Inner-city public school classrooms, group homes, juvenile detention centers and facilities will be with Americans forever. Their populations can deflate, challenge, or improve any artist's skills and expertise. The author thinks of teaching artists who work these strenuous communities as soldiers of service, dedicated individuals who fight with…

In this article, the author shares her experiences of the universality of art making and artistic experience of being a dancer and teaching artist. She describes her performance at Kohler, a worldwide leader in plumbing products in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she had an epiphany dancing in a toilet factory--a sudden, intuitive moment of…

The Artists' Collective for Social Change (ACSC) was established after the success of a multidisciplinary theater-dance project completed in March 2000 at a girls' residential treatment facility, Devereux Deerhaven, in Chester, New Jersey. The uncomfortable nature of this artistic adventure resulted in a model for teaching at-risk and underserved…

The authors work in the most difficult conditions to create the most crucial art. In this article, the authors share their experience in teaching art at Devereux Deerhaven, a home for abused and neglected girls. They arrived at Devereux Deerhaven unprepared for the residents and the facility. Yet, they left educated about their students and the…