Starting from Where You Are: Ethical Responsibilities [Practices?] in Community
Cultural Development with Children and Youth
SE WOODSON
This paper explores a few of the central tenets primary to building ethical relationships
with youth in community cultural development processes. In particular, I posit that a clear
understanding of difference and power rooted in personal awareness and honesty is an
essential component of successful community-based work. Of course, all community
cultural development residencies depend upon building ethical relationships, but work
with children and youth further complicates the already complex connections of artistfacilitators and participants. In US American culture adults automatically have more
power than young people. Adults have access to political and business processes that
children and youth do not. In addition, society-at-large values adult cultural capital more
than young people’s identity constructions and/or youth/child culture. While I am sure
each of us can think of exceptions to this rule, what is important to take away from this
discussion is an awareness of the complexity and ethical dexterity demanded by
community-based work with children and youth.
The field of ethics is a philosophical inquiry into questions of morality and how
individuals and cultures understand a “good” life. What do we mean when we say
“good” person; or to live a “good” life? The field of ethics is generally subdivided into
three branches: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Philosophers concerned
with metaethics research where and how ethical concepts arise and what they mean. For
example, there are long standing philosophical arguments about whether or not
“universal” moral standards exist. Many 20th century anthropologists worked cross-
culturally in order to try and identify universal moral patterns. Normative ethics attempts
to determine standards of behavior and moral conduct. The golden rule and the Old
Testament’s ten commandments are prime examples of normative ethical standards or
codes of conduct. Finally, applied ethics is concerned with answering specific ethical
questions around a single topic or question, e.g., euthanasia or abortion. For the purposes
of this conversation, I am most interested in normative and applied ethics as related to
outlining practitioners’ ethical responsibilities in community-based arts practices with
children and youth. Psychology professor, William D. Woody, compared the codes of
conduct for several academic disciplines (e.g., nursing, engineering, psychology, history,
physics) looking for common ground in order to inform university instruction. He
identified several commonalities across disciplines’ codes of conduct including: “[…]
competence, fairness, informed consent, appropriate relationships, and confidentiality”
(p. 40). While not one-to-one applicable, I find his analysis useful to organize my
discussion about the ethical responsibilities of community-arts practitioners.
COMPETENCE
Like nurses, engineers and physicists, community-arts practitioners have an ethical
responsibility to be competent in their chosen field. And frankly, competence does not
mean just being a good performer or a good studio artist. Community-based artists have
a fundamental responsibility to understand their primary artistic field’s practices and
knowledges; the knowledges and practices of community arts in general; teaching skills
and/or youth development skills; and a deep knowledge of self. I have spoken and
written about the first three competencies elsewhere. While I want to reiterate the ethical
components of skill and knowledge in pedagogy, mentoring, art-making, and community
cultural development, key to ethical practice is a deep and fundamental knowledge of
self-in-context. All individuals construct the world through the lens of culture and belief
systems. Ideas primary to our identity—like what it means to be a man or a woman; what
skills we value in others; how we understand family; how we understand our body; what
we mean by success, et cetera—are constructed. We have an ethical responsibility to
know our cultural capital, to understand how we practice power, and to be aware of what
I call our value-laden prejudices. Everyone has preconceived values that focus our
judgments about people and the world. Everyone assesses the world through the lens of
those values. I am prejudice towards frankness and I value honesty. My mother-in-law
values calm and is prejudice towards avoiding conflict. As you can imagine, our valueladen prejudices radically influence our approach to disagreements.

self-mapping: difference and power, belief systems, social and cultural
capital based on web of difference/s (iceberg metaphor, wagon wheel
metaphor, status map)
JUSTICE/FAIRNESS:
An ethical approach to community-based arts must include a commitment to justice and
fairness. While these are closely related terms that often are used interchangeably, I
understand justice to be a standard of rightness, and fairness the ability to judge and act
without relying on personal feeling or self-interest. Justice means that all individuals have
the same intrinsic dignity and value regardless of skin color, country of origin, cultural
affiliation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, gender identity, age, religious
affiliation, et cetera. I depend upon the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
general and the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child in particular as the standard to
which I hold myself and others accountable. When making decisions, we must strive for
fairness even when that choice is difficult for us. Many in the community-arts field lean
to the left politically, in point of fact, I would map myself as a strong progressive.
Ethically however, we still need to treat issues and individuals fairly—without bias. This
can become extremely difficult when exploring contentious topics. In order to explore
immigration issues then, I would need to be open to individuals and/or organizations that
normally I would cross the street to avoid. My ethical responsibilities include fairness.
 Performance of Power in context
 intent vs. outcome models; social justice
 treat equals equally and those who are unequal, unequally—Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics
 other decision-making guides: utilitarianism, rights, common-good,
virtue
INFORMED CONSENT:
time commitments, goals, plans, risks, and outcomes. Children and youth are partners in
the endeavor and should be treated like partners. All have the right of egress. All too
often youth are told what to do not asked. Likewise, part of informed consent concerns
the possible outcomes or potential consequences of the choices children and youth make
with regard to the arts process and product. Issues of censorship, legal obligations,
copyright, and disclosure or nondisclosure of information.


goals and risks: ethical relationship building
dialogue models
RELATIONSHIPS:


building a vocabulary/practice of deliberative dialogue and shared
power--ensemble
facilitation vs. leadership model
CONFIDENTIALITY:
appropriate use and non-disclosure of information
I have combined outline and small text style in this proposal. Hopefully this gives you all
enough information to move forward as an editorial board. I welcome feedback.
WORKS CITED
Woody, William D. "Learning from the codes of the academic disciplines." New
Directions for Higher Education (Summer 2008): 39-54. Academic
Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 16, 2008).
Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (Revised Ed.) Cambridge, MA: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press.
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/thinking.html