One-third of the children in Burlington and Winooski public schools are students of color, including new Americans who are English language learners. With the demographics in our region shifting so dramatically, government agencies, educational institutions, businesses, and nonprofits are grappling with inadequate cultural competency in trying to serve these myriad populations.

Yesterday, the Flynn Center, along with Burlington City Arts, the Vermont Arts Council, and the Vermont Community Foundation, hosted a forum in Burlington called New Community Visions with Americans for the Arts. The initiative’s goal was to explore the role that the arts play in pursuing a healthy, vibrant, and cohesive community, and how individuals, arts institutions, and support organizations can help achieve that.

In 2015, Americans for the Arts launched a two-year program to explore the role the arts can play in partnership with other sectors to create healthy, vibrant, and equitable communities. The New Community Visions Initiative seeks to work with our institutional systems to find points of intersection to address arts impact in our communities. 

This is the first in a weekly series of posts drawn from the newly released book, "To Change the Face & Heart of America: Selected Writings on the Arts and Communities, 1949-1992," by Robert E. Gard. This excerpt, "Invocation: What Is Our Calling?," was originally published in 1969.

When we propose to contribute toward making a place more healthy, equitable, and vibrant, we should be in and of the community—but not saving the people in it. 

"If I could wish for one thing in this life it would be that I might live long enough to hear the music of the American spirit emerging from thousands of fine civic orchestras in large places and small; see good plays, joyously presented and viewed in every American community almost every night; see fine pictures by native American artists decorating the walls of a multitude of American homes of every economic status."

Lakota culture and tradition remain a guiding light—the beacon from which the community has drawn from and used their cultural and artistic practices to both honor their ancestors and rally their communities towards solutions. There is no question that traditional cultural and artistic forms root individuals in a shared history, connect them in expression, and help them look towards the future.