Robert Gard Lecture Series

Balancing Values

By E'Vonne Coleman
Durham, North Carolina

June 28, 2002, Smith College, Northampton, MA
Prepared for University Of Massachusetts Amherst
Arts Extension Service

Good Morning. Thank you for getting up so early to share this time with me.

First, I want to honor and thank the indigenous people of this land for allowing me to stand here this morning. I consider it a great honor to have been selected to deliver the 2002 Robert Gard Lecture. And finally, I am humbled by the privilege of presenting the final lecture in this series for this wonderful national treasure, the Arts Extension Service under the leadership of Director, Dr. Craig Dreeszen.

I don't feel no ways tired!

We all came from somewhere. And knowing that somewhere laid the foundation for my life's work in the arts and community development.

You may have been born where you live now. You may have been born in the Midwest, the Deep South, out west, or here in the northeast. Beyond where we were born we also started out with some type of indoctrination--some values that our caregivers whispered in our ear. As we lived in our hometowns, we gained some perspectives from our community.

This morning I want to share with you somewhere of my life, my thoughts on how Robert Gard influenced the field, and leave you with a few personal reflections.

I don't feel no ways tired. Come too far from where I started from.

My somewhere was a dirt road in a small southern town. We had one stop light for many years. It was rural back then, but I did not know it. We were poor, but I did not feel it. We were segregated, and I could see it.

From those beginning value lessons--in church, at home, on my grandparents' farm--we were taught that we must be three times better, three times brighter, three times smarter, three times more educated than our white counterparts in order to succeed in America. It was not enough that we were citizens.

Growing up in the South, in the 60s, in a small town was often a unique experience from many others that I have met in my professional life. All of my K-8 education was in a segregated school. My high school years were in an integrated school. We were all forced to merge my freshman year and it was, as you can imagine, different and confusing for many of us. We, the Black students, were forced on the bus. And it was clear to us that we were not welcomed in the white schools.

The expectations of our parents and some teachers were clear--do your work, stay out of trouble, and mind the white folks. Jim Crow laws were alive and well. We were expected to conform to a separate, unequal existence in the integrated school. In my hometown we went through separate entrances if we wanted to visit the one dentist in town who would treat Blacks. On more than one occasion I paid for food through the back door of the local restaurant.

While growing up, like many of you, we took school trips to hear the state symphony and to tour the state art museum. It did not take long to notice that no one looked like me in the orchestra or in the pictures. My friends and I would peak around the corners in the museum to see statues from Africa, but they were never on the tour. Yes, I wondered why.

What saved me in high school was theatre. Always with a voice and flair for dramatics, both Black and white teachers nurtured this talent in me. There were days when I felt all I had was a character in a play, a song or a dance step to hold on to. Like Robert Gard, who stated that his father encouraged him to find his prairie, my mother wanted me to go on to college. But drama as a major, well, that was not what she had in mine. How was I to make a living she would ask? So I had two majors in college at North Carolina Central University, sociology and dramatic arts.

My mother once told me: "E, when you were a child, you would question a stop sign at the of a street. Your favorite question was always 'why'?" And that one word, why, has guided most of my work in this field.

So you see Robert Gard's account of his boyhood and work was somewhat familiar to me. Here was a man of humble beginnings who learned many of life's lessons very early. Here was a man who was very concerned with the voices from the land--a man who knew that life in small towns was rich with culture.

Patrick Overton described Mr. Gard as a man who "understood the sense of place as essential to any sincere movement in the rural arts." I too grew up in a small town, Garner, North Carolina where I spent many days on my grandparents' farm. I too learned lessons grounded in a sense of place.

Mr. Gard wrote in Prairie Visions: "I have tried sincerely to make Wisconsin a proud territory of the human spirit, of the sensitive approaches to home, nature and to the arts."

I wonder what impact Robert Gard would have had on my hometown? Would he have been able to break through the walls of segregation? Would he have found those who would tell their stories about entering public facilities through separate doors, drinking from separate water fountains, enjoying the Firemen's Day Parade from a different side of the street? If he were there, would all the stories about life in a small southern rural town really be told?

I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me…

HIS INFLUENCES

The influences of Robert Gard are far reaching because of his genuine appreciation of every day life. He left us his writings as guides on how to "serve" our communities. He appreciated the notions of rural aesthetics, excellence, and truth telling. Robert Gard's work was about community, primarily rural and small town communities. My work has also been about communities, both urban and rural, and particularly concerned with encouraging the inclusion of people of color in decision-making and policy development.

For well over 15 years I was affiliated with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Expansion Arts Program. The NEA created the Expansion Arts in 1971 to fund projects and organizations that were deeply rooted in and reflective of inner city, rural, and tribal communities as well another special and under-served populations.

The program was rooted in beliefs that represent a cross between the values of Robert Gard and the principles of the civil rights movement. The program goals fostered the belief that every community should be encouraged to engage in creative expression. It also supported the belief that this expression should be determined by the people who lived in that community. In other words, Expansion Arts helped institutionalized programs that were "deeply rooted in and reflective of" the culture and priorities of their home communities.

It is important to note here that in the mid 60s Robert Gard received a $250,000 grant from the NEA to develop rural arts programs across the country several years prior to the creation of Expansion Arts.

In the many long conversations I had with Vantile Whitfield, the founding director of the Expansion Arts program, we discussed the program's philosophy and reasons that it was named Expansion Arts. Mr. Whitfield explained, "We wanted a name that was specific but inclusive." He recognized the need to expand the arts to include what were then called ghetto arts, minority arts, arts in rural and small communities, and other art forms associated with particular cultures. The philosophical grounding was based on local expression-cultural, geographic, or ethnic. Expansion Arts embraced the notion that art created by, for, and of the community was a valid approach to art creation, and deserved national attention and funding.

Nancy Hanks, the second Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, eloquently described this newly recognized art phenomenon in a speech at Scripps College in 1972. I'd like to share her words with you:

"There is also another change in the arts in America life that is so new there is no commonly accepted name. Some refer to 'art at the grassroots' or 'art with grassroots' or 'ghetto arts' or 'rural arts' or 'art as a beginning' or 'popular art.' The Endowment's name is 'Expansion Arts'. Basically, we are taking about art growing from the community and art brought to a community by that community.
The movement is new in the sense that the people who enjoy and participate in these arts are for the most part those who traditionally have lived their lives remote from the arts as presented by the great institutions: the theatre, opera house, symphony hall, museum. And the movement is new in offering a different dimension of experience and promise and participation in the arts.

Expansion Arts involve the environment, the educational system, urban development, and rural improvement. Their needs are small in terms of dollars when one considers the monies necessary for the physical transformation of our inner city or the economic development of rural communities, but their benefit is great in terms of human values and encouragement of individual creativity."

Ms. Hanks went on to say that she has "no question about the impact of Expansion Arts on all the arts in the years to come, on artists as well as on audiences."

History has shown us that she was indeed correct. Expansion Arts was a movement and the art created by Expansion Arts organizations has impacted all the arts.

Expansion Arts Program created a table where rural arts and multiculturalism co-existed. For many, the notion of rural arts development only involved poor White people. For others, inner city art often meant the cultural expressions of poor Blacks and Hispanics. Expansion Arts as an inclusive program also supported the arts of others constituencies such as hospital arts programs, arts-in-prison programs and art created by those who were disabled. The Expansion Arts Program, under Mr. Whitfield's leadership, recognized the unique expressions of all groups and was careful to provide a round table for true and open dialogue.

Vantile Whitfield held similar ideas and values Robert Gard expressed as he shaped and guided the development of the Expansion Arts Program.

When Robert Gard arrived in a community, he would visit the common places where people gathered. He would go to the homes and farms, and listen to countless stories. He would later introduce the idea of telling those stories through a play or performance. Mr. Gard believed art was about every day life and you had to be there-to see it and hear it-and then you would feel it. Mr. Whitfield shared that view when he directed the Expansion Arts program.

In the early days of Expansion Arts, Mr. Whitfield organized a peer panel meeting consisting of sometimes 15 people. The panel reviewed grants during the morning and went on site visits over the next two days. He exposed city folks to the countryside and country folks to the inner city. Perhaps it was no accident that among the first employees that he hired were a country girl from Kinston, NC name Lizzie Green and a city boy from New York City name Gordon Braithwaite.

To many Vantile Whitfield, the founding director of Expansion Arts, is considered the father of the Expansion Arts movement. I believe Robert Gard was indeed one of the many Godfathers who laid the groundwork for this movement.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Preparing this paper has allowed me to consider my own career. I have been fortunate to have more than twenty-eight years of experience in community development and the arts.

My work is grounded in a few fundamental beliefs.
· People and communities have a right to determine their own destiny, including their cultural life.
· The arts are more than aesthetics and they can transform people and community.
· We are in the business of building community through the arts, and that is a greater mission than community arts development.
· The South, is culturally rich, but continues to be ignored by the so-called arts establishment.

My work centers on my own values of fairness, equity, equality, and acceptance. It has also been focused on exposing hypocrisy. I work hard to travel a road where creating opportunity for truth and service is always important.

I learned from the life of Robert Gard the importance of listening. I learned from the life of Vantile Whitfield the importance of taking responsibility.

Dr. Benjamin Mays, a noted educator and clergyman said: "Every man and woman is born into the world to do something unique and something distinctive, and if he or she does not do it, it will never be done."

My work is not yet done.

Thank You.