| ISBN: | 978-0-9815593-0-8 |
| Publisher: | New Village Press |
| Distributor: | Consortium |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Binding: | Trade Paperback |
| Trim: | 6 x 9 x 0.56 |
| Illustration: | 100+ b/w photos and illus. |
| Release: | February 20, 2009 |
| Price: | $14.95 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 1, 2008
Contact: Karen Stewart
PO Box 3049
Oakland, CA 94609
510 420-1361;
Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame
By Beverly Naidus
Oakland, CA (February 4, 2009) – New Village Press announces its forthcoming title, Arts for Change, by Beverly Naidus, a provocative, personal look at the motivations and challenges of teaching socially engaged arts. The author offers candid examination of her own university teaching career, weaves in broader social and historical perspectives, and opens readers' minds to other points of view, including those collected from contemporaries in her field.
Arts for Change intersperses scholarly concerns with intimate, image-rich metaphor in a free-spirited, non-academic prose. The author answers vital questions that students and educators have long been asking: How can polarized groups work together to solve social and environmental problems? How can art be used to raise consciousness?
Using her personal experiences in the classroom as a template, Naidus guides the reader through a progression of steps to help students observe the world around them and craft artistic responses to what they see. Arts for Change also features interviews with over 30 artist/educators with diverse opinions and strategies for successfully engaging students in what, to them, is most meaningful.
Illustrated with 48 visuals and photographs of student, faculty and community works, Arts for Change is both inspirational and instructional. It is sure to stimulate new thinking among arts faculty, arts students, and activists of all kinds, as well as anyone who has an inkling of the role the arts can play in responding to critical issues of the day.
Intended audience: College-level educators and graduate students in arts education, arts and social change theory, best practices in community-based arts, and history of community arts courses. Faculty and students of critical arts theory and feminist art. Social activists.
Beverly Naidus, artist, activist, educator, and writer, has had her work exhibited internationally in venues including the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Armand Hammer Museum at UCLA. She is the author of two artist’s books: One Size Does Not Fit All and What Kinda Name is That, and has authored several essays on activist art pedagogy. She is currently co-creating a program at University of Washington, Tacoma on Arts in Community, with a focus on arts for social change within the Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences Program. She lives on Vashon Island, WA with her husband and son.
Bevery Naidus’ warm and serious pedagogic memoir should ring bells with educators everywhere. I have long admired her commitment to an alternative path in teaching art and social justice without contradictions. Her personal and political odyssey, and the thumbnail portraits of her artist colleagues/mentors, offer an illuminating glimpse beyond the academic curtain.
— Lucy R. Lippard, art critic, activist, curator, and author of The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society
New Village Press <www.newvillagepress.net> is a not-for-profit publisher devoted to the building of vibrant communities. The Press specializes in books about community-based art and community cultural development. It is a public-benefit venture of Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility <www.adpsr.org>.
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