Using Arts to Bind the Community

By Sara Terry Gabrels

The Christian Science Monitor, March 19, 1998

Anna Faith Jones is a believer in a simple truth about art. Whether you hang it, sing it, dance it, play it, or wear it, art, she says, is about community.

It's a long-held conviction, rooted in a childhood immersed in music lessons and choir singing - and the memory of Marian Anderson drawing huge crowds when she sang at the Lincoln Memorial, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her give a concert in Constitution Hall because she was black.

"I come from a people for whom music was a great outlet," says Ms. Jones. "It was an outlet [for community] when they had few outlets, first as slaves and later in deeply segregated communities. I've always understood that about art."

Today, as president of the Boston Foundation, a community foundation with assets of more than $500 million, she is overseeing a recently announced campaign to create a multi-million-dollar fund that aims to weave every aspect of the arts more closely through the daily lives of Bostonians.

Ms. Jones is no lonely pioneer in championing the relationship between the arts and communities. While many headlines continue to focus on the so-called culture wars, as well as the funding woes of the National Endowment for the Arts, there is a quietly building commitment at state and local levels to nurture art within communities across the country.

"It's not necessarily a role that art has always been funded to play in the past," says Jonathan Katz of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA).

Increasingly, says Mr. Katz, government agencies at all levels are turning to arts-based programs. When his organization published a report about ways the arts can help youths, one of the biggest patrons was the US Department of Justice. It bought 5,000 copies to distribute to counselors working with at-risk teens.

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