ArtMill: A Story of Sustainable Creativity in Bohemia

By Barbara Benish

Barbara Benish tells her story as a female artist who found a way to build a life in a rural, post-totalitarian, foreign country, it is a testament to the resilience of the people of that small nation that was sacrificed in the tumultuous chess game of colonial superpowers dividing up Europe after the devastation of WWII.

Creative Instigation: The Art & Strategy of Authentic Community Engagement

By: Fern Tiger

Creative Instigation is a collection of in-depth case stories focused on effective and innovative community engagement and policymaking in diverse cities across the western U.S.

Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth 

By: Robert Shetterly

This third volume in the Americans Who Tell the Truth series features Robert Shetterly’s striking color portraits and profiles of fifty peace activists as well as essays by Chris Hedges, Kali Rubaii, Paul K. Chappell, Medea Benjamin, Alice Rothchild, and David Swanson. 

See Me: Prison Theater Workshops and Love

By Jan Cohen-Cruz

Encounters, transformations, and reflections from in-prison and post-release theater workshops, each essay is a collaboration between two or three people who connected profoundly in the temporary community that a workshop can create.

Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty— 30th Anniversary Edition

By Anne Herbert, Paloma Pavel, Mayumi Oda

Foreword by Desmond Mpilo Tutu

A parable of hope and peace for all ages with beautifully crafted words and exuberant watercolor illustrations, Random Kindness offers a poetic and empowering message for world peace. Recognizing “we are right on the edge of destroying ourselves,” this modern allegory inspires taking joyful steps to end violence. 

Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater,
Vol 1 & Vol 2 (set)

Edited by Ben Fink

This two-volume anthology tells the story of Roadside Theater’s first 45 years and includes nine award-winning original play scripts; ten essays by authors from different disciplines and generations, which explore the plays’ social, economic, and political circumstances; and a critical recounting of the theater’s history from 1975 through 2020.

Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater, Volume 2: The Intercultural Plays, 1990–2020

Edited by Ben Fink

The plays in Volume 2 come from Roadside’s intercultural and issue-specific theater work, including long-term collaborations with the African American Junebug Productions in New Orleans and the Puerto Rican Pregones Theater in the South Bronx, as well as with residents on both sides of the walls of recently-built prisons.

Art in a Democracy: Selected Plays of Roadside Theater, Volume 1: The Appalachian History Plays, 1975–1989

Edited by Ben Fink

The plays in Volume 1 offer a people’s history of the Appalachian coalfields, from the European incursion through the American War in Vietnam. Roadside has spent 45 years searching for what art in a democracy might look like.

In the Camp of Angels of Freedom: What Does It Mean to Be Educated?

By Arlene Goldbard

Through her evocative paintings and narrative, author Arlene Goldbard has portrayed eleven people whose work most influenced her—what she calls a camp of angels. She sees each as a brave messenger of love and freedom for a society that badly needs “uncolonized minds.”

Portraits of Earth Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth

By Robert Shetterly

This second volume in the Americans Who Tell the Truth series, is a collection of environmental and climate activists whose stunning color portraits Robert Shetterly painted with the intention of honoring their work and bringing them to a wider audience.

Divining Chaos: The Autobiography of an Idea

By Aviva Rahmani, Foreword by Lucy Lippard

Divining Chaos provides a personal memoir of eco-artist Aviva Rahmani, offering her Trigger-Point theory thesis and unparalleled exclusivity to the moments in her life that shaped her as an artist and activist. Rahmani shares intimate decisions that shaped her life’s work.

Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance, 1965–2020, by Those Who Lived It

By Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira
Forewords by Carlton Turner and Jill Dolan

Meeting the Moment explores experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in the U.S. The work offers insight into the challenges and adaptations of the industry, recognizing limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity that performance artists have faced over the past 55 years.

Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities

Edited by Amara Geffen, Ann Rosenthal, Chris Fermantle, and Aviva Rahmani

Compiled of 67 members of the Ecoart Network, a group of more than 200 internationally established practitioners, EcoArt in Action stands as a field guide for practical solutions to critical environmental challenges. Each contribution provides models for ecoart practice that are adaptable for use within a variety of classrooms, communities, and contexts.

Click here to see our Ecoart in Action contributors!

Healing from Genocide in Rwanda: Rugerero Survivors Village, an Artist Book

By Susan Viguers and Lily Yeh

Healing from Genocide in Rwanda demonstrates the power of art in the service of healing and is a testimony to responsive community process in a highly sensitive environment. The work immerses readers in the stories of two Rwandans who as small children experienced the 1994 Genocide. It tells of the horrific tragedy each survived, the courage necessary for surviving, and the humanity they embody.

Portraits of Racial Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth

By Robert Shetterly

The first volume of Robert Shetterly’s Americans Who Tell the Truth portrait series, Portraits of Racial Justice takes a multimedia, interdisciplinary approach, blending art and history with today’s issues concerning social, environmental, and economic fairness. Shetterly’s paintings, as well as profiles of those portrayed, illuminate a community of people not only willing to recognize the shortcomings of America’s history, but most importantly, individuals who offer their visions of a better world moving forward.

Works of Heart: Building Village Through the Arts

Revised Edition
By Lynne Elizabeth and Suzanne Young

Citizen artists revitalize places, celebrate culture, and inspire social change in this beautiful introduction to community-engaged arts.

Conversations with Diego Rivera: The Monster in His Labyrinth

By Alfredo Cardona Peña
Translated by Alvaro Cardona-Hine

A year of weekly interviews (1949–1950) with artist Diego Rivera by poet Alfredo Cardona-Peña disclose Rivera’s iconoclastic views of life and the art world of that time.

Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts, 2nd Edition

By Mat Schwarzman
Illustrated by Keith Knight

Ten transformative local arts projects come alive in this illustrated training manual for youth leaders and teachers. This energetic guidebook demonstrates the enormous power of art in grassroots social change.

Openings: A Memoir from the Women’s Art Movement, New York City 1970–1992

By Sabra Moore
Forewords by Lucy R. Lippard and Margaret Randall

An account of the women’s art movement in New York City from 1970 to 1992 and how these women created politically and personally effective art works, exhibitions, actions, and institutions.

Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame

By Beverly Naidus

Beverly Naidus shares her passion and strategies for teaching socially engaged art, offering, as well, a short history of the field and the candid views of more than thirty colleagues.

Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines

By William Cleveland
Foreword by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Author William Cleveland tells remarkable stories from Northern Ireland, Cambodia, South Africa, United States (Watts, Lost Angeles), aboriginal Australia, and Serbia, about artists who resolve conflict and heal unspeakable trauma.

Acting Together, Vol II: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Building Just and Inclusive Communities

Edited by Cynthia Cohen, Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, and Polly O. Walker

Acting Together, Volume ll, continues from where the first volume ends documenting exemplary peace-building performances in regions marked by social exclusion, structural violence and dislocation.

Acting Together, Vol I: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict: Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence

Edited by Cynthia Cohen, Roberto Gutiérrez Varea, and Polly O. Walker

Courageous artists working in conflict regions describe exemplary peace-building performances and groundbreaking theory on performance for transformation of violence.

Awakening Creativity: Dandelion School Blossoms

By Lily Yeh

International artist Lily Yeh guides a participatory process of artistic expression that uplifts a distressed community. Her open, joyful approach to art-making is a model for building healthy cultural esteem.

New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development

By Arlene Goldbard

An inspiring, foundational book that defines the burgeoning field of community cultural development.

Performing Communities: Grassroots Ensemble Theaters Deeply Rooted In Eight U.S. Communities

By Robert H. Leonard and Ann Kilkelly
Introduction by Jan Cohen Cruz
Edited by Linda Frye Burnham

Ensemble theater is one of the vibrant, meaningful American performance forms today. It’s more than art—it’s a social movement.