The opportunities of this moment compel us as artists and organizations to translate what we know about the power of art into a clear story of community benefit. Whose lives, what values, and what commitments do we center in the choices we make budgetarily, programmatically, creatively? What benefit do we bring to our community? Who and what do we serve?

“That was an impact we didn’t expect,” said Michael Rohd, “State of Mind” creator and director of the Co-Lab for Civic Imagination at UM. “It stopped the meeting for a moment, because board members were crying as these students read their statements. The results of our workshop had become a form of testimony in that space.”

Every artist will have to choose their way to be, the work they’ll do, the posture they’ll take. What does your youth tell you an artist is supposed to do in days like these? What does the middle age before or behind you say? What about the old person you will one day be?

At this moment theatres are discussing, discovering, debating, and delivering upon the roles they are called to take on in community. Storytelling. Transformational engagement. Shared resources. Statements of solidarity and actions in service to movements. There is no single way to be a theatre in one’s place now. There never has been.

When, as a nonprofit, local government, or arts institution, we try to build relationships and trust in community, we are often operating from within systems that have done harm. Can we build a healthy “we” on a foundation of harm? What have we changed? What have we repaired? What have we made right? Who is being centered, every day, by what we do now and how we do it?

Your vision of a nation that works for everyone is dependent on all Americans committing to build a story together- a narrative that includes all, cares for all and is based in a shared vision for what the Public in Public Health should mean.

We find that one of the key barriers to successful collaboration between artists and community residents and partners is frequently a lack of clarity and communication about the why and the how- why is each partner working on the project? How do they want to work on the project? How will decisions be made? Who is being served?

I think, as artists and organizers involved in a collaborative form that demands, arguably, one skill above all others, we are at a moment where we can put that skill to new use. That skill is listening, and we can radically alter our role in our communities if we employ it with greater intentionality and generosity.

“Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration,” the social justice exhibition at the ASU Art Museum, asks viewers to do more than contemplate the artworks that address mass incarceration.

The show, the first ever to take over the entire museum, wants visitors to be actively engaged in thinking about the history, the future and their own relationship to the crisis.

Michael Rohd, one of the 12 artists in the show, focuses on the viewer’s journey throughout the exhibition.