place differently. While I believe we opened dialogue, I do not know that anyone's mind was changed. Tensions, however, seemed lessened. Negotiation is part and parcel of every residency I have ever conducted: in the planning, in problem-solving, in aesthetic decision-making—internal negotiations focus on what is possible and what is desired. The manner in which elders, youth, and adults interact and understand one another on the TO Reservation structures power and status in particular ways. Elders are provided pride of place and in order to respectfully interview them we had to pay particular attention to traditional behaviors and necessary protocols. This was particularly important for the Tucson youth, who did not necessarily understand the cultural protocols in play.

 

Communication Skills

I always teach my students skills in nonviolent communication and active listening, skills useful in multiple contexts, including this one. Additionally, as resident artists, we needed to practice deep listening and to communicate across multiple cultures and linguistic practices. The language of the TO elders has a particular rhythm and cadence. In particular, the elders perform humor differently than the youth. Spoken English and Spanish, however, were the dominant languages of the residency, although music and movement were also used to communicate effectively. We also had to communicate within the artistic team, and weigh our aesthetic desires and understandings with those of our partners. This project did not depend on written communication.

 

Creative and Aesthetic Skills

The creative practice I followed understands children and youth as artists. The resident artists were responsible for articulating creative choice-making while building literacies in aesthetic practices. The digital story in this residency pulled from the cultural capital and natural environment of the Topawa village contrasted with the burned hulk of the Topawa school. We used the creativity cycle—preparation, incubation, insight, and verification—to process and structure visual images and poetic writing, and to conduct and edit interviews. We used location and memory as a narrative structure. Additionally, the youth focused on future iterations and educational opportunities, not framing education solely through formal opportunities but including informal learning from elders, spiritual practices, and the natural environment.

 

Domain Knowledge and Grounded Theory

Understanding the educational context and history of both Arizona and the TO Nation was important in this residency. Additionally, we needed a working knowledge of Catholicism and the history of colonialism, mining, and missions/missionary practices in southern Arizona. Located on the border of Arizona and Mexico, the politics of immigration and the splitting of the TO Nation by the imposed international borders were also in play. During the week of our residency, the paramilitary presence of immigration enforcement frequently interrupted our filming. The political relationships of different tribes, particularly a nearby Apache enclave and Gila River, were also discussed. Finally, TO is open range and we needed knowledge of range protocols and live stock awareness as we moved around and through the landscapes.

 

Group/Ensemble Skills

Our responsibilities included facilitating participatory space in which the youth of St. Pius and the Topawa youth felt comfortable and safe creatively. They worked together in cross-cultural groups to build the digital story. We had to strike a careful balance between allowing for slow creative processes and our limited time together. We needed to constructively deliver feedback on aesthetic structures without negating the youth's capacities in favor of our own. Planning for the project included individuals in three different cities, one of whom did not use email and had only unreliable cell service. We had several group telephone planning meetings and conducted round-robin collaborations with our local partners—e.g., St. Pius youth, priest, youth group minister, etc.—that we brought back to one another via phone calls.

 

Intercultural Skills

Participants came from multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds. The work depended on crafting mutuality of experience and communal participatory language while also reflecting openly across difference. Additionally, we needed to balance adult ways of knowing and youth ways of knowing. This last bit was quite difficult, as tribal elders understood youth through one particular lens, while youth understood their identity practices differently.

 

Interpretive and Critical Skills

Interpretive and critical skills closely align with aesthetic capacities. Working as collaborative artists means being able to unpack the whys of the art as well as the hows. Resident artists need to project choice-making forward so that we can adequately position the public-making and place-making of our young artist partners. In this way, we can have grounded conversations with community partners in order to help them negotiate how the aesthetic choices they make construct an artistic whole. Additionally, we can explore together the ways in which narrative and symbol or metaphor allow us to unpack larger life narratives and constructs. We thus hopefully build the cultural and symbolic power of the community and contribute to capabilities valued by the participants. With a close eye on the practice of everyday performance in situ, we can participate in the aesthetic register of the community rather than imposing external aesthetic practices or artificial constructions of "good" or "important." Finally, we have to understand what we do not know. For example, have we unintentionally ignored an elder who will be angered by their exclusion? Knowing what questions to ask often depends on advanced interpretive skills.

 

Philosophical Skills

This residency depended on understanding philosophical implications of education, social capital, and diverse understandings of spirituality.

 

Project Management Skills

We needed to calculate what we could accomplish in one week, how we could integrate youth and elders, and what equipment would be needed. We developed the project from the conceptual stage through to an edited digital story presented for feedback at a village-wide dinner cooked and hosted by the youth. We leveraged built capital, the natural environment, cultural capital, familial capital, and social capital. Additionally, we needed to plan logistics (transporting youth around the village to interview elders, transporting ourselves and equipment to Topawa), timing, and strategic planning.

 

Research and Evaluation Skills

We mined the collective memories of community elders for diverse experiences of the Topawa School. We looked for teachers, students, neighbors, and historical documents and photographs. The project was evaluated collectively along agreed upon criteria and informally by the youth after the project's completion. Project partners followed up with participating adults and elders to make sure they felt comfortable with what had been accomplished.

 

Skills of Place

Facilitating artists were both geographical and cultural others in this experience of living together in community. We had to quickly grasp the complexity of the context while also parsing the subtle interactions of humans and environments. On TO, landscape functions in particular ways to structure metaphorical and sometimes even narrative place. Finally, understanding an expansive definition of wealth was necessary for crafting a participatory structure based in abundance and capability development rather than risk management or blame (for the loss of the Topawa School).

I have found the taxonomy useful for myself and for my students. The list helps us parse the skills and learning structures while promoting advanced metacognition and the development of strategic thinking. I wonder about my organizing principles, however, and how other participants might frame learning differently. I also wonder how my design and humanities colleagues might respond, reevaluate, and reframe the learning categories or specific skills. As someone trained as a K–12 teacher, my understanding of taxonomies in general is weighted by primary and secondary pedagogical philosophies. Do my colleagues with adult-learning specializations or critical pedagogy foci offer alternative frameworks or critical commentary on the politics and/or hubris imbedded in taxonomies in general or this one in particular? Finally, my emphasis on children and youth creates unique power dynamics not necessarily operational in other communities. I happily invite commentary, revisions, and feedback.

 

Works Cited