FORWARD: Issue #8: Civic Health
From the Guest Editor
From the Guest Editor
In the practice of Kentucky Rural–Urban Exchange, Kentuckians come together to exchange stories. Through developing a greater understanding of each other’s issues, the group engages in a prototype of how to build a healthier civic life for their state. Photo by Tyler McDaniel. Read about this work in Fostering Civic Relationships.
Artists Renewing Civic Life
How artists are building infrastructure for a lasting democracy
By Richard Young
The intersection of arts and civic health/engagement is one of the most exciting and (frustratingly) underexplored aspects of a healthy democracy ecosystem.
For decades, artists have been doing the hard work of bringing people together, helping them navigate shared challenges, and finding new, creative ways to build community agency. However, through my work at CivicLex, I have spoken with many funders, academics, practitioners, and thinkers who work in our democracy ecosystem about the role artists play in strengthening democracy; despite artists’ valuable contributions, it’s clear that the ecosystem has yet to fully recognize arts and culture as a core strategy.
I hope this issue of FORWARD will help those working on democracy see arts and culture as part of an integral strategy to building a stronger and healthier democracy.
Sin Tax Bingo, hosted by Warm Cookies of the Revolution. Find this work in Building Civic Knowledge. Photo by From the Hip Photography.
The Center for Urban Pedagogy and the team at the Center for Justice Innovation during a tabling event to distribute Let The Papers Do The Talking. Learn more in Building Civic Knowledge. Photo courtesy The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP).
I hope that this issue of FORWARD will help those working on democracy see arts and culture as part of an integral strategy to building a stronger and healthier democracy.
Since Kentucky Rural–Urban Exchange’s creation in 2014 as a project of Art of the Rural, an artist-run nonprofit devoted to promoting healthy rural conditions and healthy images of rural life, more than 300 Kentuckians from 65 counties have passed through its leadership cohort program, building an engaged network of leaders across the Bluegrass State. Read about this project in Fostering Civic Relationships. Photo by Tyler McDaniel.
Art by Erik Ruin, photo courtesy Phoebe Bachman. Explore the People's Budget Office in Generating Civic Transformation.
To help make the case, we’ve highlighted a handful of transformational initiatives, most of which are place-based, that illustrate how artists are building civic infrastructure in ways that are deeply rooted in community life. All of these are being interpreted through the lens of civic health.
The term civic health stems from research on how communities solve problems, by the National Civic League and the National Conference on Citizenship. Loosely defined, it’s how communities are organized to be able to address challenges, including rates of civic literacy, voting, volunteering, and more.
For this issue, we’ve narrowly defined it around three core impacts:
• building civic knowledge and capacity
• strengthening social cohesion and connection across difference, and
• creating more responsive institutions
While many efforts could fall under the umbrella of civic engagement, we’ve intentionally focused this issue on these specific outcomes.
An important distinction I’d like to make at the outset is that we are intentionally not covering the role of the arts and artists in organizing and advocacy. Historically, organizing and advocacy have almost been synonymous with the term artists. For many artists, advocacy is so fundamental to their craft that it is impossible to separate the two. While this is a vital topic to be covered, there is already a strong body of work focused on it.
In the initial conversations about this FORWARD issue, we decided to use this issue to explore something that’s both related and distinctly different.
Civic health work, as described above, builds infrastructure and scaffolding for participation in civic life. It can make organizing effective, but it also must stand on its own—broad, inclusive, and not narrowly partisan. As someone working in Kentucky, I’ve seen firsthand that for this work to succeed, it has to make space for everyone to see themselves as part of the solution, regardless of background, lived experience, or ideology.
For this work to succeed, it has to make space for everyone to see themselves as part of the solution, regardless of background, lived experience, or ideology.
A defining feature of the work highlighted in this issue is that it’s largely place-based. We intentionally avoided work tied up in the national political conversation, though it’s certainly shaped by it. For us, this is about highlighting how artists are helping local communities navigate and solve their own challenges.
One of the biggest gaps in our democracy ecosystem is the dearth of investment in place-based work outside of initiatives such as the recent Press Forward campaign to bolster local news. While there’s growing recognition of local journalism as civic infrastructure, other forms of community-rooted democratic practice—like the work of artists—haven’t received the same level of attention or support. That needs to change, and I hope this publication can move the needle.
The case studies featured in this issue showcase a range of approaches across the United States (and beyond!). Warm Cookies of the Revolution in Denver uses art, culture, and joy to help people understand and engage with shared civic challenges. The Kentucky Rural–Urban Exchange bridges divides across geography and ideology, weaving tighter the social fabric that democracy depends on. The People’s Budget Office in Philadelphia uses public art to make complex civic processes more accessible, engaging, and participatory.
Each of these initiatives demonstrates how artists can drive the three key civic health outcomes we’ve identified. Artists are building civic knowledge and capacity by making information more compelling and accessible, whether through theater that explains local decision-making or murals that demystify the budget process. Artists are strengthening social cohesion by fostering connection, creating shared experiences, and offering spaces for dialogue across difference.
Artists are building civic knowledge and capacity. Artists are strengthening social cohesion. Artists are creating responsive institutions.
The Theater of Witness (ToW) approach aims to open hearts of audiences to humanize "the other" and bridge divides, through performances such as I Once Knew a Girl (2010), with (from left) Kathleen Gillespie, Ruth Moore, and Anne Walker. Discover more about this work in Fostering Civic Relationships. Photo courtesy Teya Sepinuck.
And artists are creating more responsive institutions by embedding new, creative practices within civic processes, making it easier for people to have their voices heard.
Looking ahead, one of the many challenges we all must confront is ensuring this work gets the recognition and investment it deserves. Too often, funders, policymakers, and civic leaders see the arts as "nice-to-have," rather than as a necessity. I hope this issue of FORWARD makes the case that investing in the arts shouldn’t just be a cultural priority. It’s actually essential to the future of our democracy and shared way of life.
The work featured in these pages reminds us that democracy isn't actually about institutions, policies, or elections. It's about the everyday...
The work featured in these pages reminds us that democracy isn’t actually about institutions, policies, or elections. It’s about the everyday relationships, shared experiences, and the possibilities that bind us together as communities.
My plea to you, reader, is to embrace arts and culture as the civic infrastructure that it is. If you do, we can all work together to build a more engaged, connected, and resilient democracy for the generations that come after us.
My plea to you, reader, is to embrace arts and culture as the civic infrastructure that it is.
Artists and activists are devising lively strategies to bring Philadelphians into the city budgeting process. Explore this Generating Civic Transformation case study. Photo by Akeil Roberston, courtesy Phoebe Bachman.
At an in-person workshop from Activate Rural's 2024 public workshop series at The YES! House.The YES! House is a creative community gathering space and evolving economic development concept in Granite Falls, Minnesota. Find more about the work of the Department of Public Transformation (DoPT) in Fostering Civic Relationships. Photo © DoPT.
Also in this Issue
You’ll find insights from Public Matters co-principals Reanne Estrada and Mike Blockstein, with a featured interview about the intersection of art and public engagement. The following pages also hold a Toolkit filled with resources for working creatively in civic health and engagement, along with our popular Dream Job description, which, for this issue, is presented as a Dream Ordinance. Chicago-based cultural strategist Amanda Carlson offers this measure, and asks us to think about what percentage of a local community’s budget should be dedicated to artist-led work, and how that money should flow.
Also in this Issue
You’ll find insights from Public Matters co-founders Reanne Estrada and Mike Blockstein, with a featured interview about the intersection of art and public engagement; and the seventh installment of Public Art Now from Forecast's Director of Planning & Engagement, Ebony Dumas. Public Art Now is a recurring collection of selected works featuring leading voices sharing public art of the moment. As our next Public Art Now guest curator, Ebony presents a collection with the lens of advancing civic engagement in the field of public art—including, for example, a music-making tree sculpture that also serves as a community gathering space, and an Afrofuturist landscape that re-envisions public spaces to center Black people, Black culture, and Black aesthetics. The following pages also hold a Toolkit filled with resources for working creatively in civic health and engagement, along with our popular Dream Job description, which, for this issue, is presented as a Dream Ordinance. Chicago-based cultural strategist Amanda Carlson offers this measure, and asks us to think about what percentage of a local community’s budget should be dedicated to artist-led work, and how that money should flow.
Bio
Richard Young
Richard Young is the founder and executive director at CivicLex, a nonprofit in Lexington, Kentucky, dedicated to strengthening civic health at the local level. A practicing artist who has been working in and around civic engagement and community development for almost a decade, Richard has a deep interest in how the creative process can positively impact democracy.
A FORWARD series cross-sector discussion June 26, 2025
Join us to explore how art and culture are central tools advancing civic health in local communities around the country. Leave inspired by how initiatives from Philadelphia to rural Kentucky to Arkansas can be models for cross-sector practice to create a healthy democracy in your community.
This panel, hosted by Forecast, features the following speakers:
- Lisa Hicks Gilbert, Mayor, Historian, Community Builder. Born and raised in Elaine, Arkansas, Lisa serves as the Volunteer Program Manager at the Lee Street Community Center and as the founder and Managing Director of Descendants of the Elaine Massacre of 1919. She leads with a spirit of resilience rooted in community, believing that leadership is not measured by title alone, but by service, sacrifice, and the courage to uplift others—especially in places where silence and struggle have long endured.
- Phoebe Bachman, (she/they), a South Philadelphia-based artist, facilitator, and curator, whose interdisciplinary practice is grounded in collaboration and social justice. Their work amplifies resistance movements, focusing on economic and criminal justice through methodologies like public art installations, popular education, and community mapping.
- Savannah Barrett, Exchange Director for Art of the Rural, a national organization that works to resource rural and Native artists and culture bearers to build the field, change narratives, and bridge divides. She co-founded the Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange in 2014, and leads this work alongside hundreds of Kentuckians to combine grantmaking, leadership and network development, narrative change, and institutional bridging to strengthen Kentucky’s communities across racial, economic, and geographic divides.
This panel will be moderated by Richard Young, FORWARD Issue 8 guest editor and the founder and executive director at CivicLex, a nonprofit in Lexington, Kentucky dedicated to strengthening civic health at the local level. Register. This conversation will be held via Zoom.
Please consider a donation to make events like this possible.
FORWARD: Issue #8
Civic Health
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