Foreword
Dr. Terron Banner, Urban Arts Space Manager of Community Learning and Experience
Sometimes academic language offers precision, while everyday language offers connection. I've tried to weave both through this foreword. I share this not as a statement on how language should work but as an insight into the power of our words and the thought we all must use in creating them. Much like the artistic process, this writing evolved through reflection, revision, and a commitment to reaching across difference while honoring the poetry and power of our collective vision.
When I first dreamed up Artist Commune—the monthly program, not the journal—I did so with an understanding of the transformative power of art and community. In recognizing this collective power, there is also a pressing responsibility we—arts institutions and communities—hold as curators of creative spaces. This foreword emerges from the spirit of the Artist Commune event, which embraces CARE | CULTURE | JUSTICE as the foundation of real community connection. The Artist Commune Journal stands as a natural extension of that commitment.
This first issue of the Artist Commune Journal is more than just a collection of ideas and images—it’s a living record of our work to break down walls between institutions and build authentic relationships between university and community. Born from The Ohio State University Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme & Office of Outreach and Engagement grant-funded project “Care, Culture, & Justice as Practice,” this publication both documents and actively participates in our shared reimagining of what arts engagement can and should be.
At its core, Artist Commune Journal challenges traditional academic knowledge and lifts community expertise and lived experience. The pages that follow show how the principles of CARE | CULTURE | JUSTICE come to life through co-creating.
What we’re building together is an Artist Commune in its truest sense—not just a gathering space but a web of support, inspiration, and mutual aid that exists in physical spaces, virtual spaces, and the spaces in between. We know that community itself is a form of self-care, especially for underestimated communities, where pooling resources for everyone’s benefit has long been essential for survival. The people who’ve contributed to Artist Commune Journal—artists, scholars, community organizers, and cultural workers—embody this spirit, creating infrastructure for imagination and innovation while challenging extractive institutional practices.
When I speak of “institution,” I’m not only referring to the physical structures of universities, museums, and formal arts organizations but to the entire system of established practices, hierarchies, and power dynamics that have historically determined who creates art, who accesses it, and whose voices are amplified through cultural production. These institutions—both concrete and abstract—have often perpetuated exclusionary frameworks that privilege certain forms of knowledge, certain aesthetics, and certain communities while marginalizing others. To challenge institutional boundaries is to question these inherited systems, to dismantle the artificial separations between “academic” and “community” knowledge, between “high” and “folk” art, between those deemed cultural producers and those positioned as cultural consumers.
Our work through the Artist Commune Journal actively resists these false dichotomies, recognizing that meaningful transformation requires not simply reforming institutions but reimagining them entirely—creating permeable spaces where knowledge flows multidirectionally and where creative authority is distributed rather than concentrated. In this sense, our engagement with institutions is both critical and generative: we acknowledge their historical limitations while working to build new models of institutional practice rooted in accessibility, reciprocity, and shared power.
Similarly, when I speak of building community through art, I am not speaking of superficial collaboration or performative relationships. Instead, we envision and actively construct collaborative networks that drive change through shared responsibility and collective decision making. Our arts ecosystem thrives on principles of solidarity economy, valuing creative work and reinvesting in creators, their communities, and the issues that matter to them.
As you explore the works in these pages, I invite you to consider how they collectively represent efforts to carve out authentic creative spaces—spaces that resist appropriation, commercialization, and exploitation. I am deeply grateful to the contributors, collaborators, and community partners who have made this journal possible. Together, we are not merely documenting artistic work but actively creating the conditions for transformative engagement that centers CARE | CULTURE | JUSTICE in all that we do. The journal you hold is our shared commitment to breaking through institutional silos, fostering accessible and just arts programming, and recognizing the power of art to build community across difference.
As the Artist Commune Journal grows, I hope it continues to serve as both mirror and window—reflecting our shared values while opening new paths of possibility for art-based community engagement.
— Dr. Terron Banner