Microsoft Word - MantieWilson Final 092717 .docx Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts Volume 6, Issue 2 http://artivate.org pp. 32-45 pp. 8-32 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2017, Kevin Wilson & Roger Mantie INSPIRING SOULFUL COMMUNITIES THROUGH MUSIC: CONNECTING ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT VIA CREATIVE PLACEMAKING Kevin Wilson and Roger Mantie Arizona State University Abstract Due to its focus on business topics such as entrepreneurship and management, arts entrepreneurship education has often focused on economic motivations and market-driven rationales (Beckman, 2007; Manjon and Guo, 2015). The same often holds true for the community development field (Phillips, 2003). This article examines an interdisciplinary collaboration between courses in two disparate units of a university: music and community development. Creative placemaking activities are presented as pedagogical tools for connecting arts entrepreneurship and community development goals. At the heart of the experiences described was a desire to extend beyond the dominant paradigm of both arts entrepreneurship and community development in relation to economic development of the individual and collective. In so doing, it is suggested that these projects represent a soulful approach to learning and community building (Westoby, 2016; Westoby and Dowling, 2009) via creative placemaking. Our charge [as arts entrepreneurship educators] is to prepare students for a professional life of means, meaning, and the opportunity to give back, equipped to thrive within the world they will soon inherit, a world rife with challenges, yet ripe with opportunities. - Mark Rabideau Recognizing the importance of weaving arts activities into the fabric of community development practice, the National Endowment for the Arts introduced a focus on “creative placemaking” in 2010. Markusen and Gadwa (2010) describe creative placemaking as a process whereby: [P]artners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired. (p. 3) ArtPlace America, a ten-year collaboration between a number of foundations, federal agencies, and financial institutions, has been at the forefront of efforts to advance creative placemaking. Drawing on the urban planning ideas of Jane Jacobs, ArtPlace America suggests that community development work “must be locally informed, human-centric, and holistic,” and that in creative placemaking projects, “art plays an intentional and integrated role in place-based community planning and development”,(ArtPlace America, 2016) Due in part to the relatively large investment of economic capital in creative placemaking projects over the past ten years, creative placemaking has become an important conceptual and aspirational ideal influencing arts entrepreneurship and arts-related training programs in higher education. Arts entrepreneurship education (AEE) is an area of growing interest in arts education and pedagogy research that resonates with the discourses of creative placemaking. In part, AEE is a response to the creative industries placing value on the consumption of arts, entertainment, and culture for economic growth in urban development (Beckman, 2007; Chang & Wyszomirski, 2015; Lloyd, 2002). Due to its emphasis on business topics such as entrepreneurship and management, AEE has generally been focused on economic motivations and market-driven rationales (Beckman, 2007; Manjon & Guo, 2015). Yet, there is growing support that more humanistic characteristics, such as self-efficacy, self-actualization, place-making Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 33 for exploration and innovation, empowerment, trust building, collaborative engagement, and sense of community are inherent to the pedagogy and practice of arts entrepreneurship in higher education (Beckman & Essig, 2012; Manjon & Guo, 2015). Pollard and Wilson (2014) identified five goals with respect to AEE: (a) the capacity to think creatively, strategically, analytically, and reflectively; (b) confidence in one’s abilities; (c) the ability to collaborate; (d) well-developed communication skills; and (e) an understanding of the current artistic context. Welsh et al. (2014) suggest that the effectiveness of AEE is directly related to the extent to which AEE programs address and meet both the professional and academic needs of students. Roberts (2013) echoed this notion, suggesting that entrepreneurship in the arts goes beyond building a business skillset, and he advocates for pedagogy to be innovative by means of genre blending. While scholars have presented various pedagogic methods and dispositions for AEE in recent years (Essig, 2013, 2015; Pollard & Wilson, 2013; Welsh et al., 2014), collaborative and experiential learning has been deemed effective in developing innovative ideas for students to utilize as value-enhancing knowledge sharing processes (Essig, 2013; Welsh et al., 2014). Essig (2013) suggests that mentorship, collaborative team projects, and experiential learning are three useful pedagogies for developing “entrepreneurial habits of mind.” This situates universities as mediating structures for the creative process of arts entrepreneurship in linking the means for arts entrepreneurship (i.e., alertness, specialized knowledge, financial capital) with its end-goals (i.e., wealth creation, value creation, sustainable culture) (Essig, 2015). In this article we describe the practical application of the university as a mediating structure by examining an interdisciplinary collaboration between courses in two disparate units of the university: music and community development. The intent of our collaboration was to offer a humanistic approach toward building and bridging relationships and developing human capacities that reach beyond the economically dominant paradigm within which research and practice in AEE have typically been situated. While not officially (or even unofficially) courses in arts entrepreneurship, we believe the activities that resulted from our two courses embody the spirit of AEE and demonstrate how AEE thinking can be embedded in the fabric of arts training and community development. We believe our interdisciplinary collaboration responds to, and supports, Rabideau’s claim that AEE: must thrive in non-curricular spaces, as much as be infused across curricular initiatives; cross- pollinate among faculty, regardless of generational boundaries, traditional silos, and tenured lines; and unite campus and community, with particular attention to those at the margins of society. (Gartner, Roberts, & Rabideau, 2015) We further support Jackson, Herranz, and Kebwasa-Green’s (2003) assertion that there is a need for comprehensive documentation of the various ways in which people participate in cultural activities that can provide better grounds for understanding community dynamics. This article represents a modest step in that direction. Setting the Stage Fortunately, from our perspective, community engagement projects variously described as outreach, engagement, creative placemaking, and more are becoming increasingly common in arts education and training programs in higher education. To our knowledge, however, instances of these initiatives originating in music units are less common than in other artistic units. Although AEE has advanced considerably in recent years, it is still, particularly in the higher education music field, in its relative infancy. In order to advance work in this area, ongoing theorizing is imperative. Toward this end, we offer conceptual elaboration that is, to some degree, post hoc in nature. While our initial joint discussions were grounded in our respective pre-existing theoretical understandings as instructors and researchers and Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 34 we had what might be loosely be called “working hypotheses,” our collaborative efforts have helped to bring forth additional insights that we believe can add value to AEE discourses. Dialogical Community Development (DCD) Community development has been concerned with the notion that economic development is a chief indicator of community wellbeing (Bhattacharyya, 1995, 2004; Phillips, 2003). Yet, in order to ensure social support and a sense of community, humanistic characteristics such as agency, empathy, hospitality, resilience, and civic engagement are significant elements of sustainable community development (Bhattacharyya, 1995, 2004; Putnam, 2000; Westoby & Dowling, 2009). Establishing trust and empathetically engaging with others in a manner that welcomes reciprocation opens the door for communication to spark collaboration. The conceptualization of community for this article heeds the call from Westoby and Dowling’s (2009) critical insight into the essence of community work. Westoby and Dowling coined the term “dialogical community development” (DCD) to reflect the practice of listening deeply and making oneself present to the other. DCD “invites awareness, attention and imagination that are directed at our relations to one another, our relations to place, to practice, to economics, culture, earth, politics and the traces of history and so forth” (p. 14). The “dialogue” in DCD is considered a “mutual process of building shared understanding, meaning, communication, and creative action” (2009, p. 10). DCD requires attentiveness throughout the process and orients community as hospitality by “welcoming other people, other ideas, and other ways of thinking about community life” (Westoby & Dowling, 2009, p. 12). Westoby and Dowling suggest that DCD is a social practice that fosters social relationships, invokes multiple elements of personal and collective agency, and aims to reclaim places as spaces of social activity rather than the current “norm” of speculative economic activity. In order for this to occur, this social process encourages poetic participation “that comes when people genuinely participate in community life as an intimate engagement of their creative imaginations” (2009, p. 18). In Creating Us: Community Work With Soul, Westoby (2016) introduces the term “soul” to describe the animation of the individual and the collective body. This builds upon his previous work with Dowling (Westoby & Dowling, 2009) where they quote rhythm and blues legend Ray Charles’s classification of soul as “the ability to respond from our deepest place” (p. 14). Westoby (2016) suggests that community work from a soulful perspective is a social process to be embraced as a responsive dance, something Westoby and Dowling describe as: a quality, a dimension, a movement towards experiencing life in a way that adds depth, value, relatedness, heart and substance…A soulful orientation invites hospitality towards other people and places and other ways of being, doing, and imagining. It requires…‘another’ way, one that demands heart, emotion, and will. (p. 15) Dialogical community work with soul, then, is founded on finding deeper social and cultural meanings together and appreciating alternative ideas and ways of thinking, a notion that resonates strongly with the concept of hospitality found in the community music literature (e.g., Higgins, 2007, 2012). Creative Placemaking Bennett (2014) argues that “communities consistently employ creative placemaking interventions to strengthen economic development, encourage civic engagement, build resiliency, and/or contribute to quality of life” (pp. 77-78). He suggests that as part of organic community planning, creative placemaking ideally engages residents in the neighborhood development process. In response to various criticisms highlighting issues of gentrification and displacement (e.g., Bedoya, 2012), creative placemaking has more Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 35 recently been deemed the deliberate integration of arts, culture, and community-engaged design in community development practices to expand opportunity for vulnerable populations (Borrup, 2016). In his chapter, “Creative Placemaking: Arts and Culture as a Partner in Community Revitalization,” Borrup (2016) emphasizes that creative placemaking contributes to community building in that it amplifies “local human, physical, and cultural assets to enhance the social and civic fabric” (p. 1). Aligned with aforementioned arguments concerning community development work and creative placemaking, Borrup suggests that creative placemakers achieve success by thinking holistically and continuously pushing to connect established silos of practice. When done effectively, creative placemaking can arguably foster what Debra Webb, following Roberto Bedoya, calls an “aesthetic of belonging” through place-based arts initiatives (Webb, 2014). This can contribute to what The Urban Institute’s Arts and Culture Indicators Project (Jackson, 2006) calls “cultural vitality.” Cultural vitality is considered “evidence of the creation, dissemination, validation, and support of the arts and cultural activity as a dimension of everyday life in communities” (Jackson, 2006). While admittedly limited in scope and aspiration, the creative placemaking activities described in this article sought to enact soul, hospitality, an aesthetics of belonging, and cultural vitality by respecting and capitalizing on local people, places, and spaces. For purposes of analysis we have borrowed from Webb (2014): (a) placemaking that is guided by civic engagement activities that foster cultural stewardship; (b) placemaking that spurs systemic social change and youth empowerment; and (c) placemaking that articulates a shared aesthetic of belonging. Partnership The community music projects discussed in this article were the result of a collaboration between the instructors of a school of music graduate course entitled “Music and Community Engagement” and an undergraduate course entitled “Leisure and Quality of Life” in the university’s community resources and development school. Students in the school of music class were partnered with selected students in the community development class and tasked with planning, facilitating, and evaluating community-based music projects overtly described as “creative placemaking,” and deliberately placed within a “community cultural development” frame. While this collaboration occurred in both 2015 and 2016, we wish to highlight the evidence from the inaugural year of the project to set the stage for how these projects illustrate the benefits for students within the contexts of creative placemaking, DCD, and AEE. The overarching goal of the collaborative project assignment was for each school of music student to organize a “one-off” event with the potential of being sustainable for future engagements. The school of music students functioned as the music leaders and content specialists. The community development students served as “community development officers” responsible for researching and coordinating logistics. As instructors, we decided not to impose too much structure, enabling each project to be as broad or as narrow as desired. Criteria were listed in the course syllabi as follows: ● event should occur no later than the last day of the semester ● event should be at least 30 minutes (but may be longer) ● should involve as many community members as feasible/reasonable; advertising and “recruitment” will be important ● must be self-supported [i.e., no course money available] ● must involve some form of documentation (i.e., pictures, video, post-event interviews with participants, etc.) In order to provide the greatest latitude for creative thinking, assessments were intended to focus attention on reflection without becoming overly prescriptive. The music students were required to submit a Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 36 short write-up that provided: (a) a brief description of the event (e.g., Where and when did it take place? How many people did it involve? Who were they?); (b) evidence of success that involved some sort of indicators or metrics (e.g., 7 of 10 people said afterwards they were satisfied or very satisfied and would do this again); and (c) brief thoughts on what might be changed or improved if one were to do the project again in the future. The community development students were required to submit a short reflection paper that identified: (a) how the project was personally, socially, and culturally beneficial to quality of life of the participant; (b) how it may have impacted the quality of life of participants personally, socially, and culturally; and (c) considerations for the future facilitation of these community programs. The community development students also offered a short class presentation after the completion of the program that illustrated how the event contributed to quality of life through photos, video, and other participant accounts. We initiated this partnership with the hope that students would listen to each other, as well as the participants from the community, throughout the creative process in order to address tensions and complexities collaboratively. As such, a goal was to offer an opportunity for students to step outside of their comfort zones in unfamiliar surroundings to think critically and cultivate new ideas with people they had never met. The results of this vision manifested through seven unique creative placemaking projects in 2015. The Projects The seven projects for this experiment in creative placemaking took place in fall 2015. Serving as examples for the discussion to follow, they are presented in no particular order. Community Garden The community garden project connected the music student, a low brass player, and the community development students with volunteers from a local community garden, as well as some other community members. The community garden volunteers explained the work they do and gave tours to the students. The event was a potluck style luncheon formed in appreciation for the volunteers of the garden, and included a tuba quartet playing polka music. There were about 20 people in attendance. At the conclusion of the event, the students drove the leftover food to the local homeless shelter. Figure 1. Community Garden Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 37 Heritage Hallelujah The Heritage Hallelujah event, named after the school and the famous chorus by Handel, was an opportunity to bring together people of all ages in song. The idea was sparked from a desire to create an annual tradition to invite alumni of the school, a private charter school with a circumscribed community, to actively participate in their December concert by joining the choirs on stage to sing a final number. There were a total of 50 people in attendance, 30 females and 20 males. Of the 34 attendees who completed the exit survey offered by the student event hosts, all except for one indicated they would like to do this event again and 25 relayed that the event motivated them to pursue participating in similar music events in the future. Figure 2. Heritage Hallelujah “Beat Lab” Workshop for Girl Scouts The Beat Lab was a collaboration between the music student, a local museum, and the Girl Scouts organization. The activity fused acoustic and digital music-making in an effort to educate and encourage the participants to create their own musical arrangements (subsequently uploaded to the cloud for later sharing with their parents) and perform live in front of their peers. Approximately 100 Girl Scouts attended the event, necessitating the school of music student to involve three other music students from the university to “apprentice.” Over 85% of the girl scouts said they enjoyed the lab. This particular event was the launching pad for the music student’s startup business that now travels the local area facilitating activities and workshops similar to those offered at this initial event. Figure 3. “Beatlab” Workshop for Girl Scouts Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 38 Musical Maps The Musical Maps event involved members of the community listening to live music while making art. Significantly, the event occurred at a geographic area striving to become known as another arts corridor in the city’s downtown, emulating a successful example of one two miles away. The event was advertised using social media (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) for a local nonprofit organization leading up to the event. During the three-hour event, approximately 40 community members attended. Collaborative efforts were supported by donations from a local for-profit music venue that provided compensation for the live performers, as well as food and drink donations by a company known to one of the community development students. Figure 4. Musical Maps Music and Art Making Workshop This event was in some ways very similar to the musical maps event, except that it occurred on the university campus and involved only eight participants, most of whom were from the university’s international community, and it involved structured activities. The stated goal of this event was to mix music with visual arts in order to improve the quality of life for participants. Figure 5. Music and Art Making Workshop Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 39 Epic Instrument Maker Challenge The Epic Instrument Challenge was modeled after the Musical Hackathons held in New York and was inspired by what is often referred to as “maker culture.” Student facilitators created the event with the notion that it might promote creativity and participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009). Because the local geographic area is dispersed due to urban sprawl, they hoped that it would bring together like-minded people. Even though the event had fewer participants than anticipated, a young boy illustrated the ethos of the project with a wooden cigar box acoustic guitar he built with his father. He was rewarded for his innovative instrument and conjunctive performance with a small collection of records donated by a local record store. Figure 6. Epic Instrument Maker Challenge Instrument Making out of Recycled Materials This event took place at a local community center that focuses on providing life skills and an accommodating environment for underserved youth. Eight girls from the nearby community attended the event. The students facilitating the activity brought recyclable materials (i.e., water bottles, empty toilet paper rolls, etc.) to the center in order to work with the children to create their own instruments. The event also involved customizing a song from The Sound of Music by using lyrics made up by the participants. Figure 7. Instrument Making out of Recycled Materials Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 40 Discussion As is hopefully evident, the projects undertaken by the students illustrate the value of community development and arts entrepreneurship beyond strictly economic factors. Pictures of the events illustrate how the projects were soulful experiences for participants per Westoby’s (2016) definition of soul as the animation of the individual and the collective body. As discussed below using Webb’s (2014) three framework components, we hope to provide a more intimate association between AEE and DCD that amplifies the “dialogue” component of DCD, considered as a “mutual process of building shared understanding, meaning, communication, and creative action” (Westoby & Dowling, 2009, p. 10). Civic Engagement Activities that Foster Cultural Stewardship While the elements of DCD as a soulful approach to building community were evident in some capacity across all community music events, the aspects of civic engagement were showcased, despite their obvious dissimilarities, most prominently in the community garden, Heritage Hallelujah, musical maps, and recycled instruments projects. Each of these individual events foregrounded a sense of hospitality and ways of being, doing, and imagining that helped to build a sense of community. As one of the community development students wrote in her reflection about the community garden event: A social benefit of this event was that I...was able to communicate my passions and future goals with [the community garden volunteers]. A cultural benefit was that we are all a part of a group small or big and we were able to come together and share our common goals...As students, we were able to make a difference and do something positive in other people’s lives. Although the Heritage Hallelujah event occurred within a physical and social context that in some ways stretches the definitions of “public” and “civic,” it most certainly engendered a sense of cultural stewardship, one that helped to ameliorate differences of age and class. At the same time, the cultural and ethnic/racial homogeneity in this event was striking, highlighting the paradox in community development that, while communities are lauded to the extent they represent a genuine sense of belonging and participation, they are also defined according to in-group and out-group membership. When cultural stewardship promotes hierarchies and exclusion, civic engagement becomes just another mechanism whereby the already-advantaged entrench their dominant positions in society. In this respect, the recycled instruments event and, to lesser extents, the musical maps and community gardens events represented creative placemaking engagements that did not further enshrine economic and socio-cultural privilege. Systemic Social Change and Youth Empowerment Social change entails that people in a community have the capacity to engage with and feel as part of the participatory process. We felt this aspect most overtly in the beat lab, recycled instruments, music and art making workshop, and the epic instrument maker challenge. The capacity for community music projects to facilitate a sense of empowerment was recognized by one of the community development students, who, in reflecting on the recycled instruments event, remarked, “This project was something that anyone could do. It didn’t matter what age, gender or social class.” In an environment where waste tends to be overlooked, particularly relevant to the urban environment in which these projects took place, the recycled instruments project highlighted the notion that innovative use of materials can encourage creative solutions. It allowed for creative placemaking to be carried out in a no-cost, eco-friendly, and fun manner that helped the underserved youth to recognize their inherent musicality and their capacities to be creative. Validation can also be empowering for youth as they attempt to “feel out” whether or not participation is acceptable. This was borne out in the epic instrument maker challenge, where the young boy with the wooden cigar box acoustic guitar was rewarded with a small collection of records donated by a Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 41 local record store for not only working with his father to create his instrument, but also performing classic rock songs to the receptive audience in the music-maker project. Notably, the impact of the community music projects was as impactful on the students as it was on the participants. As one community development student remarked: Working with youth that have bad home lives or struggle for their next meal was new for me. It was very eye opening to see these kids that have some type of struggle in their lives but they still had smiles on their faces and a positive attitude. Despite their seemingly positive impacts, the one-off events undertaken by the students clearly do not qualify as systemic social change. That said, change is reliant upon empowerment, a concept that can take many forms beyond its socio-political implications. The beat lab, for example, provided not just a sense of confidence for the Girl Scouts, but demonstrable and tangible evidence of their creative capacities. Exit tickets and student reflections all point to a very powerful event for everyone involved. The music and art- making workshop, while it involved primarily older youth, was also seen as a valuable and empowering learning experience for everyone involved. As one of the community development students revealed: This project was personally beneficial to me because I got to learn different aspects of music and visual arts that I did not know before. I got to learn how to play a song on the piano and I got to try and learn how to draw. Take in mind, I am not the best at drawing, but I gave it all I had. Shared Aesthetic of Belonging Contributing to the sense of belonging that comes from creative placemaking, the community garden and Hallelujah events were both potluck-style events. As a result, the structure of these projects was inherently participatory in nature. In both cases, the provision and donation of food contributed to the overall sense of sharing, togetherness, and belonging. The participants were not merely consumers of the creative placemaking activities but were also active producers of the experience. The feeling of belonging is a key component to building community. One of the community development students from the music and art project conveyed her feelings that being in a safe and hospitable environment, coupled with encouraging dialogue, added to the experience in a positive manner: “Throughout the entire event, all of the participants exchanged laughs and words of encouragement...Everyone seemed to enjoy each other’s company, which benefitted each of the participant’s quality of life personally.” The reciprocal exchange of humor and positive dialogue support a soulful approach to community work. It helps establish a better sense of situational trust and acceptance, especially in an environment comprised of individuals from an array of cultural backgrounds. As another participant in the music and art project remarked: We all got to be in a comfortable setting where everyone became friends. They were also culturally benefitted because we all come from different places, so we got to learn about each other and we all got to learn about music and visual arts. The fact that both music and visual art were utilized in various fashions to bridge language and ethnic barriers and propagated creative placemaking suggests that it was an effective strategy for navigating these potential constraints. Webb’s (2014) notion of aesthetics of belonging builds upon the work of Bedoya (2012), who interrogates the notion of dis-belonging as it arises from creative placemaking work and its potential for displacement. We would argue that, while none of the events undertaken by the students reached the level of impact that might effect/affect long-term belonging or dis-belonging (and might go so far as to argue that belonging and dis-belonging are two sides of the same coin where both, by definition, co-exist), sensitivity to the aesthetics of belonging is critical to ethically-conducted creative placemaking work. While our Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 42 geographic area does not currently contain a large Black/African-American population relative to national figures, it does contain a relatively high percentage of Native Americans; participants in all the creative placemaking events were primarily white and Asian, with a few observably classified (particularly in the recycled instruments event) as Hispanic. Although demographic category is but one variable by which belonging might be measured, it is a primary one. Utility Together, students from two units of the university helped to facilitate experiences that offered a platform to illustrate resourcefulness and innovation towards creating value for themselves and the community. Public (i.e., community garden, community center) and private (i.e., museum, local business) spaces were animated via music and art in these creative placemaking projects. Local business viability was integrated through partnerships to provide food and drink, as well as getting more foot traffic through places of business. This said, the actual impacts of the project engagements were clearly limited, reflecting the scale and scope of the collaborative pedagogical experiment. In our opinion, the most useful aspect of this exercise with respect to creative placemaking and AEE was its utility for fostering what Pollard and Wilson (2013) call “an entrepreneurship mindset,” or what Essig (2013) describes as “habits of mind for arts entrepreneurship.” As mentioned earlier, musical instances of creative placemaking and arts entrepreneurship are rarer than with other art forms. As a result, existing capacity for creative placemaking in the music field pales in comparison with, for example, visual art, dance, and drama. Although our community music projects were mostly the result of partner pairings (sometimes 3 in a group), their collaborative and applied nature responds to Essig’s (2013) call for collaborative team projects and experiential learning. If initiatives such as this one were scaled to other universities, perhaps entrepreneurial habits of mind might become as commonplace among musicians as they are among other artistic disciplines. Conclusion Universities have evolved from traditionally being considered as detached from the community to now having a significant role in the cultural development and social fabric of communities (Chatterton, 2000; Langston & Barrett, 2008). It is important for institutions of higher education to be embedded within their local communities to bridge AEE and community development efforts. Evidence of positive community planning and community building is carried out by and with communities (Bennett, 2014) and it can be facilitated by embedding university-driven initiatives within the communities in which they are situated. This amplifies the need for universities to consider the effects of bridging campuses and educational levels in order to present students with optimal opportunities for engaging with one another to learn (Gartner et al., 2015). At the heart of the experiences described here was a desire to extend beyond the dominant paradigm of both AEE and community development in relation to economic development of the individual (AEE) and collective (community development). In so doing, we argue that these projects represent a soulful approach to learning and community building (Westoby, 2016; Westoby & Dowling, 2009). Although not necessarily life-changing in any respect, the individual events reflected a genuine sense of poetic participation for everyone involved. With respect to AEE, the three areas of mentorship, collaborative team projects, and experiential learning were integrated within each of the community music projects. The projects also exemplified, at least to some extent, Pollard and Wilson’s (2014) five goals of AEE (i.e., the capacity to think creatively, strategically, analytically, and reflectively; confidence in one’s abilities; the Wilson & Mantie Inspiring Soulful Communities Through Music _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Artivate 6 (2) 43 ability to collaborate; well-developed communication skills; and an understanding of the current artistic context). Despite being located within a university coursework, the projects articulated here presented the students, per Gartner et al.’s (2015) recommendation, with a “non-curricular space” in which they could work with community members and students from other disciplines to co-create their own learning environments. Although not public-facing, the reflective aspects of the projects help to build the capacity to respond to Jackson et al.’s (2014) call for greater documentation of community dynamics. Our interdisciplinary collaboration implemented creative placemaking activities in these non-curricular spaces in an effort to connect AEE and community development. Creative placemaking activities provided opportunities for students to participate in civic engagement as community/cultural workers. The events themselves can be considered examples of cultural vitality in that they present “evidence of the creation, dissemination, validation, and support of the arts and cultural activity as a dimension of everyday life in communities” (Jackson, 2006). Lest our presentation be read as overly rosy, we must acknowledge that there were many challenges, frustrations, and mistakes that arose throughout the 2015 semester (many of which, incidentally, continued in the 2016 semester). Communication between the graduate and undergraduate students was not always smooth, and the open-ended nature of the assignment, while certainly consistent with the “spirit of entrepreneurship,” was not necessarily something comfortable for students accustomed to the kind of explicit, narrowly-proscribed assignments and curriculum that have become commonplace throughout much of the education system. At the risk of over-generalizing, programs of study in music at the higher education level have historically focused on performance preparation, not community engagement or community development. Based on anecdotal appraisal, the music students were, with maybe 1-2 exceptions, most certainly out of their comfort zone with these events. Programs of study in community development, while perhaps more flexible than music study, do not typically feature arts entrepreneurship as prominent subject matter, as the community development field, for the most part, has not explored the possibilities of arts entrepreneurship for community development. This lack of attention to arts entrepreneurship education in community development practice and education is exactly why creative placemaking has become such a popular approach for garnering interest and integration into the discourse. The reflections from the community development students evidenced more surprise and recognition of the possibilities of arts entrepreneurship for community development. This is noteworthy to instructors in the community development field and like fields such as tourism and public policy, as it highlights the significance of arts and culture being amplified in the name of urban development. Community development has figured prominently in the creative placemaking discourse practically since its inception. While there may have been a pragmatic aspect intended to marshal political support through economic rationalization, many creative placemaking discourses have, in our reading, moved in a more socially-conscious direction. Although there may be other instances of collaborations between arts disciplines and the field of community development beyond what we were able to uncover, we argue that such synergies represent under-realized potential for AEE. We hope that through greater sharing of examples, especially theorized examples, AEE can continue to effect greater change for the benefit of both practitioners and the communities they serve. 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