Panels on the "war on terror" will follow performances of "Truth Serum Blues" at Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis, Minn., this fall. The play, written by Ismail Khalidi and Bassam Jarbawi and directed by Dipankar Mukherjee, is part of Pangea's ongoing program "Voices of Exile: Voices from the Arab and Arab American Community." The piece examines terrorism, patriotism, sedition, freedom of expression and freedom of imagination as it glides back and forth between Guantanamo, urban America and the Middle East. Post-performance dialogues are set for September 30 ("Balance and bias: framing productive questions on the Middle East") and October 1 ("The war on terror: from Israel-Palestine to Iraq and Guantanamo: victims, victors and the question of balance"). [LINK]

We have a little bit of news about artists we know in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. John O'Neal (Junebug Productions) and his family are safe in Dallas, and MK Wegmann (National Performance Network) left on August 22 on vacation. No further news about anybody else so far. Meanwhile, it's chilling to read predictions of this disaster -- "Gone with the Water" by Joel K. Bourne from National Geographic (10/04), and "The City in a Bowl" from NOW with Bill Moyers on PBS (9/02). Guess what? It's all about the oil. [LINK]

New York artist Andrea Polli is making progress with a proposal to generate power by mounting wind turbines on the Queensboro Bridge. Queens generates half of New York City's energy. The Queensbridge Wind Power Project is designed to engage the community in a dialogue about the potential of wind and other clean, renewable alternative energies in an urban setting. A video on Polli's Web site shows a computer model of the project and interviews with a climate scientist on the effects of global warming on the New York region. Polli has a financial backer interested in funding all or part of building and installing the turbines. She is now looking for approval for the project. [LINK]

Artists will join activists for a March on Washington to end the War on Iraq, September 24-26, 2005. Representatives of two major antiwar coalitions -- United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) and A.N.S.W.E.R./September 24 National Coalition -- will hold a press conference on September 1 to announce plans for the joint antiwar rally and march. The September 24 Mobilization will present a Peace & Justice Festival that will feature art installations, including a giant Peace Thunderbird puppet, a photo exhibit from past UFPJ mobilizations and a project to commemorate those killed in Iraq through the creation of mounds of skull eggs. If you have a display or art project that you would like to have considered for inclusion in the festival, e-mail: festival@unitedforpeace.org. [LINK]

A man has been shot from a cannon over the Tijuana-San Diego border as part of a public art project. For Javier Téllez's live artwork "One Flew Over the Void," Dave Smith traveled from Tijuana to Border Field State Park under cannon power, says Howard Lipin in the San Diego Union-Tribune (8/29/05). Smith, a world-record-holding human cannonball, left the cannon in Mexico and landed in the U.S., transcending the fence at the Playa de Tijuana with its 20-foot poles. This artistic "intervention" was among several making their debut August 27, 2005, as the inSITE05 exhibition opened in San Diego and Tijuana. It was also part of a long-standing collaboration among the Argentinian artist, Smith and mental-health patients in Mexicali. [LINK]

It's been a while since we picked a favorite current press release. Here you go. "Rebel Without a Pause: Unrestrained Reflections on September 11th" is SPARC's (Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, Calif.) idea of a good benefit theme. The 9/11/05 benefit stars "opinionated alternative comedian" Reno, and is co-hosted by this eclectic group: Lily Tomlin & Jane Wagner, Judy Baca, Robbie Conal, Donna Deitch, Jodie Evans & Code Pink, John Fleck, Tim Miller and Alistair McCartney, Michelle Shocked and Haskell Wexler, among others. "SPARC," says the release, "has for 30 years supported diverse, socially relevant, politically spirited, activist-minded art and artists, and offers this program as part of its ongoing commitment to art as a tool for social change." [LINK]

Shocker: The New York Times has reviewed a piece of community-based art. It's a New Jersey showing of "Endurance," the 24-hour community performance organized and translated to video by Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry. The reviewer is the excellent Holland Cotter (8/24/05). The piece is fairly well known: Two dozen homeless young people take turns standing on a streetcorner in Seattle for one hour each. The video fast-forwards the action, shortening it to two hours, while the performers talk in voiceover about their lives. "The homeless people in 'Endurance' are living the story," says Cotter. "The collaboration with Mr. McCallum and Ms. Tarry gives them a chance to perform it - that's the art part, the distancing and clarifying part - and lets us participate as witnesses." [LINK]

On August 2, 2005, President Bush signed into law the FY06 Interior Appropriations Bill, with an increase of $5 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. This is reduced to a net gain of $4.4 million after applying .476 percent across-the-board cut to all programs, putting the arts endowment at $125.66 million for year ahead, says NASAA. The final funding level agreed to by the conference committee represented a compromise between the House-passed bill, which would have added $10 million to the NEA budget, and the Senate's bill, which carried $5 million in new money for the arts endowment. This boosts the NEA to its 1979 funding level. [LINK]

Honoring the 100th birthday of Venice, Calif., in summer 2005, the Venice Arts Council is sponsoring the Venice People’s Centennial Celebration. Hosted by SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center), the celebration features an exhibition, "Venice Artists about Venice," including a benefit screening of "Feeding the Sparrows by Feeding the Horses," Moritz Borman's documentary exploring the political struggles of the 1970s in Venice.; "Divas of Venice, an installation and performances in collaboration with Code Pink, including the "Venus of Venice" awards, a "pink slip progressive wear fashion show"; and "The Posters of Peace Press," political posters created and printed by Venice activists and artists 1967-1987, produced by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics and others. [LINK]

Choreographer Liz Lerman and company have been receiving accolades for their dance work in communities. Lerman was inducted into the University of Maryland Alumni Association's 2005 Hall of Fame, which, every five years, honors alumni who have used their education and talents for the benefit of society. Lerman also received a 2005 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in the Arts from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. And the Capital Regional Education Council at Wesleyan University presented its Creative Youth Leadership Award to Teen Exchange Director Elizabeth Johnson in recognition of “the impact she is making in these young lives due to her drive and passion for her art form.” This summer's Teen Institute formed a new partnership with the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. [LINK]

The Black Rock Arts Foundation was founded in 2001 by the folks who bring you Burning Man, the most inventive arts community (pop. 25,000) on the planet. The nonprofit foundation promotes "community-based exhibitions of interactive art ... art that generates social participation" and inspires "immediate interactions that connect people to one another in a larger communal context." Their First Annual Community Arts Carnival occurred recently in San Francisco. The Black Rock grants program has supported Jessica Findley's Aeolian Ride in New York, Artica on the banks of the Mississippi River, the traveling Church of Stop Shopping, Kate Sorenson's Public Amphitheater in rural Arizona, Charlie Smith’s Tunnel of Transformation in Utah and more. See to believe. [LINK]

New York City's Percent for Art program is celebrating its 20th anniversary, says Michael Kimmelman in the N.Y. Times (8/19/05). The Center for Architecture, in Greenwich Village, is holding an exhibition through Sept. 24 to coincide with the publication of a new book, "City Art," edited by Marvin Heiferman, with essays by Adam Gopnik and Eleanor Heartney, looking back on what Percent for Art has accomplished so far. It has become the largest public art program in the city since the Great Depression, says Kimmelman. There have been more than 200 projects completed in schools, parks, police precincts and branch libraries, public squares, hospitals, juvenile detention centers and courthouses. Incrementally, usually without much fuss, they have enlarged the city's visual topography. [LINK]

Oakland, California's New Village Press will publish several books about community-based art in its initial press run. Calling itself "the first publisher to serve the emerging field of community building," the press' fall 2005 catalog includes "Works of HeART: Building Village through the Arts," a celebration of citizen artists revitalizing their communities by Lynne Elizabeth and Suzanne Young (eds); "Doing Time in the Garden," a guide to creating in-prison and post-release horticultural training programs by James Jiler; and "Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts," ten graphic stories about artists, educators and activists across the United States by Keith Knight and Mat Schwarzman. The press, under the direction of Lynne Elizabeth, is a project of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. [LINK]

"Arab Americans have somehow been written out of the history of the United States," said Anan Ameri, director of the new Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. She talked with interviewer Sean Barlow on a broadcast of Afropop Worldwide about the museum, the heart of which is in the personal stories of Arab Americans. Artist Bader Omar Al-Dafa, ambassador from Qatar, spoke at the museum opening, said Barlow, deploring the negative image of Arabs and Muslims in the media after 9/11. "Part of the message of this Museum," A-Dafa said, "is really to give the American people a different picture about the achievements of Arab Americans. ... Through culture, through painting, through music ... the closer we get together, the better we will understand each other." [LINK]

Swimmers at the YMCA in Cape Ann, Mass., are drying off with some special "talking towels" these days. Community-based artist Lara Lepionka has been embroidering Cape Ann YMCA towels with messages from Y members and staff about Gloucester and the work they do there. The Talking Towel Project (made possible by the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and Monograms by Diane) investigates how in our work lives we are constantly touching other people’s lives. The towels debuted during the Gloucester New Arts Festival in August 2005, and will continue on in permanent use at the Y. Some sample quotes: "I feel good when they get the courage to go to the deep end" and "The answers to problems in your life come in the middle of when you’re sweating." [LINK]

The new stations of the cross at Saint Paul's on the Green in Norwalk Connecticut are under fire. The commissioned paintings by artist Gwyneth Leech represent Christ in the midst of current armed conflicts, including the Iraq war. Conservative Christians have denounced them as a political statement inappropriate for a house of worship. Leech responds, "I was asked to combine the traditional stations iconography with elements of the world we live in. This brief eventually led to my vision of Christ as a prisoner of war, and as a hostage tortured by insurgents. The crowds are refugees. The people weeping at the foot of the cross are grieving Iraqis and Americans who have lost family members to bombs and to violence." All 14 artworks are on the Web. [LINK]

The NEA is offering grants for U.S. arts organizations to take part in an international arts exhibition in Belgium in 2007. In partnership with the U.S. Department of State and Europalia International, the Endowment wants to help "showcase the excellence, diversity and vitality of the arts in the United States through a series of performances, exhibitions, lectures, and symposia" at the festival, europalia.usa 2007. An application for the europalia program does not preclude an organization from applying under other NEA funding opportunities. To access the guidelines, go to the NEA Web site's "Grants" page, choose one arts discipline and then click on "europalia.usa 2007." [LINK]

Americans for the Arts has awarded 12 organizations $150,000 each for outstanding cultural work in their communities and the field, based on participation in the Animating Democracy and Working Capital Fund initiatives. The new Exemlar Program made the awards to Arte Público Press, Houston, Tex; Cornerstone Theater Company, Los Angeles, Calif.; East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, Richmond, Calif.; Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis, Minn.; Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, N.M.; Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Takoma Park, Md; Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Chicago, Ill.; National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, Ga.; Sojourn Theatre, Portland, Ore.; Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), Los Angeles, Calif.; Urban Bush Women, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle, Wash. [LINK]

The U.K.-based Centre for Creative Communities has posted an extensive new Web site. CCC aims to "combat social apathy and promote civic engagement through opening up dialogue among the community, public and corporate sectors." The new site approaches this mission with news and information about CCC activities and services, plus an international newsletter and calendar; a Reading Room of essays and links distributed across three categories (Collaborative Linking & Thinking; Citizenship & Diversity; Creativity & Learning), each with its own subcategories; and a bookshop sorted in the same way. CCC has done some groundbreaking work into cross-sector community-building and learning activity. [LINK]

The Community Arts Network has posted a useful site map to its Web site. The site map makes it easy to discover how many ways the site is organized and what services it provides. The outline clearly lists the following categories: Information Organized by Type; Information Organized by Discipline; Information Organized by Population Grouping; Information Organized by Social Context; and Information Organized by Field Application. The map also lists Custom Essay Collections; Custom Link Collections; Special Projects; Directories; Online Forums; General Information; and how to Interact with Us and how to Search the Site. [LINK]

A show of children's artworks at a university gallery leads to the story of Australia's "Stolen Generation" of Aborigines, says Felicia R. Lee in the N.Y. Times (8/15/05). The drawings, on display at Colgate University's Picker Art Gallery in Hamilton, N.Y., were made in 1950-51 by Aboriginal children who had been forcibly taken from their families in what the government described as an assimilation program. The artists were from the Nyungar people of Western Australia. As many as 100,000 mostly mixed-race Aboriginal children were were taken from 1910 to the early 1970s, sent to camps where historians say they were schooled but were ill-fed, ill-clothed and locked up at night. The plan's architects believed that full-blooded Aborigines would soon die out. In 1997, a government commission pronounced the policy "genocidal." [LINK]

A radio play of a story passed down through Kiowa tradition will be broadcast on AIROS (American Indian Radio on Satellite). In cooperation with the Wells Fargo Radio Theatre program and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, AIROS will broadcast the radio adaptation of "The Indolent Boys," the story of three homesick Native boys who ran away from a Kiowa Indian boarding school to return to their family’s camp and the consequences the boys and boarding school staff faced as a result. "The Indolent Boys" was originally written by N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Pulitzer Prize winner and Guggenheim Fellow. The play, written by Lori Tubert and based on historical events and Kiowa oral tradition, is set in Anadarko, Oklahoma Territory, in 1891. Since 1989, the Autry Museum has presented over 30 original radio plays reflecting the West’s multicultural history. [LINK]

The World Youth Centre in cooperation with U.N. Habitat is launching a new global initiative for young artists, focused on the Millenium Development Goals. The 1000 Words/Beautiful Struggle Project will document the creation of a dozen murals internationally, each based on one of the U.N.'s MDGs addressing education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, environment or global partnership. The project will publish a book featuring each mural created across the globe and accompanied by thousand-word essays on the locales and problems that young people face in each participating region relating to the Goals. Beautiful Struggle seeks interested indvidual artists or arts organizations. E-mail Project Coordinator Javid Alibhai: thousandwordproject@gmail.com. the Web site is in process. [LINK]

Art may fill a human need, but too much of it threatens a town's finances, says Sue McCloud, mayor of Carmel, Calif. The small town (pop. 4,000) is a major tourist destination where 105 art galleries make up one of every three businesses, says Garance Burke in a recent AP story. Since 2000, 35 new galleries have added only $500 in sales-tax revenues to the general fund because they rely mostly on outside buyers and California law exempts tourists from sales tax on purchases shipped out of state. City leaders have labeled gallery proliferation a "real and impending threat" and virtually banned any new ones. "Maybe now I'll be able to walk downtown and buy something useful," said Enid Sales, a resident since 1933. (Thanks, Arts Journal.) [LINK]

AMD&ART, an organization in western Pennsylvania, creates "large-scale, artful public places" to address acid mine drainage and other environmental problems. AMD&ART's newsletter reports that the organization received the 2005 Western Pennsylvania Environmental Award for Green Design, honoring its reclamation of 35 acres of abandoned mine land in Vintondale. The AMD&ART Park includes six treatment cells and 314 trees (13 species) planted in a Litmus Garden to reflect the increasing health of the treated AMD in their foliage color. AMD now enters the system at a pH of 2.8 and exits at 6.1. They celebrated July 8-9 with a symposium, a grand parade on Vintondale's Main Street and a Community Celebration Day where the nonprofit officially handed over the park to the community. Read lots more news online. [LINK]

CAN is excited to present Cross-Sector Resources, a new list of organizations that make good partners for community arts. Cross-Sector Resources is an annotated directory of organizations that are based outside the arts, but have developed resources and strategies that can be useful or instructive in community-based arts practice. Many of them have already devised working methods that address problems that confront — and sometimes confound — community arts practitioners. So far the list includes organizations that have made remarkable headway into such issues as sustainable community development, economic revitalization, international communication, placemaking and youth services. This idea emerged from the 2004 CAN Gathering and the CAN Report. If you would like to recommend a resource for this list, visit the page for instructions and a form. [LINK]

"Partnerships are becoming commonplace for many arts organizations that are seeking to fulfill their missions and visions" says Takiyah Nur Amin in a new story on CAN. Amin looks at the development of three arts partnerships: New York's 651 Arts-Africa Exchange Project; Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and the Five College Dance Department in Massachusetts; and Carpetbag Theatre Inc.'s Cafe Noir project in partnership with Knoxville College in Tennessee. Amin finds that "the success and effectiveness of any partnership is likely to be seen in different ways by different partners....What may be a working structure for one organization may not work at all for another. What seems appropriate in theory might not work at all in practice." [LINK]