We'll occasionally update this blog with news about the Spare A Dime project, the cast album, and future iterations of both the songs and stories. Thank you for being such an essential part of our process. Learn more and volunteer at our organizational website cosacosa.org!
COSACOSA's 7Cs™ – Ingredients & Directions
• Conversation
We initiate dialogues bringing project stakeholders together to learn about each other, to research neighborhood histories, and to share concerns and hopes for their community. In this step, project participants match their own needs and assets with those of others, and with those of the community at large.
• Cooperation
We engender collaborative strategic project planning among the project participants, guided by community leaders, project staff and professional artists. In this step, project participants determine their desired outcomes for the project and the overall design.
• Community
We establish a feeling of solidarity among the project stakeholders. In this step representative participants work as a team to share project plans with the larger community, to organize community response, and to invite broad public participation.
• Creation
We create community-specific public work through public participation. In this step, project participants engage in hands-on collaboration with COSACOSA artists in free and accessible community workshops.
• Celebration
We commemorate and disseminate the work. In this step, project participants share their completed work with the larger community through openings, unveilings, performances, testimonies, and/or in print and online publications.
• Consideration
We engage stakeholders in ongoing reflection, review, and evaluation. In this step, participants assess the project's successes and challenges, gauge both its short- and long-term impacts, and propose models for replication.
• Change
We incite lasting intercommunity and interpersonal transformations to build community social capital and to sustain positive neighborhood change. In this step, project stakeholders impart the art and collaborative leadership competencies they have acquired to others and continue to work for the good of their shared community, both on their own and in continuing partnership with COSACOSA.
7Cs™ Civic Engagement Method @2010 COSACOSA art at large, Inc.