Voices of the City 2012

Overview

EnJoy Productions has been invited by the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts to serve as the Creative Directors for Voices of the City, a community-wide initiative to deepen civic engagement through story and play. EnJoy and Broadway Center have collaborated on many projects over the past five years. The latest project builds on a shared belief that listening, self-expression, diverse community participation and playful creativity are keys to building a vital, safe and healthy community.

Under the direction of the Broadway Center’s lead staff, Executive Director David Fischer and Deputy Executive Director Benjii Bittle, the organization hosted a series of successful “Community Dialogues” from 2007-2010 (with diverse segments of the community: African Heritage, Pan-Latino, Pan-Asian, LGBT, Communities of Faith, Military, Under-30, Hip-Hop, etc.) Now, the Broadway Center intends to extend and expand the initiative into 2011 and beyond with “Voices of the City.”

Goals and Intentions

The driving issues behind this expanded endeavor are Community Engagement and Diverse Social Participation in the urban environment. The new project, “Voices of the City”, seeks to draw out community members’ stories that are rooted in the authenticity of place, time and experience. We will do this by engaging professional artists as coaches and facilitators in workshops with diverse community that:

• Explore in conversation and workshops what “pride of place” means, including the exploration of Tacoma’s urban setting,
• Unearth meaning, beauty and details of both story and place through research and discussion,
• Craft stories (true narrative, music, and other art-making techniques) - whether autobiographical, historical or pure fiction - and prepare these for performance
• Merge Stories with Place - creating free walking tours with embedded performance, as part of the fall 2011 Art Free for All, presented by BCPA.

Part of the expressed mission of BCPA is “to energize the revitalization of downtown Tacoma”. Accordingly, the organization perceives its job to use the performing arts as a creative and innovative platform to engage in community-building, to activate the downtown landscape, and deepen “pride of place.”

The 2011 “Voices of the City” initiative is designed to offer a dynamic approach to civic engagement - building new, diverse relationships, releasing joy, exercising empathy, practicing conviviality - and in so doing, modeling a healthy community. It is the hope of the Broadway Center and EnJoy Productions that this may become a template for other communities.

The initiative’s larger goal is to affect positive change in civic culture, as seen in enhanced social interaction between diverse groups. Tacoma has a plethora of emergent groups: new associations, collectives, artists, and ad-hoc teams who are working for change. “Voices of the City” invites all parties to engage in this project.