Leveraging Arts for Justice, Equity, and Public Health: The Skywatchers Program and Its Implications for Community-Based Health Promotion Practice and Research

Abstract

Arts have long addressed the conditions that cause ill health, such as poverty, social inequality, and structural racism, and have recently taken on increased significance for public health. This article illuminates the potential for cross-sector collaboration between community-based health promotion and community-engaged arts to address the social determinants of health and build neighborhood assets at multiple levels of the social-ecological model. It features Skywatchers, a collaborative community arts ensemble of artists and residents of the culturally rich but economically poor Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco, California, and its original values-based “relational, durational, conversational, and structural” methodology focused on process over product and leveraging arts for justice and equity. Now, 10 years into its work, Skywatchers offers lessons about building reciprocal relationships, cocreating artworks, and promoting arts-based advocacy to improve the conditions that foster poor health in the neighborhood. The article discusses implications for community-based health promotion practice that delineate commitments and challenges shared between the two fields, their distinct roles and tools, and the potential for more widespread partnerships. It concludes with implications for policy and advocacy and a vision for expanded community-based participatory research to better understand the impact of arts on community health and well-being.

A holistic approach in epidemics

“…The holistic approach to the role of arts and culture in epidemic response recognizes the potential for creativity and innovation in promoting health and well-being during an epidemic and emphasizes the significance of collaborative efforts with artists and cultural practitioners to develop appropriate and effective public health interventions. This approach recognizes the value of leveraging arts and culture as powerful tools for promoting positive health outcomes (35) and fostering community engagement in epidemic response, providing opportunities for artists to share their work, as well as incorporating artistic and cultural practices into public health programs and policies.…”

Decolonising and Critical Approaches to Community Arts: Centering Relationality, Communality, And Power

“…Relationality can also be more fundamentally embedded within community arts spaces, fostering deeper connections, understandings of power, and transformative outcomes. For example, within the value-based methodology of the Skywatcher program (Epstein et al, 2021), relationships are seen as first site of social change, and that intimate interpersonal connection leads to large scale transformations. Relationality as a guiding value of this methodology, creates an intention for relationships that are reciprocal, that are caring, trusting, and non-transactional, and that must emerge through dialogue over time.…”

“…For those community arts spaces that are led and facilitated by community outsiders, recognition of power dynamics and ways of working that support agency and the flattening of power hierarchies where possible become essential. In the reviewed there were many examples where control was given up as participants were enabled to exercise agency around how they engaged or what they created (Beauregard et al, 2020;Epstein et al, 2021;Laver et al, 2014). For Beauregard et al (2020) this constituted a "reversal of power" between workshop facilitators and participants whereby a potential tension arose between the creative desires of each as participants envisaged incorporating a cultural practice of henna into the creative work, a practice unfamiliar to the artist facilitator.…”

“…Laver et al (2021) also note the resonances between project Creativity for Enablement and Wellbeing, and Watkins and Shulman's (2008) public homeplaces as spaces that connect individual and social experience in mutually transforming ways. Other papers also describe community arts spaces that bring together people from diverse backgrounds, supporting the sharing of ideas and perspectives and the formation of community across difference (Beauregard et al, 2020;Epstein et al, 2021;Laver et al, 2021;Soulsby et al, 2021;Sonn et al, 2015). Across some of these examples, there were broader commonalities which bound them together, such as geographic location, allowing for greater heterogeneity.…”

“…This is a key feature of many of the methodologies and frameworks for change at the heart of various initiatives, for example liberation and black feminist-oriented approaches. For Epstein et al (2021) it is through the production of art that personal narratives are situated within broader structural contexts, and through the sharing of collective stories these contexts become illuminated sharpening understanding of how they impact people's lives. Through collective dialogue, participants felt empowered with a collective voice and shared experience to undertake further advocacy, and in turn, public engagement with the art produced through the initiatives enabled further dialogue that supported these advocacy efforts.…”