{"id":357792,"date":"2019-01-10T15:04:30","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T20:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=357792"},"modified":"2022-05-02T11:39:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T15:39:22","slug":"arts-and-activism-environmental-health-justice-357792","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/arts-and-activism-environmental-health-justice-357792\/","title":{"rendered":"Public health joins dance to put arts into action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last fall, students from a public health course and a dance class got together for a day of combined learning.<\/p>\n

In effort to understand how to initiate change in a community, students in Arts and Activism,\u00a0and their counterparts in Environmental Health and Justice in the Rochester Community,\u00a0met up in the Linda E. Sloan Studio of Todd Union to create some new moves.<\/p>\n

The Arts and Activism\u00a0students were using dance to explore the relationship between social activism and artistic practice. Earlier in the semester, the students\u2014in collaboration with a local organization\u2014used visual art, film, and performance to create a two-night interactive installation that would show the importance of voting during the 2018 mid-term elections. Now, they would study a new chapter that would explore the theater practice known as \u201cTheater of the Oppressed\u201d as a vehicle for community organization, expression, and action.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talk about communication and how to communicate ideas using theater practice,\u201d says Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp, instructor for\u00a0Arts and Activism and senior lecturer in the Program of Dance and Movement.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought my students would gain a broader perspective on communication from this experience,\u201d says Katrina Smith Korfmacher, director of community outreach and engagement core for the Environmental Health Sciences Center.<\/a> In her Environmental Health and Justice class, students had been working over the semester with several local groups to collect and analyze data for projects such as the protection of the City of Rochester\u2019s drinking water supply as well as the condition of the bike trails for the Genesee Riverway Trail.<\/p>\n

\"group
Professor Katrina Smith Korfmacher, front right, with students in her\u00a0Environmental Health and Justice course, take a short hike following a tour of the Hemlock Water Filtration Plant. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The students\u2019 final projects would require them to create reports or generate a communication product for a community organization. Korfmacher wanted her students to understand how they might need to tailor their presentations for diverse or under-resourced communities. \u201cThey might need to think beyond policy briefs, brochures, and info graphics,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Korfmacher and Beauchamp joined forces after getting to know one another as recipients of Community-Engaged Course Development Grants<\/a> through the Rochester Center for Community Leadership.<\/a> \u201cIt\u2019s one of our goals that faculty also serve in a mentorship role to help other faculty create their own community engagement coursework,\u201d says Alissa Clark, coordinator for the program. Beauchamp had previously taught a community-engaged course and led a presentation for others.\u00a0 \u201cWe support each other,\u201d says Beauchamp. \u201cAnd this class works out for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the day of the crossover class, the students broke up into smaller groups where they selected an issue of injustice. It might be corruption in politics, or homelessness, for example. The groups of students would then set up a scene portraying the issue, while the audience, one person at a time, changed one aspect of the scene.<\/p>\n

Beauchamp explains the \u201cTheater of the Oppressed\u201d as providing the tools for people to explore collective struggles, analyze their history and present circumstances, and then experiment with inventing different futures through theater. \u201cIt\u2019s improvisational theater,\u201d says Beauchamp. \u201cWe could only experiment with one part of it, since this was only a one-hour class.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"circle
Students of environmental health and movement and dance join forces in a multidisciplinary class session on using \u201cTheater of the Oppressed\u201d practice as a vehicle for community organization, expression, and action about a range of justice issues. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe thing that hit me the hardest was when people wouldn\u2019t agree with the change I made,\u201d says Christina Krewson \u201921. \u201cYou would change it and think \u2018no, this is still wrong, or I made it worse.\u2019 And if you were trying to change something with just one little step, it wasn\u2019t enough. It had to be everyone building on top of each other, and finally at the end we said, \u2018OK, this structure makes us feel better,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Says Korfmacher: \u201cMy students had read case studies about working with Latino communities in the Bronx who used murals to raise awareness of asthma, and they talked about why they chose to use that modality in that setting? I wanted the students to stretch their understanding of the possibilities for communicating their research to Rochester communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Christina Krewson \u201921 writes down topics for expression preparing for a \u201cTheater of the Oppressed\u201d exercise. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt was a mode of theater that I had never experienced before,\u201d says Krewson, who plans to major in public health. \u201cThe idea that we could all\u2014a whole bunch of strangers\u2014jump in and play off each other\u2019s ideas was really cool. And for me after the class, I was like, \u2018I want to do this with other people!,\u2019 because I want everyone to have the same experience. It really changes your perspective on how you view what change is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an effort to understand how to initiate change in a community, students in an Arts and Activism course,\u00a0and their counterparts in an Environmental Health and Justice course,\u00a0met up in Rochester dance studio to create some new moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":236,"featured_media":358142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9436,23722,19592,20952,16072],"class_list":["post-357792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community","tag-community","tag-department-of-environmental-medicine","tag-katrina-korfmacher","tag-program-of-dance-and-movement","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPublic health joins dance to put arts into action<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In an effort to understand how to initiate change in a community, students 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