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Artistic Expressions in Holistic Ministry
Eastern provides the skills, knowledge, and spiritual development to use a broad range of artistic expressions in holistic ministry and coalition-building within urban communities. Eastern graduates become deeply involved in solving urban problems through their own leadership and initiative in urban areas locally and around the world.
Experience Your Education
In keeping with Eastern’s commitment to Faith, Reason and Justice, the Arts in Transformation program is designed with an inter-disciplinary focus on theory—as well as theology—and professional development, applied research and field-intensive community partnerships. Learning is woven into the fabric of the community. Students aren’t educated so much as they experience their education. Students work in their specialty with artist masters and their community- or church-based arts organization in the vital effort to build relationships and a spirit of service.
Accommodating Class Formats
Most candidates complete the program in 24 months of active study. To accommodate working students, courses are offered in a variety of formats, including weekend and distance (on-line and modified on-line) classes.
Artistic Excellence and Artful Service
We strive for excellence in art and art in service: art with a vertical role in expressing praise to a Creator God, as well as a horizontal role with a passion to understand and love our neighbors.
Arts in Transformation: Teaching Life Skills
The arts accommodate a host of learning styles and have a significant impact on learning. Our instructional partner in presenting the Arts in Transformation concentration of Eastern’s Master of Arts in Urban Studies program, BuildaBridge, Int’l, is a non-profit education and intervention organization working primary in Philadelphia homeless shelters using all the arts--visual arts, creative writing, dance, drama, and music.
At the Sheila Dennis House, BuildaBridge’s Life Arts Academy works with women who are ready to see change, to take steps to financial independence, to turn a corner. A lot of services to these women and adults have been cut but the needs are still there. At the top of the list is the need to learn how to handle money and finances. When developing a program to address those needs, right away the women said, “No boring lectures; that’s not the way to teach us.” So, Buildabridge designed a program using the arts as a way to teach.
Watch this video from BI to learn more about how they did it.
Life Arts Academy
Money News Network
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Arts in Transformation: Storytelling
Dr. Campolo's sermons are packed with vivid and unforgettable stories. His stories have been told and retold over the years. The birthday party for Agnes, the prostitute in Hawaii; the hitchhiker on the Pennsylvania Turnpike; the Gulf and Western board meeting; the old lady's scarf that got caught in his zipper on the elevator--these stories make us laugh, lighten our load, inspire us, make us cry and, through the Holy Spirit, make us alive. Tony preaches straight from the heart, often challenging both conservative and liberal assumptions in the very same sermon.
Play this video to hear one of our favoites. It begins like this... "A friend of mine is a minister in Bellaire, California--Bellaire Presbyterian Church. One of the really ritzy places on the face of he planet, Bellaire.I mean, it’s where the movie stars live. Mullholland Drive sits in this magnificent place overlooking this valley. She’s a minister there. Every Christmas she goes to the Nordstrom's Department Store. She can’t afford to buy anything, but …"
Dr. Tony Campolo
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Arts in Transformation: Books
Taking It to the Streets: Using the Arts to Transform Your CommunityCorbitt, J. Nathan
Nix-Early, Vivian
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 0801064228
A quiet yet powerful revolution is going on. All over this country and across the world, creativity--in the form of visual arts, music, dance, drama, and technology--is providing an emotionally expressive vehicle for communicating truth, developing character, and crossing cultural boundaries to build the kingdom of God. J. Nathan Corbitt and Vivian Nix-Early visited numerous artists, faith communities, and arts organizations to discover and document how the arts are being used to transform people and communities, especially in urban settings. The result is this extensive handbook that combines real-life stories with tested methodologies to create a new paradigm for the role of the arts in Christian ministry and mission. Taking It to the Streets provides church and mission leaders, youth ministers, and students with a historical perspective and theology for understanding the transforming power of the arts, a vocabulary for discussing them outside the sanctuary, and creative methods for bringing faith to action in the streets of society. <buy>
Arts in Transformation: Healing Trauma
Teaching through drama and the arts allows people to become active participants in the training. It allows real life visualizations and allows people to try on and practice different ways of responding. The arts are powerful in helping people to tune into their own feelings and emotions, to communicate things that are hard to put into words and to foster empathy for another person.
It’s critically important to know how to respond to trauma. Traumatic stress symptoms, if not dealt with at the time, can effect the rest of one’s life. This is especially true of children. The Healing Place is an 8-week drama and arts-based course aimed at training parents, teachers and older youth—or anyone who works with young people—in how to recognize and respond to trauma in children due to violence, catastrophe and disaster.
View the video to learn more about the Healing Place, a project of BuildaBridge, our instructional partners in presenting the Arts in Transformation concentration.
The Healing Place
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Contact Us
Urban Studies Department
Campolo College of Graduate and Professional Studies
Eastern University | Philadelphia
3300 Henry Avenue
3 Falls Center
Philadelphia, PA 19129
P: 215-769-3121
F: 215-848-2651
E: urbanstudies@eastern.edu
