The Survey The first major outreach effort of the J. Appleseed Society is an effort to conduct an electronic survey of social and participatory dance organizers around the world. The objective of this effort is to provide all of us with information we can act on – news we can use – to help our organizations survive and thrive. It is our belief that the activities we enjoy play an important role that goes well beyond their recreational and aesthetic boundaries. We believe that they represent the warp and weft of “community” – an ideal recognized by many which is exceptionally difficult to define. The bulk of the information on this web site is a document created several years ago. We were significantly influenced by Robert Putnam’s book: Bowling Alone, and you will find the proposal contains a brief synopsis that highlights the connection between participatory dance and “community” in the broadest and most socially relevant sense. We are hopeful that the survey will reach a broad audience, that we will be able to engage other community minded organizers of dance and many other participatory art and cultural activities, and create an organization that will truly serve as a resource to organizers around the world. Our Mission To encourage the creation and growth of organizations that sponsor and promote participatory arts and leisure activities.  We are especially focused on “lifetime” activities, pursuits that have low entry barriers, and endeavors that bring people from diverse backgrounds together with the opportunity for informal socialization.  (Draft copy, January, 2002) Social Capital:  A Better Understanding of the True Value of Participatory Arts and Leisure Activities As a society, Americans value the idea of “community.”  We talk about the community spirit of the places we live, we send children to community schools, we describe the special feeling we experience in the company of others in organizations a feeling of community.  And as frequently as we use the word, we find ourselves hard pressed to say exactly what goes into a “community”.  It includes proximity, but it is more than that.  It includes a sense of civility and mutual respect, yet there is more to it than that.  There are elements of commitment and involvement, and more.  Community is ultimately, a fluid, intangible quality.  Yet it is something that all organizations that encourage participation strive to create and cultivate. Professor Robert D. Putman of Harvard University has provided a scholarly, quantifiable approach to understanding many of the components of a “community” in a study that specifically addresses the participation of Americans in a broad range of activities.  Putnam's book, Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000) defines participation/involvement in terms of “social capital” and analyzes a broad range of political, religious and cultural activities. If you believe in the importance of having a nation of active, involved, community-minded citizens, the results of his research are stark and distressing.  The United States of America has made a transition from being a positive paragon of civic virtue to become a country that is threatened with community bankruptcy.  For the first three quarters of the 20^th century, we evolved an energetic, admirable nation of community builders with vast wealth in social capital.  Over the last twenty-five years, we have given away nearly all of the gains that we made. The rationale and mission of the J. Appleseed organization relies heavily on Putnam's analysis and conclusions.  We feel that his work is extremely helpful in understanding the true value of participatory arts and leisure activities because: It provides a term, “social capital,” that identifies an underlying value that every participatory arts and leisure organization creates. It quantifies, through scholarly research, the decline in organizational participation that organizers have felt at the “gut level”. It shows organizers in all types of participatory activities that they are not alone – that the challenges (in some case crises) that they face are not necessarily a function of the popularity of their activity or a function of their stewardship of it. It identifies the major causes of the loss of social capital, thereby clarifying the major challenges organizers must overcome. It gives everyone involved in these types of activities a higher mission, making them part of a movement to reverse a serious national decline in civic virtue.

Contact Information

Our primary means of communication at this time is through an e-mail discussion list.   If you are interested in participating in this ongoing effort to create the J. Appleseed organization, please send an e-mail message to the e-mail address shown below.

Telephone

973-731-3691

Postal address

28 Yales Terrace, West Orange, NJ 07052

Electronic mail

Ridge[dot]kennedy<at>j-appleseed[dot]org

Replace the bracketed words with the right symbols, please. R.

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