API and the Center for the Study of Art & Community have launched a new project called "Making Exact Change" about how arts-based programs have made a significant and sustained, positive impact on their communities. We'll pursue Bill Cleveland's idea from the May 2004 CAN Gathering, looking at programs that have made changes leading to the long-term advancement of human dignity, health and/or productivity for a minimum of ten years. CAN will publish a series of reports on a spectrum sample of ten programs, and we'll articulate a method for this kind of research. Bill Cleveland leads the team, and he needs your suggestions of programs to be included. More info on the Web. E-mail: bill@artandcommunity.com. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Visual artist Chrissie Orr writes about her water-catchment demonstration project in the New Mexico desert, designed by students at Los Padillas Elementary School on the Rio Grande. The kids, aged five to 12, were from different backgrounds: Anglo, Hispanic, Mexican, Native American and Japanese. Orr describes getting them interested in the vital importance and beauty of water in the dry environment, and the trials of manifesting their design in the rugged wildlife sanctuary behind the school. Orr, who has done community art projects all over the world, worked on a bare-bones budget with a spoken-word artist from the Santa Clara Pueblo, a permaculture student, a master metal worker, a landscape designer and a water engineer. They ended up making beautiful music together. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Dozens of community-art fans traveled through southeastern Kentucky together in September 2004 for "RFK in EKY: The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project," which we previewed on CAN in August. The event recreated Kennedy's two-day, 200-mile Kentucky "poverty tour" of February 1968. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange Partnerships Director Jane Hirshberg kept a diary of the trip. She guides the reader through the re-enactment and combined events, from Peter Edelman's talk in Louisville to the reconstructed Senate hearings Kennedy staged in the Fleming-Neon gym. Along the way, the crowd saw today's Kentuckians recreate testimony by their 1968 predecessors about life in the mountains. They included housewives, miners, college professors, politicians, high-school students and more. The project was directed by artist John Malpede. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Artist and collaboration expert Sheila Kerrigan writes about her 2003 course at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., “Community-Based Performance: Where Art and Activism Intersect.” The goal was to teach students how to work with a community group to create art that effects social change. Four academic entities from the arts, public policy, dance and documentary studies cross-listed the course. Students worked with an Americorps leadership program called Public Allies, teens from the Family Life Center at St. James Baptist Church in the Walltown neighborhood and teens from the Partners for Youth mentoring and tutoring program in the Lyon Park neighborhood. Kerrigan tells what happened, how it flowed from start to finish and how it affected the college students and teens that participated. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Six hundred clay handprints encircle a tree on the lower Green in Danville, Vermont, for "Danville: A Show of Hands." Working with designer John Zwick and artist Maggie Sherman, Danville School students traced their handprints onto clay sheets and answered five questions defining their places in the community, then repeated the process with parents and neighbors. The prints, pressed into the tree during Danville's autumn festival in October 2004, will naturally air-dry, biodegrade and return to the earth at the tree base, demonstrating the web of connection between students and community, past and present, art and science. The project is part of the Danville Transportation Enhancement Project, an arts-based community partnership to reconstruct U.S. Highway 2 through the village center. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World has named Seattle museum director Ron Chew among its 17 community-leading award-winners for 2004. Each receives $115,000. Chew, executive director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle's Chinatown-International District, is a pioneer of the "community as curator" concept, having facilitated community creation of more than a dozen significant exhibitions with a locally oriented emphasis on social justice. For "Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After" (2003), for example, 100 local volunteers created a replica of a World War II-era internment barracks, like those that held Japanese-Americans in Washington State, and filled it with artifacts and stories from that time. See Florangela Davila's great story in the Seattle Times (10/11/04). [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Red Dive, the award-winning artist company that brought you a "Peripheral City" eco-tour of Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal, rocked Manhattan with an Urban Country Fair in October 2004, replete with kissing booths, a hula-hooping team and a battle over blueberry pies. Red Dive creates interactive events and guided performance-tours in unusual environments, "a radical re-envisioning of how and where art is presented." Say the artists: "Our work merges the voices of communities, organizations and anywhere from a few to over 25 artists of various disciplines at one time in order to bring audiences into visceral dialogue with multiple perspectives on timely issues." Partners have included Lower East Side Tenement Museum, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Working Waterfront Association, Hackensack Riverkeeper and Brooklyn’s 76th Police Precinct. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

As a winner of the inaugural Technology Entertainment Design Prize, Irish musician and global activist Bono will have three wishes granted at the TED Conference in Monterey, Calif., February 23-26, 2005. TED, a group of influential thinkers, movers and shakers, has met annually for 20 years "to share ideas and passions that are big enough to change the world." They recently inaugurated the TED Prize to reward people doing "something that can contribute to the future of life on earth." The prize includes three wishes and access to the considerable resources of the TED community. Bono, who will disclose his wishes at the conference, was honored for bringing serious attention of world leaders to the problems of AIDS and poverty in Africa. (Thanks, Jan Freya.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Prominent Indian artist/activist Mallika Sarabhai never imagined she would one day have to flee her home in the dead of night, hidden under a blanket in the back of her car, says Mira Kamda in "Saffron Nightmare" (American Theatre, 11/04). During militant-Hindu violence in her home state of Gujarat in 2002, Sarabhai, daughter of the founder of India's nuclear program, found herself on the front lines of the battle, documenting the carnage, helping displaced persons in refugee camps and filing formal complaints against the police and the Gujarat government. She and other activist artists, especially women, were targeted with death threats, house arrest and violence for making secular, "sacrilegious" art. Accompanying Kamda's story is Sarabhai's essay, "I Will Shout from the Rooftops." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Reporting the Arts II" by the National Arts Journalism Program is a follow-up to their ground-breaking 1999 study of how the press covers the arts, which exposed battles being waged in editorial offices to define the nature of arts journalism. This new publication examines the dramatic transformation of the media landscape in the wake of recent newspaper mergers, the September 11 attacks and declines in the U.S. economy. Besides revisiting and analyzing how the local and national press attempt to strike a balance between high and popular arts and critical and celebrity journalism, "RTAII" also takes a first-time look at foreign arts reporting, the non-English and alternative press and coverage on the radio and the Web. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

When it comes to supporting federal funding for the arts, maybe it's no surprise that New England leads the way among House members of the 108th Congress (2003-2004). So says the Americans for the Arts Action Fund in the first-ever Congressional Report Card on the Arts, which grades each House member on specific arts and arts-education policy votes. Highest grades went to Representatives from Vermont, Massachusetts and New York. The average grade for the House was a B. Arts support is increasingly bipartisan, the Report Card shows. Funded from a $120-million Lilly Foundation grant, the Arts Action Fund is a new political-action committee (PAC) that will promote arts issues and candidates for office, lobby legislators and evaluate their voting records. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Writer Ernest Hemingway's tiny villa on the outskirts of Havana is falling down, but the U.S. government is preventing foundation funding of the restoration of the international cultural landmark, says Ginger Thompson in the N.Y. Times (10/14/04). The Hemingway Preservation Foundation applied for a license that would exempt it from the United States' 40-year-old economic embargo against Cuba and allow it to provide money and expertise to help restore the Finca Vigía, or Lookout Farm. The foundation estimates that the project would cost two to three million dollars. The Bush Administration denied the foundation's license request in June, saying the project would support tourism and thus help the economy of the hemisphere's last Communist outpost. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Boston Harbor Islands National Park seeks artist teams to design seating/shelters on Spectacle Island, so called because its two glacial hills connected by a sandbar resembled a pair of spectacles to early European explorers. In the 1980s, Massachusetts began to restore the island, which had been used for a woodlot, quarantine station, horse-rendering plant, lighthouses, municipal garbage dump and grease plant. Now 105 acres, sea-walled and capped with topsoil, Spectacle Island will open to the public in 2005, featuring a marina, visitor center, beaches and walking trails to a 157-foot-high hill, offering panoramic views of the harbor and city. The RFP is posted on the Urban Arts Institute Web site. Proposal deadline: November 15, 2004. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif., offers a community discussion November 14, 2004, to accompany its exhibition "Land Marks: Political Interventions by Artists as Activists." Current Bridge Artists-in-residence Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla will explore diverse mark-making procedures in ideologically charged sites, from customized shoe soles for civil disobedience actions in the disputed U.S. Navy Training Facility in Vieques, Puerto Rico, to large chalk pieces placed in the governmental center of Lima, Peru. Richard Pell of the Institute for Applied Autonomy, a collective of engineers, designers, artists and activists, will discuss their nonviolent graffiti-writer robot and a modified cargo van that paints political messages on the roadway while driving. He's also developed an automated vehicle tour guide, Way Pointer. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies has a stunning On-line Multimedia Gallery showing its documentary projects rich in photographs, video clips, audio recordings and text excerpts. "We Skate Hardcore" selects pieces from a new publication from CDS' Lyndhurst Books and New York University Press by Vincent Cianni, who spent seven years photographing and documenting a group of Latino in-line skaters in the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Cianni weaves together images of the skaters with their own words, showing the struggles they experience to find a place to skate and to survive in the city. Also, check out Peter Jordan's "Small Warriors Barsaloi," an outstanding interactive Web exhibit of videos made by African children living in a remote village in northern Kenya. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

GrantCraft has published "Alternative Evaluation Techniques," a series of brief guides based on the actual experiences of grant makers and grant users, largely told in their voices. The series includes two interesting new guides by Craig McGarvey, formerly with the Irvine Foundation. "Learning Together" describes "collaborative inquiry" among grantmakers and grantees, constituents, partners and other funders to help them share what they are learning and improve their practice. The guide offers a range of practical questions to be addressed before and during the collaboration. "Getting Inside the Story" describes ethnographic approaches to evaluation, how it can be used with qualitative methods, how grantees respond and what products can emerge. At Irvine, McGarvey collaborated with API on "Connecting Californians," a study published on CAN. (Thanks, Dudley Cocke.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

We recently ordered some free print publications from the NEA Web site, including "A Legacy of Leadership," a look back at NEA history. It's full of well-done short stories about NEA-supported artists and projects that helped build strong communities across the country. We particularly enjoyed the chapter on "responding to crises," describing projects like the Healing Power of Arts at Columbine High School after the 1999 shootings, the Watts Writers Workshop founded after the 1965 L.A. riots, emergency support for the American Conservatory Theater after the 1989 Bay Area earthquake, and a design charrette for Oklahoma City after the 1995 Murrah Building bombing. We often talk of the NEA's losses, but it's important to remember its successes. Good reading and hope in the dark. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Elko, Nevada's Western Folklife Center, home to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, has a new focus called "Deep West," an attempt to "foster a network of people in communities across the country, people who share our love of the West and its traditions. Deep West will provide opportunities for everyday folks living in the American West to articulate their stories and experiences. By reading, watching and listening, we will all better understand what makes our communities strong and how we identify ourselves as Westerners." WFC offers interactive community programs like Ranch Communications, with training and production in digital storytelling (see Peter Church's wonderful short film "Stacking Stones" online now); and Voices of Youth, with training in photography, audio recording and writing (samples online). [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Social Theatre" is the topic of the Fall 2004 issue of the Drama Review. Editors Richard Schechner and James Thompson approach it as "the dynamic meeting of theatre and social work, an interaction that can change both disciplines." The issue includes provocative essays by Schechner, Thompson, Steve Tillis, Guglielmo Schininà, Nasmul Ahsan, Shayoni Mitra, Sanjay Kumar, Paul Heritage, Peter Caster, Shulamith Lev-Aladgem, Amanda Stuart Fisher and Dudley Cocke on theater history's view of the world; theoretical and historical sources and themes of social theater; such work in India, Bangladesh and Brazil; prison theater; authorship and ownership in Israeli community-based theater; collective storytelling; theater of war; and art in a democracy. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The National Center for Creative Aging has launched a multiyear public-awareness campaign called "The Art of Aging: Creativity Matters" to spotlight the relationship between creative expression and healthy aging and to win support for the establishment of a new stream of federal funding dedicated to arts-and-aging programming. Activities include a national policy conference preceded by town-hall meetings conducted across the country; a national petition calling for a referendum leading to the legislation of a separate stream of funding for arts-and-aging programming; and a range of art-making projects, including an "Art of Aging" visual arts exhibition. To get the NCCA newsletter, e-mail: ncca@creativeaging.org. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"We all leave marks in our environment — some of these marks are direct, like tracks in the snow, earth, grass, sand and water, some more subtle, as we keep track of one another in space," says a group of disabled Rhode Island artists who created Tracks, a traveling digital exhibit. "Our differences present another view of the world, and of what it means to lead a fulfilled life — and our shared world is richer for these different perspectives." Artist Petra Kuppers and VSA Arts Rhode Island brought disabled artists together in rural arts workshops to explore their tracks in the world. Their photos and collaborative poems have been exhibited across the state in cafes, libraries, colleges, malls and Women's Centers. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The U.S. Army has announced plans for a $200-million museum and entertainment complex to be built at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, 12 miles south of the Pentagon, says Julie Iovine in the N.Y. Times (10/10/04). The 255,000-square-foot complex opens June 14, 2009, with space for 515,000 works of art and artifacts, research, restaurants and shops, plus a parade ground for simulated battles and an annex for 4-D simulators offering "fully immersive environments" — like dashing through a battlefield in a jeep. If that sounds a little Hollywood, says Iovine, consider that Universal Studios is a consultant. Army Museums director Judson E. Bennett says the museum is meant to increase not enlistment but understanding of "what the life of the soldier is like." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Results are finally in from Headlines Theatre's Legislative Theater experiment, "Practicing Democracy," an exhaustive, nearly two-year process in which the Boal-based company used community-based theater to affect the way laws are made in Vancouver. The City Council bought into the proposition in 2003, then waited patiently while Headlines held a community referendum to determine the project focus. They settled on the welfare cuts to take effect in March 2004, leaving thousands ineligible. Using Boal techniques, Headlines worked with 30 community members, workshopped and presented a play, and accepted live interventions from the audience. These were documented by a legal expert and turned into a report to City Council. In October 2004, Council basically rejected their suggestions for legislation. Still developing… [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

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