The emerging field of Transformative Language Arts will "make community" at Goddard College this fall with a conference, "The Power of Words: Liberation through the Spoken, Written and Sung Word." The conference will offer more than 25 workshops, talking circles, performances, open readings and celebrations, including keynoters David Abram, anthropologist, philosopher, magician and author of "The Spell of the Sensuous"; and Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, poet, writer, storyteller and professor at the American Indian Arts Institute. The conference is a project of Goddard College's Transformative Language Arts concentration the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. TLA is a 48-hour program in social and personal transformation through the spoken, written and sung word. A visit to the conference Web site provides a list of co-sponsors that reads like a New Age community arts directory. [LINK]

Over the past two weekends, an array of women’s groups came to the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles to share their “Stories of Work and Survival” in Suzanne Lacy’s Public + Artist Project, part of the exhibition "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution." Workers of all kinds gathered by profession or common interest , talking about their lives and struggles. For many, it was their first visit to MOCA. They were in full view behind glass doors, but were inaudible to MOCA visitors. The project is built on the feminist art premise that the private lives of women have unrecognized public consequence. Starting May 5, an installation will feature photographs and recordings of each group, providing the public access to the conversations, and the women, behind the glass doors. [LINK]

"Some of our children are being prepared to assume power and others are being prepared for prison," writes Judith Tannenbaum in In Motion Magazine (4/4/07). Tannenbaum, training coordinator with San Francisco’s WritersCorps, writes from 30 years of experience teaching poetry in California public schools, after-school programs and prisons, and she is critical of today's emphasis on testing to standards. "Schools offer the best learning conditions when they welcome students with excitement, intelligence, curiosity and passion. Welcome to my child, your child, and to all our children including those in 'under-performing' schools. ... Parents who have a choice don’t choose schools such as the one I recently heard of where only the top five percent of students (as measured by test scores) are allowed any art during the school day." [LINK]

The April edition of Making Places, the fabulous Project for Public Places newsletter, concentrates on the library as the community center for the 21st Century. The creation of the "information superhighway" threatened to make libraries obsolete, but today they are as prominent as ever, says Cynthia Nikitin, director of PPS' Civic Centers Program. The newsletter is packed with exciting articles that should set any community-based artist's imagination humming. Read about libraries as theaters, front porches, studios, schools, meeting places, concert halls, translation and immigration centers, child care facilities, community-development think tanks, outdoor play areas, farmer's markets, screening rooms, art destinations, community gardens, coffee shops, job banks, centers for public discourse, ESL classrooms and catalysts for community revitalization. Got a library idea or problem? PPS says it can help. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a review of “Works of Heart: Building Village through the Arts," an anthology edited by Lynne Elizabeth and Suzanne Young at Oakland's New Village Press. The new book, in hard cover with lots of color, "presents a remarkable spectrum of artists," says reviewer Jennifer Roche, "who, like [Annie] Lanzillotto, immersed themselves in their communities and emerged with projects, connections and experiences that transcend traditional notions of community art and move into realms that seem more like community development." Roche focuses on three stories: Lanzilotto's collaboration with "the Bronx market where her grandmother shopped ... and where the sights, sounds and stories pulled at the artist’s psyche long into adulthood"; a Minneapolis gallery that involved its community in recycling a luxury shopping mall slated for demolition; and a Boston quilt project that united women of faith and produced 50 quilts that hang all over town today. [LINK]

At Touchstone Theatre in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, artist Peggy Pettitt is gathering oral histories for the Lehigh Valley Black African Heritage History Project. This is phase three of the project , which will culminate in a theater piece to tour in 2008. The first of its kind to focus on African Americans in the area, the project began in 2001, gathering the stories of the “oldest of the old” and of Allentown’s once thriving African-American community in the Lawrence Street neighborhood. It has included a wide range of community partners, including a local college, a university and several historical societies, collaborating on poster presentations, traveling exhibitions, discussions and media interviews. Pettitt's story- and song-gathering sessions have been particularly popular community-builders. The next one is set for April 28. [LINK]

Americans for the Arts is conducting a nationwide scan of the arts environment to help determine the best ways to advance the arts in America. In the coming months, AftA will ask stakeholders to participate in web-based surveys, online forums, focus groups or one-on-one interviews. The project will help update the organization's strategic plan "to continue fostering environments in which the arts can thrive." AftA is partnering in this effortwith AMS Planning & Research, an arts-management consulting firm based in Fairfield, Conn. Project leads are Steven Wolff and Amy Freidman, experts in research, strategic planning and broad-reaching analytical projects like this. The Internet portion of the project, an online survey, is available now on the Web, and must be completed by May 11, 2007. (This survey is NOT the Community Arts Network survey, also being conducted by AftA.) [LINK]

U.S. theater director Maureen Towey spent 2006 in South Africa as a Fulbright Scholar researching how performance can help re-imagine community identity. Towey has documented the year with "Pale Girl in the African Sun," a marvelous Web site including slide shows and a journal. You can follow her research on sangomas (traditional healers) and AIDS/HIV doctors for a project she will direct with Oregon's Sojourn Theatre in 2007. She also conceived and directed a musical-theater project called "Swallow What You Steal," about the advantages and disadvantages of modernization. It was cast with local actors and toured to isolated rural villages on the brink of receiving electricity. The company's encounters with populations that had never experienced either electricity or theater are fascinating, as are the photographs. [LINK]

New York University's Tisch School of the Arts offers an interesting cross-disciplinary new Master's program in Arts Politics. The program's home is the Department of Art and Public Policy at Tisch, but courses may be taken in other NYU Schools, including Arts & Sciences, Education, Public Administration and Individualized Study. The curriculum examines, "in an activist key," the relation between art and society and the role of the artist in civic life. Art is treated as providing a particular lens through which the social world can be understood, and as a medium of cultural intervention in political processes. The degree requires two core courses – Issues In Arts Politics and Seminar in Arts Activism – a colloquium, internship/field experience and electives. Enrollment is limited (8-12). A certificate program is also available. [LINK]

Oakland California Public School students and their parents and guardians will attend Family University on Saturdays, April 28-May 5, 2007, to help them plan for the future. They'll spend three days at East Oakland Youth Development Center creating an education plan for the students, learning about financial planning for college and learning to advocate for student success. There will be sessions on testing requirements, "making schools work for you" and understanding Oakland school reform. The family-friendly events include food, raffles and child care. What does this have to do with community art? The program is presented through a partnership of California College of the Arts Center for Art and Public Life, East Oakland School of the Arts and Skyline High School. [LINK]

Philadelphia is pitching in to help rebuild the cultural infrastructure of New Orleans, says the Pew Charitable Trusts. Pew, the William Penn Foundation and The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance provided funding, guidance and technical advice to help create NOLAFunGuide.com, New Orleans' new Web site featuring cultural events and attractions. Modeled on PhillyFunGuide.com, it's a joint initiative of the NOLA's Arts Council and its Tourism Marketing Corporation. “The recovery strategy mapped out by the Bring New Orleans Back Commission and the Cultural Summit relies centrally on culture and cultural marketing,” says Tourism's Sandy Shilstone. “Our culture is fundamental to New Orleans’ civic identity and economy and NOLAFunGuide.com will harness the power and reach of Web-based technologies as a means to that end.” [LINK]

Multimediale is a four-day festival of art, politics and new media hosted by Provisions Library April 19-22, 2007, in Washington, D.C. It's organized by American University's Randall Packer and curator Niels Van Toome, who seek "to energize the D.C. arts community with new ideas about art, society and politics." Events include film screenings, performances and an exhibition of work by festival participants. Turkish curator Beral Madra will give tonight's keynote on practicing art as a tool for mutual understanding, reciprocity and participation. "The Artist’s Responsibility in a Political Environment" is a Sunday panel discussion with Margaret Parsons (National Gallery), Leanne Mella (U.S. State Dept.), Paul Roth (Corcoran Gallery), Don Russell (Provisions), Jenny Toomey (Future of Music), plus Packer and Van Toome. [LINK]

Native elders, healers, speakers, musicians, singers, dancers and storytellers will be part of "Celebrating our Planet, Healing Our Hearts" in NYC April 22-23, 2007, with a Web/radio preview tonight, April 19. These "1st Annual World Peace Earth Day Celebrations" will include presentations by Cherokee, Navajo and Brazilian elders, vibrational healing, performances, chanting and praying for a "Livable Future." A preview will be broadcast by WBAI Pacifica Radio in the New York region and Webcast on WBAI.org tonight at 10 p.m. EDT. These events are presented by Planet Heart, WBAI, Good News Broadcast, New Realities and We, The World to benefit the third annual 11 Days of Global Unity, September 11-21. 11 Days is a worldwide promotion of peace and sustainability with more than 200 concerts, festivals, Webcasts, etc., culminating on September 21, the U.N. International Day of Peace. [LINK]

Art therapy is disappearing from veteran and military hospitals, says the Washington Post, even though art helps veterans recover from PTSD, common among Iraq War vets. Funding cuts, says staff writer Jackie Spinner (4/15/07), have forced hospitals to choose between art therapists and nurses. In a look at the history of art therapy for vets, she quotes hospital psychologists like David Read Johnson, who directed an inpatient unit at the V.A.'s National Center for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in Connecticut. Johnson said art programs began to disappear after he left the center in 1997. "In the 1970s and 1980s, creative arts therapies were doing well," said Johnson. "But it's just like in schools: You cut the arts first." [LINK]

"Open Dialogue XI: Global Connections to Cultural Democracy," the 11th biennial conference of The Association of American Cultures, is set for Denver, Colo., July 12-15, 2007. TAAC, whose motto is "Impacting public policy on the American Arts Industry," will engage in meaningful dialogue on changing demographics, global migration and the influence of these factors on a new generation of leaders. The conference will include a high-level symposium, professional-development workshops, exhibitions and performances. Presenters include James Early of the Smithsonian Institution; Maria-Rosario Jackson of the Urban Institute; Justin Laing of the Heinz Endowments; and Ilona Kish, Secretary General of the European Forum on the Arts and Culture. Keynote is by Doudou Diène, special rapporteur to the U.N. High Commission. (Thanks, ADI.) [LINK]

Americans for the Arts has been awarded a $400,000 grant for its Animating Democracy program from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The two-year project (April 2007-April 2009) is designed to "advance understanding of the social and civic impact of arts-based civic engagement by responding to the expressed need for quantifiable as well as anecdotal evidence that the arts can have potent social-change effects." Through the project, Animating Democracy will support selected local arts-based civic-engagement projects that have specific social-change goals and work with project leaders to assess and better the effects of the work. The project will include a research component that will collect and synthesize data from the arts and other fields in order to measure the impact of social change. [LINK]

Cow painting, a model boat trail, sculpture on the sea and a witches talk will be part of the 3 Harbours Arts Festival in East Lothian, Scotland, June 1-10, 2007. The historic towns of Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton (total population 12, 500), will celebrate their visual art, music, drama, murals, trails and literature with artwork seen in people’s homes, community halls, harbors and windows. Spectacular lighting installations will link the three communities with a two-mile-long series of illuminations. The once-thriving harbor of Morisons Haven in Prestonpans, long since filled in, will be brought back to life with model paper boats, salt, slate and lights. The community festival was founded in 2006 by a voluntary group of artists, musicians and art enthusiasts. [LINK]

This month, Tyler School of Art students are creating art installations with Philadelphia's Latino families in their own homes, addressing the effects of generational incarceration. "Badge of Honor" is a partnership project between Tyler and community organizations concerned about the extremely high rate of Latino incarceration in Philadelphia. The project culminates April 26 in an exhibition at The Lighthouse with documentation of the house installations; a performance piece by the women of those families with students and local artists; a statement by the Latino Juvenile Justice Network; and a reconstruction of a 1995 installation by the project leader, artist Pepon Osorio. His installation consists of two adjacent rooms: one a teenage boy's bedroom, the other a father's prison cell. [LINK]

"Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience" gets a rave from Gary Kamiya in his Salon review of this week's PBS series "America at a Crossroads." Produced by The Documentary Group, the film explores firsthand accounts of American servicemen and women through their own words. It's built upon a project created by the National Endowment for the Arts. Kamiya marks its as "... a truly extraordinary film. ... Featuring unforgettable writing about Iraq ... brings the dreadful reality of Iraq home more than anything else I've seen." Kamiya blasts the rest of the $20 million, 12-hour series about Islam, terrorism and the post-9/11 world as "fundamentally flawed," saying it fails "to explore the history of the Middle East, the effect of Western policies on its people, and the political and historical grievances that are largely responsible for Muslim and Arab rage at the West." [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a story by Massachusetts artist Lara Lepionka about "Hidden Value," her public art project to uncover the hidden value of work. Lepionka was wondering: "How do you measure an individual’s impact on a community or in society? What has worth?" People are constantly contributing to their communities through their work, civic engagement and family life, she reasoned, but they may not consider the value of their contributions, and the greater society may not recognize or value them either. This led her to gather oral histories about their work from a waitress, a college professor, a trash collector, a public librarian and a grocery-store owner and create temporary monuments to them in a Northampton public park. [LINK]

The United States is in the midst of a leadership revolution, says the Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World program in a new report. "Quantum Leadership: The Power of Community in Motion," written by Jennifer Milewski, is based on NYU research and interviews with recipients of the Leadership for a Changing World Award, including artists. Positing a revolution driven by the actions of a community instead of an individual, the report defines "quantum leaders" as "not necessarily heroes or ‘born leaders.’ Rather, they know how to tap into the leader in each of us, often giving marginalized community members their first sense of possibility." It outlines seven strategies that quantum leaders use to catalyze and strengthen their communities. [LINK]

Tavis Smiley has a dream: “America at 400: The African-American Imprint on America,” a huge traveling exhibition for summer 2008. “We want to wrestle with that question raised by W. E. B. Du Bois: Would America have been America without her Negro people?” says the broadcaster in a N.Y.Times story by Felicia R. Lee (4/16/07). A group of scholars and artists, including novelist Toni Morrison and scholars like Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr., met last weekend to pore over a 400-year historical timeline, planning to gather and display documents and artifacts of African-American life: Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves, Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 book of poetry, Martin Luther King's Nobel Prize -- 10,000-15,000 square feet of it. They want the exhibition to travel to major museums in ten cities for five years. [LINK]

"Troop 1500" is a film about a unique Girl Scout troop at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, that unites daughters with mothers who are serving time for serious crimes. "Trrop 1500" follows five young Girl Scouts as they struggle to mend their fractured relationships with their incarcerated moms. Filmmakers Ellen Spiro and Karen Bernstein, who volunteered with the girls for two years, gained unprecedented access to Girl Scouts of the USA, Gatesville Prison and the families themselves. The filmmakers trained the girls in videography so they could conduct their own interviews and tell their own stories. The film shows at American University's Center for Social Media, April 19, 2007, with a discussion and book forum, as part of "Interrupted Life: Incarcerated Mothers in the United States," an art installation in AU's Katzen Rotunda, April 5-21 . [LINK]

"Poetry's a big deal here in April, " says Ann Slayton, a Friend of the Takoma Park Maryland Library, which is "planting" framed poems all over town this week, according to Agnes Jasinski in Montgomery County's Gazette.net. In honor of spring and National Poetry Month, volunteers chose 36 poems by a diverse group of authors including Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Pablo Neruda. They had to comply with city rules about posting things on trees and digging holes in unauthorized places, but everybody pitched in, including typography students from Montgomery College and the city’s public-works staff. The poems will be on display through mid-May, and the Friends hold their 9th Annual Favorite Poem Evening April 26 in the Takoma Park Community Center. [LINK]

Publicly championing a community art partnership project is one proven strategy for the project's success, says a new study by the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. The Creative Communities Initiative Summary Report, now available on the Guild's Web site, details lessons learned from a $4.65 million initiative fostering partnerships between community schools and public housing communities. With its partners -- the NEA, HUD, corporations and foundations -- the Guild channeled resources to partnerships in 20 U.S. cities over three years. The report highlights successful strategies such as planning collaboratively from the outset; ensuring ongoing communication across multiple levels at each partner organization; publicly championing the partnership project; conducting evaluation; getting to know the population being served; and understanding the protocol, rules and regulations affecting your partner. [LINK]

April 21, 2007, Ping Chong & Company premiere a new work in the "Undesirable Elements" series exploring the Asian-American experience in New York City. "Undesirable Elements/Secret History" is a series of community-specific oral-history theater works examining the lives of people born in one culture but currently living in another, either by choice or by circumstance. Each production is made in a specific host community, with local participants testifying to their real lives and experiences between cultures. The series is designed to help communities confront and overcome cultural insularity by encouraging a greater understanding of "the commonalities that bind us all." Since 1992, Ping Chong has made 30 productions in the series, in communities around the U.S. and abroad. He wrote and directed the new piece with Sara Zatz. [LINK]

San Francisco Arts Commission's WritersCorps is hiring teaching artists for its programs in public schools, libraries, public housing and detention centers. Since 1994, WriterCorps has hired more than 100 teaching artists to work with low-income youth throughout the city, where they serve up to three years, are part of a group that meets often, receive extensive professional-development training and get paid summers for teaching-related writing. Applicants must have at least two years of experience teaching language arts to youth (ages 6-21), one year of community service with communities in need, evidence of literary accomplishment and a B.A. or experiential equivalent. Salary is $25.00 per hour plus healthcare allowance for up to 28 hours per week beginning October, 2007; deadline is 5 p.m. May 31, 2007. People of color and bilingual people are especially encouraged to apply. [LINK]

Generations of community leaders meet in New York in June for "Sustaining Voices from the Battlefront: Community Grounded Cultural Arts Organizations @ 30," a conference hosted by the Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute, now celebrating its 30th anniversary, and NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. It will include founders and new leaders of other cultural arts organizations in the community-grounded social-justice movement that was pioneered in the 1970s, such as San Francisco’s Galeria de la Raza, Los Angeles’ Japanese American Cultural and Community Center and Kentucky’s Appalshop. Keynote speaker Jack Tchen will explore the movement's growth alongside the civil-rights and other social-justice movements. Respondents will discuss the impact of the '90s culture wars on cultural diversity. Other topics include vision then/now, leadership and succession, class issues/access to wealth and institutional models. [LINK]

A new film premieres in Florida April 23, 1007, documenting "Bridging the Gap," an innovative interchange between incarcerated women and girls in juvenile-detention centers. “Bridging the Gap: A Writing Workshop,” premiering at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, unfolds the story of a creative-writing program at Homestead and Broward Correctional Institutions specially designed by ArtSpring Inc. The writing program (BGAP) addressed, through personal narrative essays, answers to questions that were posed by the girls in Florida's Girls Advocacy Project (GAP) including the realities of being incarcerated. There will also be a BGAP community presentation, the culmination of over four months of intensive workshops, at Homestead Correctional Institution April 28, open to the public by special application (deadline April 18). E-mail: artspring@artspring.org [LINK]

Wilton, Conn., school officials have banned a devised high-school theater piece about the Iraq war -- for its form, not its content. Superintendent Gary Richards, in a 3/26/07 press release, objects to the play's form, containing "direct excerpts from a book, documentary films, letters to newspapers, and web-sites. These sources are modified and 'cut and pasted' together in a way that does not give them attribution nor cite the viewpoint of the particular author or filmmaker." He also objects to students acting the parts of soldiers, rather than readers of the text. The National Coalition Against Censorship has written the school a letter, signed by famous playwrights, attempting to explain the form and why their actions sound like political censorship, and to recommend enriching the conversation, not restricting it. [LINK]

A play scripted by James Still, developed in community by Cornerstone Theater Company in 2005, is enjoying an extended life in productions around the U.S. "A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters," developed in a community setting during the Cornerstone Faith-based Theatre Cycle in Los Angeles, opens April 14, 2007, at University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana. The campus-wide event includes a concert-reading and dialogue with students and members of community organizations. Still will speak, teach classes and rehearse with the large cast. The play has also been produced in Boston and Chicago. Inspired by oral histories, community events and the circular structure of Schnitzler's play "La Ronde," it can be cast with 13-50 players. It's available for licensing online from Dramatic Publishing. [LINK]

San Diego artist Louis Hock will give a slide lecture close to the headlines to accompany a photo exhibition at San Diego State University about migrant farmworkers. "Field Work: Documenting California's Migrant Farm Labor Experience 1935 to 2003," showing from April 2-May 2, 2007, includes the work of five artists who have recorded and interpreted the labor and living conditions of the migrant work force throughout California, from the Sacramento to the Imperial Valleys. They include Horace Bristol's "Grapes of Wrath Portfolio" from 1937-8; Dorothea Lange's photos1935-40, including her famed image of the "Migrant Mother"; newer works by Roger Minick and Paul Turounet; and sculpture and photos by Hock, known for his activist films, videotapes, and media installations about the border region and the lives of undocumented workers. [LINK]

"Ignorance can lead us to inquiry and understanding as opposed to humiliation and destruction," says choreographer Liz Lerman. "Maybe this above all else is what scientists and artists alike have to share with our publics, our politicians and our governments during these challenging times." The quote comes from "Dance and DNA," a cross-sector journalistic duet in the Genetics & Public Policy Center's e-newsletter by Lerman and Center Director Kathy Hudson. "Scientist and policy wonk" Hudson was an advisor on the Dance Exchange's newest performance/civic-dialogue project, "Ferocious Beauty: Genome." Each describes her experience of bridging the gap between art and science. Hudson, who followed the events and discussions around "Ferocious Beauty" for two years, says it's "not just a dance but a community undertaking." [LINK]

"The social-change power of documentaries has been increasing," writes Joseph Huff-Hannon in "Documentaries: Ready, Set ... Action" (YES! magazine, Spring 2007). He quotes MoveOn's Laura Dawn: “Film is a new frontier." Witness the growing clout and commercial success of hard-hitting politically charged documentaries by Moore, Jarecki and Gore, and politicized feature films by Soderbergh, Clooney and Abu-Assad) But the most interesting aspects are innovative distribution through festivals, Netflix, youtube, house parties and independent distribution and screening networks, and the mutually beneficial ways that filmmakers are working with activists, advocates and organizers. He follows several important collaborations between filmmakers and major organizing efforts, ex.: Greenwald’s "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" with the WalMart Watch campaign. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a major story on the arts at California State University at Monterey Bay. California writer Jan Freya visits with faculty, staff, students and local partners in one of the most advanced learning communities in the U.S. The Visual and Public Arts Program at CSUMB, founded by pioneers like Judy Baca and Suzanne Lacy and directed by the remarkable Amalia Mesa-Bains, is one of the centers that make up a university founded on the principles of service learning and community participation. It serves its students as well as the surrounding community in a relationship of reciprocity. Those principles -- plus exploration of new technology and a pluralistic academic environment -- make it the most innovative campus in the California State University system. [LINK]