It Takes an Artistic Village: an Ethnographic Exploration of a Community Youth Arts Center

The purpose of this ethnography is to uncover the social world of a community youth arts center. Utilizing Oddfellows Playhouse and its neighborhood troupes program as a micro case, this extended case method study seeks to understand whether or not variations of social and cultural capital theory can explain the social behavior and processes that occur within community youth arts institutions. The study finds that social capital theory is most useful in explaining the development of positive bonding social networks and the institutional presence of collective bridging capital, while cultural capital theory is most useful explaining the transmission of a middle-classbased form of cultural capital. While these theories are helpful in explaining the social behavior and processes of the playhouse in certain instances, each theory’s preoccupation with instrumental reason and social mobility do not fully explain other fundamental aspects of the institution.