Creating Art That Truly Reflects The Community: An Exploration Into Facilitation Of Devised, Community-engaged Performance

One purpose of community-engaged work is to build and reflect the community; to allow their voice to be heard. This research explores the relationship between the professional artist facilitator and participants in a community-engaged setting while applying devised theatre practices. The facilitating artist brings to the group their expertise in playmaking and storytelling. The research centers on how a facilitating artist might approach devising a community-engaged performance project with awareness of his/her ability to influence the group. How can the facilitator channel their influence to provide productive guidance for the collective creativity in order to honor the community’s intent and minimize the distortion created by the facilitator’s perspective? Are there guidelines that can be established in order to ensure that the community’s voice is undiluted? I begin by engaging in dialogue with established current practitioners in the field and examining literature published on the subject with this goal in mind. From this research a roadmap of perils and pitfalls, signs to look for that indicate tension or discomfort within the group, and techniques and tips for productively refocusing the group’s work have been created. The objective of the research is to formulate a philosophy on facilitation that aligns with my artistic mission and values, ensuring the work truly builds and reflects the communities from which it is produced

Interview with Bill Grile and Phil Quarterman

Bill Grile and Phil Quarterman were interviewed by Michael Rupp on August 6, 2021 in Springfield, Oregon.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/planoregon_interviews/1060/thumbnail.jp

Programming Safety Improvements on Pavement Resurfacing, Restoration, and Rehabilitation Projects

As part of the project planning process, highway agencies must allocate limited funding to a substantial list of projects that exceeds available resources. For preservation projects, a key component of this decision is to determine which projects receive safety improvements and which are pave only. Traditionally, this decision has been made project by project, with the possible result of a selection that does not maximize safety benefits. This paper takes a case study approach and applies a new tool developed in NCHRP Report 486, the Resurfacing Safety Resource Allocation Program (RSRAP), to a subset of the Oregon Department of Transportation\u27s (DOT\u27s) highway network. The RSRAP tool maximizes safety improvements for a given set of projects and budget. Thirty-three projects scheduled to receive a new road surface were selected and analyzed with RSRAP. These projects were subdivided into smaller sites to meet the assumptions of RSRAP. Road geometry, traffic volumes, and crash history for each site were collected and input into the program. The type and cost of the safety improvements output by RSRAP were compared with those selected by Oregon DOT. This research determined that RSRAP, which selected more projects for safety improvements than did Oregon DOT, is a tool that could be used by the department to select various safety improvements on pavement preservation projects. It was also determined that the budget used by Oregon DOT was large enough that all cost-effective improvements could be made