Interrupting habitus and community-based arts: Pedagogical efficacy in a university/community collaboration

This study examines the "border crossing" experiences of college students participating in Reflections in Brown. Separate/Unequal/Still? Reflections in Brown is the name given to a multidisciplinary community-based arts project that is the product of a university/community collaboration. The project, which culminated in a public performance, focused on the 1955 Brown vs. Board of Education supreme court decision, its legacy in Philadelphia, racism, and the continuing struggles for educational civil rights. The college students are enrolled in a "Field Internship in Community Arts" course; their professor is the artistic director of the project. A primary purpose for examining the college students' experiences is to illustrate how community-based arts pedagogically functions as a social change process. Drawing from community-based arts, critical social theory, and border pedagogy, the study first defines community-based arts, and then outlines a pedagogical framework characterizing it as an intervention practice for challenging border constructions and for changing some of their divisive interests. The study illustrates how Reflections in Brown works to interrupt the college students' habitus, and alter their perceptions of the world and their places in it. The study is also concerned with exploring the role of the community-based artist as critical educator and expands upon this aspect as well. Using a critical arts-based research approach, the study finds that Reflections in Brown generated a beneficial landscape of tensions and ambiguities. As process products, this disequilibrium had a catalytic role in reformulating the students' perceptions, in altering habitus, and in triggering the change process itself. The study concludes with recommendations for community-based artists and educators; it also identifies and suggests areas for expanding upon this research.