The Community HeARTbeats Program

Creative expression as a tool for raising awareness, promoting civic engagement, and prompting social action

The process of social change is in desperate need of creativity and imagination, and the aesthetic process in urgent need of social engagement.  - Jane Trowell, University of San Francisco

Human Values for Transformative Action (HVTA), in partnership with local youth, grassroots groups, learning institutions, and other organizations, has launched the Community Heartbeats Program, which focuses on the powerful potential of creative expression as a tool for engaging and transforming communities.

Objectives:

In our visually-oriented society, the Community Heartbeats approach can be used as a powerful tool for accomplishing the following objectives:

• Promoting an appreciation for the powerful potential of visual images as tools for community mobilization
• Offering institutions of learning a channel for engaging students around human rights/human values issues within their own communities, thus rooming young people--our future leaders--to be thoughtful agents of social change 
• Conducting a bottom-up needs assessment
• Engaging marginalized groups
• Informing decision makers
• Underscoring the troubling gaps between human rights and human realities

Schools, religious organizations, state and city offices, non-governmental organizations, corporations, and all other community groups are invited to join the movement and to assume their roles and responsibilities as agents of positive social change.

Communities across the U.S. and abroad will be invited to replicate the Community Heartbeats program in their local areas and to share experiences and exchange strategies for implementing change. An internet gallery will showcase all visual images and help to initiate a network of communication and collaboration between local, national, and international partners. A documentary video, photo journal, and manual are being compiled and will be used to inform, inspire, and involve future partners.

The Program:

The Community Heartbeats Program calls upon the community’s youth and all people of good will to connect with individuals from marginalized groups and to work together to create visual images that accurately represent the experiences, needs, and suggestions of these individuals/groups. Assessing the needs and concerns of these sectors of the population is a necessary first step in the process of forging truly inclusive, just, and peaceful communities. Scores of local individuals and groups have enthusiastically taken on this challenge and the youth of our communities are playing a key role as catalysts for change. Artists as well as individuals who do not consider themselves to be artistically inclined participate in this program.

Community HeARTbeats Exhibitions are used as sites for promoting dialogues, developing follow-up action plans, and establishing connections with regional, national, and international partners. In 2005, Officials of the United Nations Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), based in South Africa and Europe , as well as other scholar/activists were present to view the exhibits, discuss the process, meet participants, and serve as catalysts for launching the Community HeARTbeats program in their own cities.