While #DareToImagine is gearing up for what promises to be an amazing launch on October 10th, we’ve got even more news to share. The USDAC’s first major publication—An Act of Collective Imagination: The USDAC’s First Two Years of Action Research is now available for download from this link: http://usdac.us/report-on-first-two-years
An Act of Collective Imagination is the first publication to summarize the USDAC’s work to date along with the lessons we’ve learned about translating community members’ visions into powerful ideas and action.
In 2016, after multiple rounds of Imaginings and National Actions, the USDAC will launch its first official policy platform, a compendium of proposals for policies and initiatives that can significantly advance cultural democracy: pluralism, equity, and collaborative creativity in support of social justice and social inclusion.
This report was created to offer an inspiring glimpse of the possibilities to come. It portrays community-envisioned cultural policy that embodies the public interest in culture. We know this can take the place of special-interest cultural policy designed by and for the most powerful direct beneficiaries.
What if that glimpse turned into a steady gaze? We foresee a time in which cultural policymakers understand their task as listening deeply to the aspirations and concerns of the populace and responding with creativity to ensure full cultural citizenship for everyone in every community.
An Act of Collective Imagination features six specific policy ideas to address the needs and aspirations people have shared at Imaginings and through National Actions:
- A Bureau Of Cultural Citizenship to support and enact full community belonging;
- support for Rapid Artistic Response in times of crisis;
- a Cultural Impact Study, analogous to environmental impact assessment;
- a Bureau Of Teaching Artistry;
- a universal Basic Income Grant; and
- an EcoArts Fund.
In addition to these and other ideas emerging from USDAC organizing, An Act of Collective Imagination offers responses to the perennial question: "and how will we pay for a deeper investment in culture and creativity?"
As we always say, everything created must first be imagined. So as a people-powered department, we’ve taken matters into our own hands, demonstrating how it might be done. The required culture shift may start small, with specific communities and organizations adopting the generative policy ideas offered here. But with the help of Citizen Artists like you, it can spread and come to fruition. Download the report, share your thoughts, and join us in making the impossible possible!