Working Methods is a new Special Project in the CAN Reading Room, gathering together free, online tools for constructing, conducting, documenting and evaluating effective community arts programs. The list includes the CAN How-To Collection of articles now online in the Reading Room. We've selected short, instructive stories to provide you with tools you can use. They describe best practices and offer specific guidelines for doing this work. Working Methods also includes an annotated, linked list of useful, free arts toolkits available elsewhere on the Web. Special bonus: a linked list of glossaries from other fields, helpful in understanding and defining the terms of cross-disciplinary work. This feature will grow, like our other community arts tools: Places To Study and Studies & Statistics. [LINK]

This month, poet Frances McCue, director of the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Wash., tells you about what happened to her community when it founded this literary house where people come to write, present their work and take classes. "How is making things, artistic things, like the process of making a difference?" asks McCue. "Art pries open gaps. It makes space for new things to exist. And it leaves enough room in this newly opened space for people to have a dialogue about it. … And I’ve come to believe that political work, the social and cultural work of caring for people, can learn from this. Maybe social change should be less about fixing and more about opening." [LINK]

Ann Daly critiques Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class," casting a few doubts on his success and gleaning some lessons from his methods, if not his conclusions. "For arts administrators and advocates embattled by financial and social retrenchment, an economic-development professor extolling the virtues of creativity becomes a rock star," says Daly, but his numbers are skewed by the 1999 dot-com boom, and the current economic fortunes of artists don't reflect the success he predicted for creativity. But what can we learn from Florida? To make direct observations, talk to people, ask different questions, search for alternate explanations, integrate qualitative and quantitative research and think big, says Daly. Specific to the arts: Networks are the future, look to emerging conditions, translate research into vision. [LINK]

In an election year with the country bitterly divided, it's telling that the highest-profile event at the Kennedy Center during the 2004-05 season will be a $14-million festival devoted to the art of the 1940s, says Philip Kennicott in the Washington Post (9/12/04). A distinct split in the art world, says Kennicott, mirrors the polarization of the U.S. population. "The arts are sorting themselves out into two camps: one that prizes independence, provocation and even direct political engagement, and another that offers a refuge apart from controversy and argument. They are, in short, diverging down either a secessionist path (come with us, if you will) or a concessionist route (we will work to please as many as we can). Both paths have their promise and their danger." (Thanks, ArtsJournal.) [LINK]

St. Louis, Mo., artists Wendy Surinsky and Christina Licata are concerned about the number of local people who were turned away from the polls in 2000, told they weren't on the list of registered voters. The two artists have launched the Voting Arts Project to increase voter engagement by inviting people to express their voting experiences in writing and visual art. They also want us to "remember who we are as a country," so they have created a line of "Democracy Shirts" reading "Make Democracy Visible" and quoting the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. As part of the Voting Arts Project, a St. Louis Community College class is producing bus-shelter posters encouraging voter engagement and turnout. Shirt sales (online) support the project. [LINK]

In conjunction with a group show called "The Presidency" (October 2-November 21, 2004), Manhattan's Exit Art is hosting three public programs. They include readings from Akashic Books' Presidents Series, early writings from U.S. Presidents, with an introduction and commentary by a contemporary writer. Selections on October 13 are: Adam Haslett reading from George Washington's "Rules Of Civility" and examining how well George W. Bush lives up to them; Neal Pollack reading John Adams' "A Defence of The Constitutions of Government of The United States of America"; and Percival Everett reading Thomas Jefferson's "The Jefferson Bible." Exit Art also hosts a viewing of TV's "Meet the Press" October 24, with panel discussion, and an Election Night Party ("Come Laugh or Cry") November 2. [LINK]

Over the next ten months, the U.K. Web project openDemocracy is publishing "After Image: the Meanings of Abu Ghraib," a series of articles on the strategy, implications and effects of the published images of violence and humiliation from the Iraq prison-abuse scandal. The stories include: "Abu Ghraib – Past and Future" by U.N. inspector John Packer; "A Strange and Bitter Crop" by Yale's Hazel Carby on connections between lynching and contemporary torture; "Postcards from the Edge" by activist Max Gordon, on the embrace between photography, racism and violence; "American Self Portrait" by NYU's Allen Feldman, on making the elusive terrorist threat visible; and "After-image: Abu Ghraib and the Arab World" by Arab journalist Rami Khouri, comparing the flawed U.S. democracy with totalitarian Arab regimes. [LINK]

OK, here's the story you've been waiting for: Arts companies are making $20,000 to $100,000 per session teaching the business community about leadership. That's right, companies like Movers and Shakespeares, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Pilobolus and The Music Paradigm are working with executives from Lucent Technologies, Northrup Grumman, Morgan Stanley, McGraw-Hill, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Citibank and Verizon. According to USNews' Christine Larson, and the training experts she interviewed (10/11/04), artists are treating businesspeople to experiential learning about group decision-making, collaboration, trust, multiple viewpoints and leadership styles. Movers and Shakespeares sessions have willing executives donning tights, doublets and codpieces to perform Shakespeare-based skits. "More traditional leadership courses are helpful, but I don't retain the lessons the same way I do from these," says one participant. [LINK]

Theater, once a crucial public meeting ground, has lost its social impact, says Editor Richard Schechner in The Drama Review ("The Big Issues and the Happy Few," Summer 2004). "Certainly people can 'express' themselves on any issue to any extreme, but this expression is not linked to action. In so-called open societies, one is permitted to say and exhibit just about anything, but increasingly with little effect beyond the pleasures of self-expression. Ironically, the more open the means of expression are in a society, the more superfluous both the openness and the expressions become. We are in the pitiable situation of being able to say or show everything but change nothing. The powers to govern or change society are out of the hands of the people." [LINK]

On September 16, 2004, at a secret, remote location close to London, surrounded by wire fencing and bright floodlights, artist Rod Dickinson reconstructed the FBI's 1993, 51-day covert psychological-warfare assault on the Branch Davidian religious community in Waco, Texas. The FBI intimidated the group, led by David Koresh, with a continuous barrage of sound at 110 decibels, including white noise, rock music and sounds of babies crying, circling helicopters, high-pitched rabbit screams and dentist drills. Dickinson's recreated audio from the performance, "Nocturne: The Waco Re-Enactment," may also be heard on the Internet for 51 days from September 16. Dickinson's artistic focus is the mechanism of belief systems and moments when they come into conflict with the state or mainstream culture. (Thanks, Salette Gressett.) [LINK]

A ten-piece accordion ensemble and a host of dancing angels led an exploration of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, 478 acres of rolling hills, ponds and sculpture, on October 9, 2004. The walking tour by Martha Bowers Dance Theatre Etcetera included the cemetery's Catacombs, with an Alex Heliner photographic installation featuring portraits of people interred at Green-Wood; the Steinway Tomb, accompanied by a live piano performance; and a discussion in the Historic Chapel with Douglas Keister about his book, "Stories in Stone: A Field Guide to Cemetery Symbolism and Iconography." The event was part of the second annual Open House New York weekend showcasing architecture and design sites across the city, many of which are usually off-limits to the public. [LINK]

What do you wear that makes you feel powerful? That's the question Two Girls Working have been asking women since July 2001 for their project "Trappings," an investigation of contemporary feminism that explores individualized approaches to power through interview-based community dialogue. The results are displayed in a touring exhibition (including a Bronx show, "Bitch School: Artists Explore Our Attitudes Towards Strong Women") with audio, print and video components and a Web site. TGW, Renee Piechocki and Tiffany Ludwig, have interviewed diesel engineers, students, stay-at-home moms, community volunteers, drag-kings, corporate executives, artists and elected officials. The interview settings have included private homes, universities, high schools, YWCAs and a quilting circle. TWG are available to bring the project anywhere. [LINK]

"To me, the Ph.D. was vital," said Bryant University's Petra Kuppers recently in the ongoing CANuniversity listserv conversation. "It allowed me to pinpoint and reflect on the issues of visibility, representation and embodiment that were so close to my heart in my artistic practice. It is this passion for social justice in representation that now fuels my writing, and my publications — never an external pressure, or a 'tenure-clock.' I would suggest that this passion for a question is what should drive a Ph.D. — not (necessarily) job-market conditions. Community arts don't exactly lend themselves to easy alignment with institutional structures. …But a Ph.D. can give you the time to explore the conditions and structures under which art making and community building are possible." Join us; send a blank e-mail to: canuniversity-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. [LINK]

"Finding the Common Threads" is a study being conducted by the U.K.'s Centre for Creative Communities. Its focus is on the insights and concerns of funders (public, corporate and private) that provide resources for arts projects working to fulfill social, health, education and community-development goals. It explores the contradictions and everyday realities of operating giving programs in a world with common problems but segregated sectors. "There is a clear need for new paradigms that emphasize communities of people acting together to create capacity for self-confidence and participation," says Jennifer Williams, director of the study and the CCC. The research will yield principles and good-practice markers for arts-linked cross-sector projects, and a map locating funders, their relationships and influences on their decision-making. [LINK]

Conservative support for the National Endowment for the Arts is among the little-noticed political developments this year, says Bruce Weber in the N.Y. Times (9/7/04). It's thanks, he says, to NEA Chair Dana Gioia, who's "selling the agency to senators and congressmen one at a time." His pitch? "What I would like to accomplish here is to maintain the artistic standards of our programs but improve the equity of our programs, reach more of the country," says Gioia. "If I represent anything in American culture it's the necessity for the arts to have public engagement. I'm a kind of populist elitist. Some art is better than other art, but without an audience, it's all diminished." Great! But can't we win back support for individual artists, too? [LINK]

The Center for Creative Community Development, a new joint project of Williams College and MASS MoCA made possible through a major grant from the Ford Foundation, has been created to serve as a national focal point for research, education and training on the role of the arts in community redevelopment. The Center plans to pursue this mission by undertaking research in a diverse range of communities nationwide to explore localized neighborhood effects of the arts, with a particular focus on communities in the midst of change, and by promoting practical training in the application of these techniques. It aims to make research results and analytic methods more widely available to policymakers, funders, arts administrators and community-development practitioners. (Thanks, Animating Democracy.) [LINK]

Carpetbag Theatre presents a Show What You Know Festival in October, a six-day series of community art events in Knoxville, Tenn. (October 5-10, 2004). The festival includes free performances and learning exchanges all over town, featuring spoken word, jazz and hip hop by Mississippi's M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction); performance by Miami's Teo Castellanos, 2003 Edinburgh Theatre Festival Winner; and the Resources for Social Change faculty of Alternate ROOTS. Events include a showing of the "Sankofa Project," digital storytelling about Carpetbag history; a Songfest from the Civil Rights era at Full Armor Church; a Hispanic Festival on the UT campus; and a day of weaving stories and building instruments to be used in the closing SambaEnsemble celebration in the streets. [LINK]

Writer Howard Zinn, director John Sayles, actor Wallace Shawn and others will read from "Voices of a People's History of the United States" by Zinn and Anthony Arnove, just published by Seven Stories Press. It's a companion volume to Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," the textbook for a whole generation of American activists. "Voices" features speeches, letters, poems and songs by "the people who make history happen but who are usually left out of history books," says Seven Stories. It includes, in their own words, Cesar Chavez, Frederick Douglass, Bob Dylan, Fannie Lou Hamer, George Jackson, Helen Keller, Public Enemy, Tecumseh, Mark Twain and hundreds more. The reading is on October 22 at The New York Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan. (Thanks, N.Y. Activist Calendar.) [LINK]

Writer Bruce Kayton, author of "Radical Walking Tours of New York City," leads a Radical Walking Tour of Harlem October 24, 2004. "See all of the history that the mainstream tours and PBS leave out," says Kayton, "from Malcolm X and A. Philip Randolph to Marcus Garvey and Fidel Castro. Harlem is the richest area culturally and historically in New York City and this tour focuses on Central and West Harlem. Great political movements like the Communist Party, The Black Panthers and the picketing of businesses on 125th Street are covered." Kayton also leads radical walking tours of the Villages (East, West and Greenwich) and the "Non-Jerry Seinfeld Upper West Side." His Web site features a book list, a "Labor Map" and "Today in Radical History." (Thanks, N.Y. Activist Calendar.) [LINK]

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige has heard the disturbing reports of arts cuts in the name of the No Child Left Behind Act, says Doug Herbert, special assistant on teacher quality and arts education with the U.S. Department of Education in the Detroit News (8/20/04). Herbert quotes Paige's recent letter to local school superintendents: “I believe the arts have a significant role in education, both for their intrinsic value and for the ways in which they can enhance general academic achievement and improve students’ social and emotional development.” Paige also outlined the funding flexibility under NCLB, most notably for Title I funds, which can be used by local education agencies to improve the educational achievement of disadvantaged students through the arts, says Herbert. (Thanks, ArtsEdMail.) [LINK]

Students at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin have established a new organization called the Policy Coalition on Culture (PCOC, or "peacock") to advocate for the arts in public affairs and give students opportunities to engage in advocacy and professional networking. Among their plans is a symposium on the 40th anniversary of the legislation that established the NEA, September 5, 1965. A core group of PCOC members are students of UT Austin’s Department of Theater and Dance Performance as Public Practice program. Other community members include Vincent Kitch, Cultural Arts Program manager of the Economic Growth and Redevelopment Services Office of the City of Austin, and Celia Hughes, executive director of VSA Arts of Texas. [LINK]

Miscellaneous Magazine is a publication from Vancouver's Miscellaneous Productions, a nonprofit interested in merging "the new frontiers of performance and new media" with community development and popular culture. Edited by Rita Wong, this single-issue publication is full of stories by young activist artists from diverse backgrounds about their efforts to confront racism, violence, homophobia and other forms of discrimination. "Miscellaneous Productions does not shy away from the dissonance between the social norms of what Canada is supposed to be and the 'dark side of the nation,' the experiences of people who undergo the violence of colonialization and imperialism," says Editor Wong, a poet and founding member of Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation. Copies of the magazine are downloadable free. [LINK]

Two more vital publications out of Vancouver are available from Judith Marcuse Projects (formerly DanceArts Vancouver). "The Fire Log" is a report on the FIRE Project, the second of a quartet of Marcuse projects exploring the worlds of young people, involving years of workshops, tours and community collaboration on a culminating performance work. ICE, the first component, concentrated on teen suicide. FIRE explores youth violence. "Breaking New Ground" reports on the 93 sessions of the First International Gathering of the EARTH Project for which 300 artists and activists (half under 25) from 21 countries met in Canada to explore the ways the arts are being used around the world to make positive changes in young people's lives. (AIR, to come, is about youth and spirituality.) [LINK]

Artist Normando Ismay is leading a Collective for Artists' Health Resources that will serve to direct artists to affordable health insurance and create a fund where they can borrow emergency healthcare funds. The collective's launch party is a Bizzoso Café and Fiesta, October 14-16, 2004, at Horizons School in Atlanta. Ismay's legendary moveable art venue, Café Bizzoso, will include dozens of performances, dance lessons and arts workshops. Ismay was diagnosed with cancer this year and, like many artists and 41 million other Americans, he has no health insurance. "In recognition that a 'for-profit' healthcare system is an atrocity in a country as advanced as the U.S., performing and visual artists are coming together to do something about the situation," says the collective. Donate through Alternate ROOTS. [LINK]

If you're passing through Philadelphia in October, you're passing through "Passing Through," a mural-arts treasure hunt designed by muralist Meg Seligman for the Mural Arts Program's 20th anniversary. The centerpiece is a 5,000 sq.-ft. mural on the eastbound side of the Schuylkill Expressway at Girard Avenue. Figures bound out of trompe l’oeil signage directing drivers to Central Philly, where they can begin the hunt for 19 satellite murals hidden throughout the city. The murals by Seligman, with text by Sue Spolan, are site-specific and reflect local history and people through images and sound bites recorded at each site. All murals display the "Passing Through" logo, which resembles an Interstate sign. Seligman's Web journal documents the process as murals pop up across town. [LINK]

You wouldn't expect to see a lot of misspelled words when you enter a public library. That's why, says the Associated Press (10/6/04), the city of Livermore, Calif., is paying thousands of dollars to an artist so she'll correct the words she misspelled on a giant mural in the entryway of the new main library. Eleven of the 175 words and names are misspelled, including Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Einstein. Artist Maria Alquilar was initially paid $40,000 for the mosaic. Now the city will pay another $6,000 plus her travel expenses from Miami for her to correct the work. Alquilar blames city leaders for not catching what she calls "oversights." The mistakes wouldn't even register with a true artisan, Alquilar said. (Thanks, Chigger.) [LINK]

The inventive artists of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Los Angeles, Calif., have posted their online Summer 2004 newsletter, "Lay of the Land," with a host of great travel stories. There's coverage of their bus tour to the Owens Valley, with exhaustive documentation of a visit to Jawbone Canyon, where the tourists "physically interact" with massive California Aqueduct pipes, and Inyo County, 92% of which is federal land. Other stories cover a CLUI exhibit of first-responder-training architecture, a sortie into the new L.A. sewer and visits to the attractions of the western South Dakota area, home of Wall Drug, Crazy Horse, Presidents Park, the planet's largest motorcycle meet and Devil's Tower, where the campground shows "Close Encounters" nightly. [LINK]

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