City of Imagination is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization bringing art, free, directly to the public in Gulfport, Florida. Its City as Museum program uses city buildings -- lobbies, libraries casinos -- for exhibitions like June's "Highway To the Soul: The Disappearing Florida Landscape," paintings by an African-American group of artists called The Highwaymen that emerged in the 1950s with works intended for sale to tourists. COI's monthly Lawn Chair Literary Festival in Clymer Park presents artists using the written word as a base. In a time of decreased public/private funding of the arts, says COI's Frank Hibrandt, this is a way to offer free arts experiences to the public "without the burden of having to maintain physical buildings or an organizational bureaucracy." [LINK]

"Windsock CURRENTS" is a project of ecoartspace created for the United Nations World Environment Day 2005 in cooperation with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. The collaborative ecological public artwork at Crissy Field in the Presidio by artist R.T. Livingston and performance group Red Dive aims to underscore the power of wind as a readily available, sustainable energy source. On June 1, Livingston will strategically place 16 re-engineered International-Orange commercial airport windsocks, metaphorically reviving the historic landing strip, once San Francisco's first line of defense. On June 4, for Urban Power Day, Red Dive performers in bright orange construction jumpsuits will guide visitors through the windsock installation while exploring unexpected physical relationships, taking visual cues from the direction of the wind. [LINK]

Everybody's talking about Bill Moyers' address to the National Conference for Media Reform on May 15, 2005. Moyers commented on attacks on him by "the right-wing media and their allies at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting," calling them "a contemporary example of the age-old ambition of power and ideology to squelch and punish journalists who tell the stories that make princes and priests uncomfortable." Moyers said officials at CPB, rather than protect independent journalism, gave into the Bush administration's policial pressure from quash Moyer's "continuing reporting on overpricing at Haliburton, chicanery on K Street, and the heavy ... hand of Tom DeLay." This might seem far afield from community art, but it has everything to do with the future of free expression. Read/hear it on freepress.com. [LINK]

The National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University will close due to lack of funds, says the program's advisory board. Founded in 1994 to advance the quality of arts coverage in the press, NAJP had to raise its entire operating budget after funding from Pew Charitable Trusts ended, according to an AP story (5/23/05). "At a time when arts journalism is under pressure across America, you might think that a program like NAJP is even more crucial to the field than ever," board member Douglas McLennan said. "You'd be right, and perhaps it's an indication of how much work we have to do in arguing the case for arts journalism that there currently doesn't seem to be major institutional support to keep NAJP going." (Thanks, Arts Journal) [LINK]

In advance of the National Critics Conference in Los Angeles, the L.A. Times has published a meaty article surveying the field (5/22/05). Quoting such critics as Dave Hickey, Robert Brustein and Frank Rich, Times writer Scott Timberg concludes that criticism has lost its influence. Primarily, say the critics, it's because art has lost its direction. "In the 1980s," says Brustein, "as the religious right flexed its muscles and the academic left began to dismiss 'Eurocentric' art, there was an attack on the very idea of high culture from both sides of the political spectrum. That's where the left and right seem to meet." APInews is on the spot at the conference in L.A. this week. [LINK]

The Leeway Foundation, which supports "women artists making change" in the Philadelphia region, makes a little grant money go a long way. The foundation's 2005 Art and Change grants, totaling $22,000 to ten women artists, will support: a documentary about a soldier's decision to have himeself shot in the leg rather than return to combat in Iraq; a black artist (who teaches 8-12-year-olds) to study drama at Oxford; artists creating community-builders like a free Friday Night Jazz Series in an African-American West Philly neighborhood and crochet workshops in the Puerto Rican Norris Square neighborhood; an oral history of the last surviving members of the Sholem Aleichem Club; research in Ghana for a documentary on women of the African Diaspora; and more. [LINK]

Artists from around the world will come together for "B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop" at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Minn., June 2-5, 2005. The summit will feature panels, live performances, film screenings, live graffiti art, breakdancing, MCs and DJs and community workshops (for ages 12 andup) in lyricism and poetry, stencils and graf, dance (breaking, popping and locking) and digital media. The summit is part of the larger B-Girl Be project at Intermedia, April-June 11, including the first international exhibition of art created by women involved in and influenced by Hip-Hop culture, and a workshop in freestyle Twin Cities graffiti history. Be sure to visit the excellent project Web site for artwork and pictures and bios of the participants. [LINK]

A live-entertainment road show with a difference -- a West African "caravan of hope" raising awareness about HIV/AIDS through evenings of entertainment -- is wowing the crowds in Mauritania. The mobile state-of-the-art theater, a truck equipped with a powerful sound system and giant screen, has just ended the first stage of a 2005 HIV/AIDS tour of the Senegal River Valley, says a lively report on the U.N.'s PlusNews Web site. Nedwa, the Mauritanian organisation that runs the caravan, hopes the tour will trigger dialogue about the pandemic across the Mauritanian countryside and help break down taboos about HIV/AIDS. In river-valley towns like Tiguent, Mbagne, Rosso, Bogué and Kaedi the show has attracted big crowds of up to 7,000 spectators an evening. (Thanks, Art4Development.net.) [LINK]

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, will view its first annual children's art exhibition in early June 2005. The show is the result of Shoshana Lara Woo's Fulbright research project with seven former street children living in a safe house operated by the Thao Dan Care Program, a Vietnamese-run NGO devoted to empowerment, support and protection of street children in Ho Chi Minh City. The exhibit is sponsored by Rossignal Fine Arts, where Woo is coordinator of children's art. "Our exhibition is in honor of each child's efforts and accomplishments as both a young artist and, most important, a child reintegrating back into society from the city streets," says Woo. "It is my hope that you, too, will see the way in which the children’s dreams, fears, way of thought, sense of morals and emotions materialize in their works." [LINK]

L.A.'s SPARC has issued a report on the May 14, 2005, demonstrations around a Judy Baca community artwork in southern California, "Danzas Indigenas," a 13-year-old, an officially approved Metro-station monument created for the City of Baldwin Park. Save Our State (SOS), an anti-illegal-immigration group, "garnered only a handful supporters," says SPARC. SOS, "with ties to the vigilante Minutemen Border Patrol, erroneously believed that quotes on the ... monument were racially charged, seditious and anti-American in nature. The residents of Baldwin Park believed otherwise, along with numerous high schools, universities and peace organizations, and quickly mobilized into a group of nearly 1,000 people in a counter-protest on Saturday. The Save Our State demonstrators, wearing inflammatory minuteman and border-patrol garb, were highly outnumbered by monument supporters." Read more on the Web. [LINK]

Dipankar Mukherjee, founding artistic director of Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis, Minn., has received a Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship. Mukherjee will study methodologies of peace and nonviolent negotiations at the local, national and international level. He will travel to South Africa, India and Switzerland, meeting with leaders, activists and mentors working for world peace and human rights. The fellowship program aims to help individuals at midcareer prepare for greater leadership responsibilities and enhanced contributions to their communities. Pangea will also receive a Special Recognition Award from the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights on June 7, 2005, honoring its work to promote human rights through the arts. Mukherjee's wife and partner in Pangea, artist Meena Natarajan, participated in the 2004 CAN Gathering. [LINK]

If you're interested in Civil War re-enactments or Living History events, head for "The Muster" on Governors Island in New York. "The Muster" is a Public Art Fund project by Allison Smith, who for ten years has been obsessed with re-enactments. Set for May 14, 2005, on the Fort Jay marching grounds of Governors Island, the event was generated, says Smith, by the questions "What are you fighting for?" Interested in the role craft plays in the construction of identity, Smith borrows the language and aesthetics of re-enactments to create "new historical narratives for the 21st Century." Fifty enlisted participants will fashion uniforms, build campsites and declare their causes publicly to an audience of spectators. See pix of Muster 2004 on the Web. [LINK]

Have the humanities become so marginalized that they no longer serve a purpose in peoples’ lives? Can they achieve the same visibility as community arts? The University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center is addressing on several fronts the community relevance of the disciplines of literature and language, philosophy, religion, art history, cinema, linguistics and history. In March 2005, the Center conducted "Urban Humanities," a town-hall style discussion -- the core purpose of which was to examine the university's troubled relationship with its Southside Community. The Center has an excellent, detailed article about the discussion on its Web site. Also, the Center will sponsor a May 20 workshop by scholar Norman M. Bradburn introducing the National Opinion Research Center’s major study, the Humanities Indicators Project. [LINK]

Southern California is boiling with censorship crises these days. In Baldwin Park, a 12-year-old community public artwork by Judy Baca is under attack by an anti-illegal-immigrant group called Save Our State. The piece, "Danzas Indigenas," includes quotes from local community members, some of which were called "anti-American" and "propaganda" from "radical organizations" who wish to "return the Southwestern U.S. to Mexico." Baca says the opposite is true. Protests and counterdemos are set for the weekend of May 14-15. Read all about it on Baca's Web site. Also, "Mark of the Beast" at downtown L.A.'s Transport Gallery, an antiglobalization group show that reworked corporate logos (Levis becomes "Evils") was shut down April 23, 2005, by the LAPD on charges that the content was "aggressive and offensive." See Transport's Web site. [LINK]

The Poetry Foundation has finally figured out what to do with its $100 million gift from Ruth Lilly. The foundation is sponsoring a national survey of people's attitudes toward poetry, conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. It's also teaming up with the NEA on the National Poetry Recitation Contest and with the Library of Congress on the American Life in Poetry project, a weekly column by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser free of charge to any newspaper that wants it. And it's redesigning Poetry magazine. Just for comparison, the Ford Foundation is putting up $50 million over five years to support its "largest initiative to support nonprofit media in more than 25 years." [LINK]

CANuniversity is a new resource on the CAN Web site for people involved in or interested in community-arts training. CANu looks at college and university training programs and at the community partnerships and projects that enhance that training and put it into practice. CANu debuts with writings by or about this topic by practitioners, educators and students; Places To Study, a directory of college and university courses in degree and nondegree programs, plus internships, fellowships, apprenticeships, certificate programs, workshops and institutes; syllabi from past and continuing courses around the world; and a discussion group hosted on Yahoo groups. The project is open-ended and will continue to grow, possibly generating CAN textbook publications and CAN training courses online. [LINK]

Today CAN takes you to New York City for a tour of the community-arts learning opportunities at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Artist/scholar Jan Cohen-Cruz and her colleagues work hard to help students imagine a world where artists are deeply involved with their communities. Opportunities at Tisch to bring that imagined world into reality include a minor in applied theater, the Department of Art & Public Policy, the Office of Community Connections and LOCAL (the Laboratory of Community Cultural Development) – the cradle of what Cohen-Cruz hopes will be a new major in community-based theater. Linda Burnham takes you to class with the students, inside some faculty-staff meetings and to Brooklyn for a student-produced performance. [LINK]

Today on CAN, arts-and-education specialist Arnold Aprill reviews "Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century," edited by Nick Rabkin and Robin Redmond. Published by Columbia College Chicago's Center for Arts Policy (2004, 165 pp.), it's "a breakthrough document that cogently explores the role of the arts in innovative educational practice and school-improvement policy in the contemporary world," says Aprill. "The book is outspoken in its findings that not all arts education is the same — that as necessary as it is to teach art appreciation and formal technique, 'Putting the Arts in the Picture' takes the radical position that arts education that also explicitly connects the arts to all other school subject areas and, vice versa, is much more valuable for young people’s development." [LINK]

"The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army's War and Strategic Planning Room for Operation H.A.H.A.H.A.A. is now open." This announcement appears on the Web site of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (lab of ii), a network of socially engaged artists and activists launched in London during the October 2004 European Social Forum. The lab is touring the U.K. in preparation for the G8 Summit in Scotland, July 6-8, 2005, where the War and Strategic Planning Room is part of the Centre for Contemporary Arts' "Risk: Creative Action in Political Culture" exhibition in Glasgow. Campaign elements include the Church of Immaculate Consumption, the Starbucks Faulty Cup Recall, Cleaning Up After Capitalism, Trickster Training and 13 Experiments in Hope. (Thanks, Salette Gressett.) [LINK]

The National Endowment for the Arts has announced yet another new program -- the Arts on Radio & Television. The agency announced May 5, 2005, that it will award nearly $3.85 million through 47 grants in the new category, which supports the development, production and national distribution of radio and television programs focusing on the arts. "The arts simply don't have enough presence today on radio and television," said NEA Chair Dana Gioia. "The NEA is committed to making the best of the arts as widely available in America as possible. Our new grants for Arts on Radio and Television will bring jazz, opera, symphonic music, literature and theater into millions of homes." For a list of "the best," see the NEA Web site. [LINK]

Today on CAN, Community Performance Inc. Director Richard Owen Geer reviews "Local Acts: Community-Based Performance in the United States," a new book by Jan Cohen-Cruz. The book (Rutgers University Press, 2005), says Geer, "puts a history beneath us, a vision before us, identifies leading voices, provides case studies, theory, criticism and indications for future scholarship. In Wallace Stevens' poem 'Anecdote of the Jar,' a jar, placed in the Tennessee wilderness, orders and ennobles its surroundings. Likewise, 'Local Acts' defines the field in which we labor. Hers is a book we need to be who we are." Calling it a basic textbook for the field, one that "charts and challenges all at once," Geer also diligently catalogues what's missing, but says these omissions should stimulate further writing about the topic. [LINK]

Today on CAN, Dudley Cocke introduces Tamejavi, an intercultural experiment in California's Central Valley. Organized by the Fresno-based Pan Valley Institute of the American Friends Service Committee, Tamejavi is a year-round exploration of new immigrant and refugee life in the valley. The name itself, invented by the participants, is a mix of the Hmong, Spanish and Mixtec languages. Tamejavi emphasizes Popular Education methods -- individual and group learning as the path to political and civic engagement. Its 2004 festival was a sprawling cultural marketplace of performance stages, food and craft booths, educational platicas (forums), screening rooms and art galleries. Get Cocke's take on all this in a story first published in the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader. [LINK]

Boston's Fort Point Artists Community ArtWalk, May 6-7, 2005, will include "Stone Bridge," a site-specific public artwork addressing historic violence. "Stone Bridge" by Joanna Rice of Mobius Artists Group consists of 12 signs placed on posts, set at eye level on both sides of the sidewalks on the Summer Street Bridge over A Street in Fort Point. The texts -- factual, historical details of beheadings -- are not intended to present a point of view, but to provoke reflection, says the artist. "The installation is sited on a bridge, which is a structure that spans. Violence spans time." Example: "Lesson of Terror: Chinese Holocaust, 1938. In a competition for beheading the most Chinese, Sub-lieutenant Mukai Toshiaki received first place with 106 beheadings. Sub-lieutenant Noda Takeshi placed second with 105." [LINK]

Models for community education and organizing — Theatre of the Oppressed and Playback Theatre — will be explored at Teatro Visión's Instituto de Teatro July 8-23, 2005. The Chicano-theater summer intensive in San Jose, Calif., will include Teatro Chicano foundations (Acto, Mito, Corrido); new directions (spoken word, hip-hop theater); core theater skills; exploration of Chicano/Latino identity; development of critical consciousness and dialogue; community-based research and artistic-creation methodologies; and a community-based performance project. "It is a training ground for those interested in an inherently political expression of art through theater," says Teatro Visión's Elisa Marina Alvarado. "We seek to foster a blend of artistic and cultural expression through Teatro Chicano in which social change has been a focus for centuries." [LINK]

The 21st issue of Under Pressure is out from the International Theatre of the Oppressed Organisation in the Netherlands. The newsletter reports on the Barcelona Joker Meeting, which, says Editor Ronald Matthijssen, "will probably be remembered as the start of the real globalization of ITO." Topics included developing a TO network in Boliva; developing a world-touring Forum piece about globalization; a Flying Actors Forum with people from different European countries; TO with asylum seekers from African countries, those now in Europe and those who sent back; Legislative Theatre in former Yugoslavia; how to cope with the fear of Muslims in Christian-dominated countries; and a contact point for feminist TO groups around the world. The issue also includes news of TO activites in India and Laos. [LINK]

The NEA is undertaking what it calls "the biggest jazz program in history." NEA Jazz Masters on Tour, organized with Arts Midwest, will tour the winners of the 2005 NEA Jazz Masters Awards to all 50 states by providing supporting funds to nonprofit presenting organizations, with educational activities included in each engagement. NEA Jazz in the Schools is an educational resource for high-school teachers of social studies, U.S. history and music. The five-unit, Web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit explores jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a means to understand American history. Much of the activity in both programs is supported by grants from the Verizon Foundation. [LINK]