Prairie produces photography based programs for schools and community organizations throughout Greater Cincinnati. Programs seek to bridge the gap between disparate communities in Cincinnati by using image-making and reflective activities as a medium for relationship building. Prairie's programs also seek to give voice to those excluded from public discourse on important community issues.
David Rosenthal is the founder and Executive Director of Prairie, Inc., a Cincinnati based arts organization which has been producing media-based community art programs since 2009. Prairie has produced over 75 photography based programs customized for community agencies and schools. Rosenthal graduated from Cornell University, and the University of Cincinnati with an MFA in 2001 and has acted as an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky University and Miami University.
In 2009 Prairie began its New Voices programming with the School for Creative and Performing Arts as a way to create a more thoughtful and inclusive dialogue around an issue generating divisive rhetoric in the community. The School for Creative and Performing Arts was moving from its historic, and repurposed, old school building in Over-the-Rhine to a brand new building closer to the central business district and across from the largest homeless shelter in Cincinnati, the Drop Inn Center (now Shelterhouse). Those for and against this move had strong opinions......but based on what knowledge? To soften this bitter debate, creative writing students from SCPA worked throughout the fall of 2009 with a handful of residents at the Drop Inn Center to photograph and discuss the changing neighborhood and to crystallize and present their shared understandings to the community. These thoughts, shared with the local press, school administration, parent committees and others helped to cool heated rhetoric and bring voice to important stakeholders in the debate whose voices weren't being heard.
Prairie is thankful for the generous supported from private and public foundations in the Greater Cincinnati area.
