Art has often been overlooked as fuel for development. Considered as either decoration or a collectible luxury, art has been narrowly understood as a product of culture rather than as the dynamic process of making. If culture means only a legacy of shared sites and beliefs that bond communities, the bridging capacity is forfeited. Making new artistic projects can bridge diverse communities and foster social capital through the development of skills and collaboration.
The Certificate in Arts and Policy is designed to enhance the capacity of city* governments to design and implement high-impact projects through the power of participatory arts. The Certificate is based on evidence that coordination across municipal functions and incorporation of broad-based participation in the arts can drive community impact in areas ranging from climate change, to public health, immigration, transportation, and education.
Each of these challenges is complex or “wicked,” meaning that each is transversal rather than delimited to an area. One challenge engages all the others: security, education, environment, public health, employment, integration of immigrants are all interdependent. Programs that address these and other challenges facing local governments must then recognize and leverage that interdependence in order to be effective. Like the global Sustainable Development Goals identified by the UN, city-centered goals require coordination among the range of particular areas.
Login or Register
You need to login!
Arts and Policy City Certificate
Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies. She is founder of “Cultural Agents,” an Initiative at Harvard and an NGO dedicated to reviving the civic mission of the Humanities. Sommer’s academic and outreach promotes development through arts and humanities, specifically through “Pre-Texts” arts-based literacy, and Renaissance Now, for decision makers to harness the power of arts for social development. Her books include Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (1991) about novels that consolidated new republics; Proceed with Caution when Engaged by Minority Literature (1999); Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental Education (2004) for times of immigration; and The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities (2014). Sommer has enjoyed and is dedicated to developing good public school education. She has a B.A. from New Jersey’s Douglass College for Women, and Ph.D. from Rutgers University.