All too often, a community undergoing a community development process is relegated to the role of audience to outsiders' expertise. Community members are asked to furnish token "representation" of the residents' point of view and once they have been represented are asked to approve what the outsiders say is in their best interest. This dynamic is reinforced by whatever power struggles and multiplicity of points of view actually exist inside the community itself, inviting outside experts to create oversimplified, monolithic characterization of the community's wants and needs as a way of responding to the overwhelming number of apparently competing agendas represented by the individual community members themselves. So how is consensus built across differences in age, class, ethnic identity, gender, lifestyles, religion, mobility, language, and values? This article presents a case study of the arts as an occasion for collective adult learning as authentic community development, as seen in a collaboration between the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation (LCDC) and the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). (Contains 2 figures.)