A diverse group of people, ages 8-87, speaking five languages, is working together across boundaries on a community performance piece for the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. "Memorylines," debuting May 11, 2007, is described by experimental theater director Molly Sturges as "bridging cultural, economic and generational boundaries in Santa Fe through an exploration of collective memory and place." She says it has stimulated much needed community dialogue about the bioregion through workshops, open forums and performance creation, grounding its investigation in "the land, the water, the air, the light - in the memory held in the land. It is the land binds us, our common language." Sturges, founding co-director of Littleglobe Inc., is artist-in-residence for the Opera's Outreach projects. [LINK]

California artists Sue Mark and Bruce Douglas will be tandem-biking around Sumter County, Ala., in April, collecting stories and towing a billboard. During their one-month residency at Coleman Center for the Arts, they'll work as the "CAlabama Peddlers." Starting April 13, they'll bike through the region served by the old Alabama Tennessee & Northern Railroad, looking for local stories and local help creating slogans that will promote York. They'll display the slogans on a billboard towed behind their bike. In exchange for stories, the Peddlers say they'll assist with grocery pick-up, mail deliveries or small odd jobs. The artists will base their project out of Coleman's municipalWORKSHOP bike shed, where on April 28 kids can receive help fixing up their own bikes or refurbishing a community-donated bike that will be theirs to keep once repaired. [LINK]

The artists of SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) in Venice, Calif., have been very busy lately. They produced banners for Code Pink's March 17 march in D.C. They began an RFK interactive digital mural for a learning center in L.A. They're finishing up their Animating Democracy project, the Great Wall DVD. They're planning work with young immigrants on a mural for Fox Searchlight Pictures. They just opened "maquiL.A," an exhibition on L.A. sweatshop labor, curated by UCLA grad student Ana Guarjardo. They're designing the Cesar Chavez monument at San Jose State University. And they just completed a 20-week "Beyond the Mexican Mural" class with UCLA students taught by Judy Baca in the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab. [LINK]

What is the morality of gain in a world where some have more and some have less? Or, what would you do for a million dollars? That's the question Sojourn Theatre's new project, "Good," is asking. The production will take place as a "performance journey "in and around the Wentworth Subaru Parts & Showroom facility in southeast Portland, Ore., beginning June 10, 2007. Sojourn is conducting a Public Interview Series to develop the performance and explore the issues the material raises with participants; Director Michael Rohd interviews local figures from the business, civic, media and labor worlds about money, values and ethics. On April 7, Rohd interviews Pippa Arend of p:ear, Steve Dotterer of the Portland Bureau of Planning and a surprise guest. [LINK]

Members of the satirical performance troupe Billionaires for Bush suspected they were being spied on before the elections in 2004. They were right. For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover N.Y.C. police officers traveled across the U.S., Canada and Europe covertly observing people who planned to protest at the convention, writes Jim Dwyer in the N.Y. Times (3/26/07). In addition to a handful who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, the NYPD's “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad" reported on hundreds who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, including the Billionaires, Bands for Bush, the 1199 Bread and Roses Cultural Project and Joshua Kinberg, a Parsons graduate student who made a bike capable of spraying anti-R.N.C.-type messages on streets (and was arrested). [LINK]

Can you hear it? Parade School is coming to Baltimore. Nana Projects, "a nonprofit company of lanterneers and visual alchemists," will conduct a Parade School in Baltimore, Md., June 13-17, 2007. It's is a training program for artists, community organizers and college students interested in the artistry of community-based parades. Parade School faculty come from Vermont’s Bread & Puppet Theater, NYC’s Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and Baltimore’s own Great Halloween Lantern Parade. Nana says the school offers concrete skills, guidance, advice, resources, tools, an interdisciplinary approach to art making and networking opportunities with professionals in the field of Parade Arts. [LINK]

"UPROOTED: The Katrina Project" is underway at Jump-Start Performance Co. in San Antonio, Texas. Jump-Start artists have been conducting performances and story-circle workshops through their education programs and with local artists and community members, including Katrina survivors who have relocated in San Antonio. The project will culminate in a multidisciplinary performance, March 30, 2007, featuring a dozen displaced actors, poets, dancers and musicians from the Gulf Coast. This production will explore Gulf Coast artists' responses to the disaster and their efforts to reconstruct their lives and communities. The project is supported by the National Performance Network, of which Jump-Start is a member. [LINK]

Bealtaine is not only an ancient Celtic festival celebrating spring, it's also a contemporary Irish arts festival celebrating creativity in older age. Bealtaine 2007, "Forever Begin," will take place all across Ireland throughout the month of May. Events include theater, literature, dance, film, storytelling, music, painting, sculpture and Bealtaine Conversations It's all organized by a Dublin-based organization called Age & Opportunity with national arts institutions, arts centers, arts offices, public libraries, active retirement groups, care centers, hospitals and individual older people. With 262 partners organizing over 1,000 events in 26 counties, it is estimated that approximately 40,000 people took part in Bealtaine 2006. This year, Maryland's Liz Lerman Dance Exchange conducts a one-week residency in Dublin, ending with a performance at the Abbey Theater. [LINK]

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange has embarked upon Moving Dialogues, a series of conversations that focus on intersections of the arts with other disciplines. They bring the Dance Exchange together with panelists from varied fields, usually inspired by the company’s current projects and performances. The next Moving Dialogue, March 25, 2007, draws on a new LLDE piece, "613 Radical Acts of Prayer," by engaging the public in questions such as: What is the relationship between art, social action, and religious practices of prayer, contemplation and praise? Panelists include LLDE artist Cassie Meador, curator Steven Newsome and religion scholar/ethicist Zack Plantak. "Art and Science – Partners or Polarities," the dialogue for April 15, is sparked LLDE's "Ferocious Beauty: Genome," with science writer Ivan Amato, NIH’s Irene Eckstrand and LLDE's Elizabeth Johnson. Both panels are in Takoma Park. Md. [LINK]

A screening of Daniel Zlutnick's film "Down But Not Out" and spoken word by Bay Area artists will be part of "An Evening in Solidarity with the Katrina Survivors" in San Francisco, April 7, 2007. Keynote speaker will be Kali Akuno, executive director of the People's Hurricane Relief Fund-Oversight Committee, which sponsors the event at Centro Pueblo in the Mission District, along with the Bay Area Katrina Solidarity Committee, Million Worker March Movement, International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Revolution Youth and the Organizer newspaper. The fundraiser will support the International Tribunal on Katrina and the Second Survivors Assembly set for August 25-28, 2007, in New Orleans, "where the U.S .government will be tried for its various Katrina-related human-rights violations." [LINK]

What does it mean to be an immigrant? That's what artists and audiences will be talking about after performances of "From the Ashes" at Pangea World Theater in April. "From the Ashes" is a new piece written by Meena Natarajan and directed by Dipankar Mukherjee; both are founders of the Minneapolis theater. The multilingual production, April 12-29, 2007, tells stories of immigrants and refugees in the Twin Cities. Based on its interviews across the globe and on Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights' (MAHR) latest report on the ongoing impact of September 11th on local immigrant and refugee communities, Pangea "raises the global question of migration and movement, and about carried and left-behind realities in the current environment of miasmic fear." MAHR co-sponsors Friday and Saturday post-performance discussions. [LINK]

Artists are joining grassroots organizers and peace activists in the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Ga., June 27-July 1, 2007. Being called "the largest gathering of progressives and radicals in years," the forum will draw together hundreds of activist groups under the banner "Another World Is Possible." The USSF is a regional gathering of the World Social Forum, founded in 2001, a "possibilities-oriented" global alliance of "people's movements" that are "working to demonstrate that the path to sustainable development, social and economic justice lies in alternative models for people-centered and self-reliant progress, rather than in neo-liberal globalization." The USSF "sends a message to other people’s movements around the world that there is an active movement in the U.S. opposing U.S. policies at home and abroad." [LINK]

Arts leaders spoke to politicians March 13, 2007, in the first Congressional hearing on arts funding in 12 years. Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, actor Chris Klein and BET co-founder Sheila Johnson pressed Congress to restore funding for the arts to levels from 15 years ago - before those funds were slashed, says Brett Zongker in an AP story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (3/13/07). In his first public action on arts issues as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) hosted the hearing on the importance of investing in the arts in conjunction with Arts Advocacy Day, sponsored by Americans for the Arts. The advocates asked that NEA funding be increased to $176 million --its 1992 high. Bush's 2008 request is $128.4 million. [LINK]

The Center for Art & Public Life at California College of the Arts has announced a new Art in Education Teaching Institute at the Oakland campus. Designed for K-12 education administrators, teachers and art-education professionals, the ongoing institute offers Arts Learning Specialist Certification and Continuing Education Units offered through Alameda County Office of Education. Described as "a revitalizing and rigorous approach, where contemporary art and progressive education meet," the institute will have summer, evening and weekend classes. "Participants learn to "engage all students through dynamic culturally and socially relevant curricula, utilizing an inquiry-based approach to achieve the highest academic standards." The first course, to be launched this summer, is "Art Retreat for the Non-Artist Educator," a three-day art-making intensive. August 8-10, 2007. [LINK]

Suzanne Lacy and Grant Kester are two U.S. cultural figures featured online by CityArts, a busy Dublin, Ireland, organization focusing on community collaboration. Lacy and Kester are authors of influential books on participatory arts. Artist Lacy, currently at Gray’s School of Art in Scotland, is interviewed on film by artist Ailbhe Murphy at the Shifting Ground Conference, Ireland. Kester, art historian at UC San Diego, is seen addressing a seminar of artists, arts managers and community activists at the Dublin City Library and Archive, followed by a lively discussion. CityArts, now 30 years old, is worth reading about. It focuses on collaboration with communities and in civic contexts. Its programs and research in urban arts, art & city regeneration and with migrant communities are beautifully articulated. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you "Living Like a Refugee: Peggy Diggs Takes a Design Problem to Prison," a story by Linda Frye Burnham that comes with its own DIY kit for a portable desk. The desk design is the product of “WorkOut,” a project by artist Peggy Diggs and men in a maximum-security prison. It began with Diggs’ concerns about climate change and disaster preparedness. She assumed living like a refugee would mean moving from place to place with only a few light belongings. Through a partnership with the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, and funding from Creative Capital, Diggs met with 15 artists confined in the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Graterford to talk about living in tight places with almost nothing. Their meetings, detailed in Burnham's story, resulted in a functional artwork. Make it yourself with Diggs' easy-to-use directions. [LINK]

The largest exhibition of prisoner art in the country will open its 12th annual exhibition at the University of Michigan this month. The Prison Creative Arts Project presents the Twelfth Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners and a series of eight educational events, March 27-April 11. This year’s exhibition will include some 300 artworks by 200 artists. Curators Buzz Alexander, Janie Paul and Jason Wright selected work from 40 prisons statewide. Events include talks, discussions and film screenings about incarcerated youth, life inside Angola Prison, the mental-health crisis behind bars, torture in U.S. prisons, incarcerated Native people, the impact of having a loved one in prison, and Southern detention centers as a replacement for slavery. [LINK]

Artists, scientists, scholars, activists and community organizers share their work concerning food production, consumption and distribution during "Bioneering: Hybrid Investigations of Food" at UC Irvine in April. Curated by Lisa Tucker, events include a symposium April 13 at UCI, along with a screening of "Milk in the Land, Ballad of an American Drink," a "quirky, alternative history of America’s most committed culinary choice," by Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum. April 14 brings tours of the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, Fritz Haeg's Garden (Edible Estates) and the Plant Transformation Research Center at UC Riverside, where scientists research plant genes. A UCI art exhibition, April 26-May 11, includes a reading by writer Lesley Stern, a demonstration by Master Gardener Alyssa Pisano and a performance of "Food Diagnostic Activism at Home" by artist/bioengineer Pearl Ho. [LINK]

Swamp Gravy, the community theater project that changed the economy of Miller County, Ga., will host an arts conference May 2-4, 2007. "Building Creative Communities" promises to reveal "the power of the arts to transform a community and its citizens," says Colquitt/Miller Arts Council's Joy Jinks. "Participants will learn oral-history gathering and how to create murals, and [founding director] Richard Geer will be leading story circles and turning stories into performance. The registration will include seven meals, a performance of Swamp Gravy, a mini-May-Haw performance and the storytelling Cabaret. It is going to be loads of fun. Hope you can come." SG playwright Jules Corriere has been blogging on CAN from Swamp Gravy for the past few weeks (see CAN's front page). [LINK]

Marking the 4th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, March 19, artists are joining war protestors across the U.S. this week, says United for Peace and Justice. The UPFJ Web site lists more than 500 events demonstrating for peace. Musicians, dancers, singers, puppeteers, actors, poets, filmmakers and visual artists are among those staging events. Activities include festivals, marches, candlelight vigils, speeches, die-ins, street theater, poetry, parades, prayer, bell ringing, screenings of "The Ground Truth," dancing and drumming for peace, a crowd spelling a giant "OUT!" for the cameras, and people wearing tombstones and blank dog tags or carrying coffins or boots or white crosses to symbolize the war dead. UPFJ has the events listed alphabetically listed by state and city. [LINK]

Sarah Klein is an artist who bakes bread in office lobbies, schools, art galleries and other unexpected places, says Conan Putnam in venuszine, a magazine about women in music, art, film and DIY culture. Klein's "Bread Project" is a performance art series in public places in which she invites people to join in the eight-hour process of making naturally leavened bread and "get their hands sticky," as she says. "I find that the bread-making process acts in contrast to the focus of the space, questioning our busy lifestyle and our expectations of a place." Klein gives lectures on her bread-related art and that of other artists, and manages and documents the biennial Brick Oven Bread Bakers Conference in the San Francisco Bay Area. Follow your nose to her delicious Web site. [LINK]

A poet/veteran, an actor, a sculptor and a photographer/ veteran will discuss "Art and War" in Harvard Square on April 15, 2007, as part of "an emergency exhibition" of sculpture by Donald Shambroom. "Recruits," Shambroom's sculptures addressing "the tragedy of war," will be on view at the new Pierre Menard Gallery on Arrow Street in Cambridge, Mass., April 11-15, 2007. The April 15 discussion will include Shambroom and poet Kevin Bowen, Vietnam veteran and director of The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass Boston; actor Kermit Dunkelberg, co-founder and core actor of the Grotowski-influenced Pilgrim Theatre; and photographer and justice of the peace Chip Troiano, Vietnam veteran working on a documentary for PBS about Vietnam veterans who have gone back to that country. [LINK]

An English drama therapist is offering a unique workshop that combines the techniques of Augusto Boal and Outward Bound. Chris Reed has an amazing set of credentials in drama & movement therapy, dance, media, counseling, education, human ecology, mental health and wilderness therapy. Plus, he's the art director of a project aimed at helping develop a self-managing performing arts group run by people with disabilities and learning difficulties in North Cumbria, he's editor of Horizons magazine for the Institute for Outdoor Learning, and he teaches in the Outdoor Leadership degree program at the University of Lancashire. Reed has developed a complex service called The Moving Space (worth reading about). Its next manifestation is "Theatre as Adventure: Outdoors as Art" at Ratlingate International Camping Centre near Carlisle, England, June 11-13, 2007. [LINK]

"Keen architectural intelligence and a social conscience are not necessarily at odds," says the N.Y. Times about Michael Maltzan's designs for housing on L.A.'s Skid Row. Nicolai Ouroussoff writes (3/13/07) that Maltzan's new housing designs for the homeless, the 89-unit Rainbow Apartments and the 100-unit New Carver Apartments, are "bold and communally minded, with flashes of genuine elegance." And with on-site service providers, communal spaces, open-air walkways roof-top views and a prominent visual relationship to the community, the buildings "reflect changing thinking about how best to reintegrate the homeless into society." They "forge both a strong sense of community and a visual presence for the poor in a city that often seems to have forgotten them. ...Shocking, isn’t it? Imagine if this became a commonplace." [LINK]

Seven young Israelis and seven young Palestinians have gathered in a monastery in the hills above Jerusalem to begin a six-month photographic dialogue, says the BBC. Saeed Taji Farouky writes on BBC News that Side-by-Side, a joint project between U.K.-based charity PhotoVoice and the Palestinian-Israeli charity Parents' Circle/Families Forum, aims to give children their own voice. "I think we all sit together and smile together, but inside each one of us has a lot of things that he doesn't want to say," explains Limor Melzer, the project's co-coordinator. "I can understand that, but I think that we don't have to say everything, we can just try to do it from the side, with this camera." (Thanks, Creative Exchange.) [LINK]

Presentations from "New Directions in Community Dance," a 2006 research forum in the U.K., are now online. The Foundation for Community Dance and De Montfort University, Leicester, hosted the forum on May 6 to bring together community dance practitioners, teachers, students and academics to present, share and debate ideas. The term "community dance" has barely surfaced in the U.S., but the U.K. forum seriously discussed whether it has already lost its meaning. Presentations dealt with dance politics today; educating for the knowledge society and its impact on community dance; blurring the distinctions between "professional" and "community" performance; case studies on teaching for creativity and dance for the deaf; and the complexities of the intersection of community dance and religion. (Thanks, Creative Exchange.) [LINK]

Louisville, Kentucky's honored Humana Festival of New Plays will feature a special event about grassroots, community-based theater on March 25, 2007. Panelists for the discussion, "Playwrights and Community-based Work," are Sojourn Theatre's Michael Rohd, Cornerstone Theater's Allison Carey, playwright Alice Tuan and and CAN Co-director and theater director Robert H. Leonard of Virginia Tech. Humana's description: "As regional theatres once again push for regional stories, as playwrights in other forms of work join the rich tradition of writers of community-based work, join us for a conversation about different models of community-based work around the country, the odd alchemy of going from a community's experience through a playwright's intelligence back to a community and how the history of the field and its practitioners can enrich theatremaking in many forms." [LINK]

The National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO) is conducting a survey on artists' rights in the post 9/11 era. The results of this survey will be used for a presentation at the NAAO Annual Conference (Vital Signs: Creative and Healthy Communities. Los Angeles, California. April 26-29, 2007). "This work continues to support the ongoing mission of NAAO to support artist advocacy and and to be a catalyst that ensures the cultural health of our communities," says NAAO Executive Director Sandy Agustin. She requests those interested to go immediately to the survey on the Web and fill it out, and forward it to friends and colleagues. Further information is available on the NAAO Web site (http://www.naao.net/), or from Augustin at director@naao.net. [LINK]

Julian Boal, editor of UNDER PRESSURE, the International Theatre of the Oppressed (ITO) Newsletter, devotes the current issue to the Indian activist organization Jana Sanskriti. Says Boal, "Jana Sanskriti represents to me all the beauty that can be achieved in this world through Theatre of the Oppressed." The theater is engaged in a struggle against West Bengal State and a number of corporations. "Thousands of peasants are now facing the risk of being evicted from their houses, land and livelihood because the government want to give their lands to corporations," says Boal. The issue reports on recent organizing events in India: an ITO workshop; a 12,000-person rally by Jana Sanskriti; an Augusto Boal speech; and founding texts of the Federation of Theatre of the Oppressed–India. [LINK]

The effects of U.S. policy on European social challenges is the subject of a new Los Angeles Poverty Department community performance project in Gent, Belgium. LAPD, Nieuwpoort Theater and a community cast will open "Legal Illegal" March 21, looking at the ways U.S. policy impinges on Belgian sovereignty, including secret CIA flights, restrictions on use of the harbor and immigration policy. "LAPD’s theater work is gaining attention in Europe," says LAPD on its Web site, "due to the social challenges there now: pressures to dismantle the social safety net, demands of war on terror, war on drugs -- all American exports. Theater artists there, where work has been pretty aestheticized for many years, are now discovering engaged theater as a means of understanding and resisting current pressures." [LINK]

Two U.K. organizations have come up with a Public Art Evaluation Toolkit for measuring the impact of public art. The toolkit was created by ixia, a nonprofit think tank for public art practice, and OPENspace, a research center at Edinburgh College of Art and Heriot-Watt University. In response to the U.K. government's evidence-based approach to the development and implementation of policy, two tools have been developed: the matrix and personal project analysis. They help users appraise feasibility, identify stakeholder goals and agree on outcome measures and systems for collecting, storing, analyzing and reporting on data gathered. In addition ixia has constructed a database to hold information about public art commissions evaluated using the toolkit. The team will present the toolkit in workshops throughout 2007-8. [LINK]

While arts-ed policies languish elsewhere, things are going well in San Francisco, says Alexandria Rocha in The Examiner (2/28/07). "While schools throughout California struggle to maintain arts education programs," says Rocha, "the San Francisco Unified School District is beginning to see the effects of a massive plan to beef up its arts curricula across The City. District educators are in the first year of implementing the Arts Education Master Plan, an ambitious road map to give arts education to each student at every school. . . . This year, $2.2 million has been allocated for 15 middle school art teachers and 76 elementary art coordinators’ stipends. Those funds have also stocked art supply cabinets and trained the district’s middle and high school principals. That’s only the beginning." (Thanks, artsed411.org.) [LINK]

A new Hewlett Foundation study is a strong comment on the state of policies and practices in arts education in California schools, much in the news of late. "An Unfinished Canvas" by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and SRI International affirms that California has made a number of policy commitments to K-12 arts education. However, these policy commitments have not translated into implementation of standards-aligned arts instruction at the school-district level. There are no measures for accountability, quality or accessibility in the system, says the report, and schools still suffer from uneven implementation, a lack of funding, underprepared elementary teachers and inadequate facilities. Apparently it takes more than policies and occasional gifts from the governor to make arts-ed dreams come true. (Thanks, artsed411.org.) [LINK]

Here's an addition to our recommendations for summer 2007: courses in Theatre for Youth and Community Development at City University of New York (CUNY). The Creative Arts Team at the Paul A. Kaplan Center for Educational Drama at CUNY offers (for credit or not) three bundles of certificate courses. The Theatre Teaching Artist Certificate courses include The World of the Teaching Artist; Theatre of the Oppressed; Creating Meaning through Community Drama; and Teaching through Theatre: The Theory and Practice of Theatre-in-Education. The Drama in the Classroom Certificate courses includes Drama with Special Education Populations; and Literacy, Drama and Dramatic Writing. The Creating Theatre with Young People Certificate course is Playbuilding: The Youth Theatre Project. [LINK]

Read Jules Corriere's blogs from Colquitt, Ga., over the last few days and learn what it's like trying to debut a community performance in the path of a tornado. Corriere is a playwright with Community Performance Inc and she has been blogging on CAN's Guest Blog since April 2006, when she was making theater in a war zone in Rio. She and a fellow CPI member, director Richard Owen Geer, have been helping the citizens of Miller County create their latest "Swamp Gravy" community play, which debuted on March 2, the night tornadoes tore through the area. Corriere was blogging from the floor of her shower, the safest place in the house. Subsequent blog posts relate the damage to the geographic area, including Americus, which was devastated. You can keep up with CPI's posts on the CAN front page. [LINK]

"Reclaiming Midwives: Stills from ALL MY BABIES" is a traveling exhibition of photographs by Robert Galbraith that explore the lives and experiences of black midwives in Georgia in the early 1950s. Galbraith was a cameraman for George C. Stoney’s 1953 film "All My Babies," produced by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Georgia Department of Public Health, and intended as an instructional tool for the midwives still delivering most of the babies in rural Georgia at the time. The film, featuring Albany, Georgia, midwife Mary Francis Hill Coley (1900–66), has traveled to train midwives around the world. Curated by Linda Janet Holmes, the exhibition is at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, N.C., through April 2, 2007. George Stoney, who wrote, directed and produced the film in collaboration with Mrs. Coley, will speak at the center on March 8. [LINK]

Artists and biologists will come together at the New York Academy of Sciences April 14, 2007, for a cross-sector conference, "Biology and Art: Two Worlds or One?" The conference will explore the nature of the science-art interface, the inspiration it provides to scientists and artists alike, and the impact of these interactions on art, research and other human endeavors, says the Academy. "More specifically, the conference will focus on how biological objects – whether viruses, animals, plants, cells or organelles – become an inspiration for certain artists' work, and how scientists – ever so particular about accuracy and specificity – respond to such artistic representations." Keynote is by Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye, creator of the Cloaca Project. Sessions -- on structural biology, microbes, locomotion and more -- are organized as a series of conversations between artists and scientists. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a report on the 2006 national conference of the consortium Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, held in Columbus, Ohio. Columbia College Chicago's Nicole Garneau writes about the conference, focusing on a panel discussion about artists' residencies as campus-community collaborations. For an example, the panel examined poet Sekou Sundiata's “51st (dream) state” performance residencies that have been collaborations among cultural institutions, community groups and Imagining America campuses. The work, which Sundiata imagines as his poetic and personal “state of the American Soul Address,” explores how America defines itself in a new era characterized by unprecedented global influence and power. Panelists discussed different collaborative approaches used at the University of Michigan, the Arab-American National Museum, Stanford University and Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. [LINK]

"Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community" is the theme of the Americans for the Arts convention in Las Vegas, Nev., June 1-3, 2007. The convention's keynote, "The Spark: Igniting the Creative Fire That Lives Within Us All," is by Cirque du Soleil's Lyn Heward. Innovator sessions feature investment professional Mark Brewer and critic Dave Hickey. Guest artist is Jenny Holzer. Seven new program tracks will debut this year, offering close connection with colleagues and expanded opportunity for crossover among areas of the larger arts field. Tracks include Arts Education, Civic Engagement, Economic Development, Leadership, Private Sector, Public Advocacy and Public Art. Each track comprises different approaches to its topic, including forums, presentations, film showings, case studies, peer networking, exhibitions and keynote speeches. [LINK]

Choreographers, directors and filmmakers will come together March 4, 2007, in San Francisco for a symposium on dance and disability. The event at CounterPULSE includes "Phoenix Rising," an award-winning film by Karina Epperlein about dancer Homer Avila, who lost his leg to cancer and returned to the stage without crutches; "Crip Shots" by John Killacky, portraits of six artists with disabilities; "Outside In," a dance for the camera choreographed by Victoria Marks and performed by England's CanDoCo Dance Company; plus other films, performances and panel discussions. It's all sponsored by CounterPULSE, Jess Curtis/Gravity, AXIS Dance Company, the National Arts and Disability Network and the CSUEB Dance for All Bodies and Abilities Program. [LINK]

If you're looking for something refreshing to do this summer, check the CAN Conferences, Workshop and Special Events calendar. Seeking workshops or institutes? Look for Mandala Center for Change (Wash.), Sojourn Theatre (Ore., N.Y.), Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (Md.), Los Angeles Poverty Department (Calif.), Bauen Camp (Wyo.), Cornerstone Theater (Calif.), Center for Documentary Studies (N.C.) and Headlines Theatre (B.C., Can.). Summer convenings? There are: Americans for the Arts (Nev.), Association for Community Design and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (La.), Theatre Communications Group (Minn.), Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Alaska), American Alliance for Theatre & Education (B.C., Can.), Burning Man (Nev.), Transformus (N.C.) and Alternate ROOTS (N.C.). Something missing? Let us know. [LINK]

Minneapolis' Catholic Charities Branch III has a new mural, "The Last Supper," painted by artist Elissa Cedarleaf Dahl and 80 Branch III guests and opening March 8, 2007. Michelle Bruch, in the Minneapolis Downtown Journal (2/28/07), says Branch III serves homeless people, and Dahl, a Minneapolis College of Art and Design graduate who has painted 13 collaborative murals, "decided to take on the project in her free time to enliven a room where she had worked running the food service five years ago." Drop-in guests of the center said they wanted something real they could relate to, so they chose to represent their daily routines of drinking coffee together and eating their typical meal of soup and a sandwich. Bruch's story describes the collaboration and the extensive art skills of some of the participants. [LINK]