The National Endowment for the Arts has announced the NEA Education Leaders Institute, a new program to enhance the quality and quantity of arts education. With the increasing emphasis on core school subjects such as reading and math, says an NEA press release (5/15/07) art teachers and art programs are struggling to maintain a place in the regular school schedule. The institute, commencing in March 2008, will gather teams of school leaders, legislators, policymakers, educators, professional artists, consultants and scholars from up to five states at a three-day conference to discuss a shared arts-education challenge and engage in strategic planning to advance arts education in their respective states. Topics will include school schedules, assessment, leadership, curriculum development and standards. The institute is modeled on the Mayors' Institute of City Design, a 20-year NEA partnership. [LINK]

"Writing From the Inside: Prisoners share their stories" is a short survey article on who's publishing prisoners' writings, written by Julie Dolan on Utne Web Watch (5/24/07). Dolan discusses prisoner's rights of freedom of speech and the few publications that are still committed to publishing their work. Prison Legal News, a magazine "dedicated to protecting human rights," often includes contributions from prisoners themselves, plus prominent figures such as Noam Chomsky and Dan Savage. The May issue of Words Without Borders, dedicated to opening international dialogue through literature on the Web, showcases an international cast of writers from "behind bars." PEN American Center holds an annual contest for writers in prison and publishes a handbook with tips on punctuation and style to help incarcerated writers. The story has useful links. [LINK]

Ten thousand delegates have registered and 10,000 more are expected from all over the world for the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Ga., June 27- July 1, 2007. Participants in the five-day event, themed “Another World is Possible/Another U.S. Is Necessary," will create hundreds of workshops, street theater, exhibits, lectures, discussions, music and art. The organizers say the object of the USSF is "to develop leadership, vision and strategy needed to realize another world.” They declare it "the most significant event for U.S. progressives since the anti-WTO Battle of Seattle of 1999." They have identified six key areas of struggle: Gulf Coast injustice, indigenous sovereignty, workers’ rights, gender & sexuality, war/militarism & prisons and immigrant rights. At closing, the assembly will create integrated agendas and build a national calendar of "activities, actions and unity." [LINK]

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is showcasing works by 17 student community artists from MICA’s who work in partnership with Baltimore-area nonprofit organizations. "The Art of Community" (in the Fox galleries May 22-June 21, 2007) exhibits visual-art works by students in MICA’s Community Art Corps (CAC) and master of arts in community arts (MACA). They worked in community arts projects with a wide variety of local organizations, with many of which MICA has developed long-term relationships: Stadium School Youth Dreamers, Operation ReachOut Southwest, Creative Alliance, Child First Authority, Village Learning Place, Franciscan Youth Center, The Native American Program of Baltimore City Public School System, Parks & People, Access Art, Kids on the Hill, Community Art Partnership Office and Better Waverly Community Organization, Baltimore Clayworks and Enoch Pratt Free Library. You can read more about each student and his/her community partner on the MICA Web site. [LINK]

More than 300,000 visitors are expected to descend on Venice, Italy, for the 52nd Biennale, and RSA Arts & Ecology wants to know if art is sinking the city. The Arts & Ecology project of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, in London) supports the work of the arts in examining and addressing social and environmental concerns, and June 9, 2007, it sponsors a discussion in Venice exploring "how the international arts constituency, individually and collectively, is responding to environmental challenges." The Biennale, June 10-November 21, contributes substantially to the carbon footprint of the city, which is already under extreme environmental stress. International travel is imperative for cross-cultural understanding and exchange, says the RSA. What, if any, are the moral requirements for the arts constituency to play a more active role in addressing the challenges ahead? [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a new essay by art-historian David Jeffreys about a domestic violence project at the Union Mission in Savannah, Ga. The mission's objective is to prevent homelessness in the area, and it has has provided a number of community arts initiatives that have facilitated an open exchange of ideas around some crucial local issues, often ignored, notes Jeffreys, in a city that relies heavily on tourist revenue. He writes about an exhibition at the mission's Starfish Café, a working gourmet restaurant that trains community members impacted by homelessness for careers in the food-service industry and an outlet for artists working with the Growing Hope Artisans’ Cooperative. Following a mission arts workshop with violent offenders, violence survivors and youth at risk, artist Penny Brice combined their words and images in a suite of posters and audio works exhibited at the café, April 6-May 6, 2007. Jeffreys' story is accompanied with a slide show and two audio excerpts. [LINK]

The 33rd Conference on Social Theory, Politics and the Arts (STPA) is set for October 11-13, 2007, in New York City. Hosts are New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, the Arts Council Manhattan, the Research Center for Leadership in Action and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Paper and proposal submissions are due by June 15, 2007. Conference themes are: Artists, Activism and Social Change; Leadership in, of, and through the Arts; Sustaining Cultural Industries and Organizations; Role of the Arts in Bridging Ethnic, Cultural, and Regional Differences; and Local and Regional Revitalization through the Arts. To access "The Origins of Brigadoon: A History of the Social Theory, Politics and the Arts Conference" by Robert D. Leighninger Jr., Arizona State University, go to: http://research.culture.info/stpahistory. [LINK]

"We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do--and Why," a new book available by pre-order in the CAN Bookstore, comes out June 10, 2007, from Vanderbilt University Press. Written by veteran community organizer Joe Szakos and writer/editor Kristin Layng Szakos, it offers "a glimpse into the daily lives of the people who make changing the world their life's work." The publisher describes it as an excellent introduction to the field, and writer William Greider says it's "so much fun to read. It's like a personal tour of America where you get to meet the most engaging, optimistic kind of citizens -- people who love this country's possibilities and are working to fulfill them. It is also a deeply informative portrait of community organizing -- how it works, why it is so important for our future." (Thanks, Caron Atlas.) [LINK]

Harvard Business Review has listed the Master of Fine Arts as one of the top ten hot new ideas of the year, says John M. Eger in the San Diego Business Review (5/14/07). "As we talk about the foreshadowing of a whole economy based upon creativity and innovation," says Eger, chair of communication and public policy at S.D. State, America's great cities must capture the high ground "because the hearse is now at the back door of our current economic malaise. ... we need to focus more on training the next generation of leaders for the Creative Age." He defines "the creative industries" as broader than "the arts" and says business educators are looking to the field of design, which IIT Institute of Design in Chicago sees as “a core methodology of innovation." (Thanks, ArtsEdMail.) [LINK]

This afternoon the U.S. House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee,approved a $35 million increase for the NEA for its FY 2008 spending bill. Americans for the Arts says: "If this funding level is maintained by the Senate and signed into law by President Bush, it will represent the largest increase in NEA history. The agency, currently funded at $124.4 million has only seen increases of under 3% for the last several years. In his first public action on arts issues as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) invited Americans for the Arts to organize a high profile panel of witnesses to testify at the first hearing in over 12 years held on the importance of investing in the arts." [LINK]

The new ArtsBlog from Americans for the Arts has been added to the CAN BlogNet, a network of blogs appearing on the CAN front page. ArtsBlog tracks news in the arts about about advocacy, education, leadership, public art, research and more. In CAN BlogNet, it joins Aesthetic Grounds: Public Art/Public Space (Glenn Weiss); Art for a Change (Mark Vallen); Arlene Goldbard; Artful Manager (Andrew Taylor); Center for Social Media (American University); LeisureArts (Dilettante Ventures); Ms. Appalshop (Appalshop); and Portland Public Art, a spicy but anonymous blog from Oregon. These are some of the blogs we pay attention to around the Web because they often have relevance to material we publish on CAN. They are relayed electronically to the CAN site through rss feeds, updating four times a day. CAN has no control over their content. [LINK]

"The fiercest issues that have ever faced community designers" will be on the table during two community-building conferences in Louisiana next week. This collaborative gathering of progressive planning and design organizations will focus on rebuilding devastated communities post-Katrina and revitalizing distressed neighborhoods nationwide. "Race, Class and Community Recovery: From the Neighborhood to the Nation and Beyond," hosted by Planners Network, meets at the University of New Orleans, May 30-June 2, 2007, to examine rifts exposed by Hurricane Katrina and learn from the work of impacted community-based organizations, local planners and individuals."The Great Gumbo: Stirring the Pot of Community Design," hosted by the Association for Community Design and Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, meets at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, June 3-5. Keynoters include Carol Bebelle, director of Ashé Cultural Arts Center, New Orleans. [LINK]

The National Mall in Washington, D.C., from 4th St. to 7th St., will be packed with artworks, performances and workshops during the World Children's Festival, June 23-25, 2007. Produced by the International Child Art Foundation, the free festival will feature winners of the third Arts Olympiad, in which three million children worldwide produced artworks on the theme "My Favorite Sport." Artworks from 50 countries and 30 U.S. states were selected as finalists to be displayed on the National Mall. Finalists will together create a symbolic artwork to be presented to President Bush and the 2008 presidential candidates. The three-day festival will focus on Health & Environment, Creativity and Imagination and Peace & Leadership, respectively. Some 100 educators and experts will host workshops on issues ranging from art therapy to animation, ethics to leadership. Performances will be staged on the World Stage for Children and at the Kennedy Center. [LINK]

"The Art of Community; Creativity at the Crossroads of Immigrant Cultures and Social Services" is a new publication from The Institute for Cultural Partnerships (ICP). Compiled and edited by Laura Marcus, the publication presents diverse professional perspectives that illustrate the merging of arts and culture with social services in support of newcomer communities. Drawing on personal experiences, five authors present model projects in Georgia, Illinois, Idaho, California and Pennsylvania that examine the traditional arts in relationship to such cultural integration issues as mental health, at-risk youth, economic development and English language acquisition. "The Art of Community," published in collaboration with Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees," is a companion piece to ICP’s earlier publication, "Newcomer Arts; A Strategy for Successful Integration; a manual for refugee and immigrant service workers and artists." [LINK]

A Toronto-based audio story project, [murmur], was recently commissioned to start a [murmur] in Dublin's rapidly redeveloping Docklands area. [murmur] is a mobile project by artists Shawn Micallef, James Roussel and Gabe Sawhney allowing cellphone listeners to hear recorded stories in a site-specific location, told by its residents. Re Dublin, they say: "This project has placed a particular interest in stories from seniors, as it was commissioned by the Bealtaine Festival, Ireland's national festival celebrating creativity in older age. Stories range from current events, life during World War II, and even stories told by a descendant of a 1916 Easter Uprising leader. If you can't make it to the Docklands, you can listen to all the stories at http://murmurdublindocklands.info." Expanding like crazy, [murmur] projects also exist in Edinburgh, San Jose, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. [LINK]

In April, artist Judith Selby installed in San Francisco Civic Center Plaza "Recycled Ryoan-ji," a replica of Japan's Ryoan-ji rock garden, made entirely of recycled materials. Selby is an eco-artist obsessed with cleaning up the environment. In conjunction with the 2007 Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, April 14-24, she created a 18’-x-55’ scale replica of the 30’-x -78’ Kyoto garden, a flat, rectangular surface of raked white sand with 15 rocks. Selby's materials were thousands of white plastic shopping bags cut into 4-inch strips, then gathered onto 55-foot monofilament (during community workshops) and placed in a taut position next to each other, shaped to appear as if raked. The “rocks” were formed from black plastic detritus collected from the beach. Her journal about what happened during the exhibition is on greenmuseum.org. [LINK]

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture has some interesting events coming up. May 19: Writer AJabari Asim, author of "The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why," lectures on the topic. May 21: British Deputy Prime Minister John Leslie Prescott delivers a keynote address commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain and the United Kingdom’s role in the slave trade. June 1: Screening/discussion of the documentary "NO! NO!" about sexual violence and healing in African-American communities. June 9: Second Annual Hip Hop Day, "The Evolution of Hip Hop and Spoken Word: Old School to New School," including a Sisters Spoken Word Workshop for girls 13-17. Current exhibitions include "At Freedom's Door: Challenging Slavery in Maryland" and "Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons." The museum opened in Baltimore in 2005. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you an essay by Linda Frye Burnham exploring new language from old wisdom about community art as lived experience. The essay sifts the language of three leaders in the field of community arts -- educator Amalia Mesa-Bains, community leader Marta Moreno Vega and foundation officer Claudine Brown -- who come from communities heavily invested in issues of social justice, civil rights, cultural rights. They see the field as a continuum of those who have gone before, negotiating constant, massive cultural shift. This essay is excerpted from "Crafting a Vision for Art, Equity and Civic Engagement: Convening the Community Arts Field in Higher Education," the catalog of a conference at California College of Art’s Center for Art and Public Life in Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., November 2-4 2006. [LINK]

"Tractors are great partners," says choreographer Liz Lerman about the Dance Exchange's upcoming "Pas de Dirt" performance with backhoes in front of Washington's National Building Museum. “Some people like to dance alone, and some like to dance with a partner,” says Lerman. “Tractors are great partners. And the wonderful thing about site-specific performances is that audiences get to see everyday objects, buildings, people and even music in a new light.” Working with heavy equipment, Bowen McCauly Dance and music by Tchaikovsky, the company will perform "Pas de Dirt" three times on May 20, 2007. It's part of "Street Scenes: Projects for DC," as series of citywide public art events curated by Nora Halpern and Welmoed Laanstra to "bring contemporary art into the public domain and insert art experiences into unexpected places." [LINK]

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald was called before the House Appropriations Committee, May 10, 2007, to discuss war profiteering in Iraq. His recent film is "IRAQ FOR SALE: The War Profiteers," about "private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so." Republicans banned a four-minute film clip from being shown at the hearing. Greenwald's Web site has a video clip of him responding to attacks by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). From Greenwald's e-mail: "His intended knock-out blow? That the film was an exercise in profiteering!! Ha. He was literally speechless when I explained that 3,000 of you [the public] contributed your hard-earned dollars to make the film. That 3,000 of you were figuratively with me in testifying. That 3,000 of you were the true patriots." [LINK]

African feminist activist Karambu Ringera, running for parliament in Kenya, will speak at the Social and Public Art Resource Center in Venice, Calif., May 21, 2007. She is the founder of International Peace Initiatives, a grassroots organization dedicated to educating children, taking care of AIDS orphans and promoting peace in Africa. She holds degrees in education, mass communications, media and theology. She will talk about how she organizes grassroots feminists worldwide to come together to create a new vision for Africa. The talk is presented by artist Judy Baca, author Terri Jentz and filmmaker Donna Deitch, who write: "We felt motivated to do something on her behalf because she is a woman in a position of power who could be a major change agent." [LINK]

Connections between documentary filmmaking and labor history and organizing will be explored at a North Carolina conference on working-class activism, May 17-19, 2007. The conference, "Working-Class Activism in the South and the Nation: Contemporary Challenges in Historical Context" at the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy at Duke University in Durham, N.C., is presented by Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, the Labor and Working-Class History Association and the Southern Labor Studies Association. It brings together scholars, students, social-justice and union activists, policy makers and rank-and-file workers along with documentary experts. Baldemar Velasquez, founder of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, will discuss FLOC’s current campaign to stop abusive practices in trafficking of immigrant workers, which led to the murder of FLOC organizer Santiago Rafael Cruz in Monterrey, Mexico, last month. [LINK]

Two artists will commemorate London's July 2005 terrorist bombings with interactive public artworks this summer. Both works are based on Islamic traditions and use silver to "reflect optimistic light." Bob Aldous will install "Silver Petition" at St. Paul's Cathedral, July 5-7, 2007. The public will be asked to draw threads of silver across a black velvet canvas inscribed with the words "FEAR>ANGER>RAGE>REVENGE," eventually obscuring them with reflective light. At St. Pancras Church, June 25-July 13, Aldous and Ingrid Plum will install "Elevation from Terror." Origami peace birds, made by the community with messages for the bombings' victims and survivors written on their wings, will fly through the church over an arial map of London covered with silver survival blankets, transforming London into a reflective lake. [LINK]

Amalia Mesa-Bains, whose program at Cal State Monterey Bay you have read about on CAN, has been named a 2007 recipient of the Gloria Anzaldua Milagro Award. The award is part of novelist Sandra Cisneros's Macondo Workshop — a master's-level, summer writer's workshop in San Antonio, Texas. Mesa-Bains is co-director of CSUMB's department of visual and public art and an independent artist and cultural critic. Her artwork, says Marc Cabrera in the Monterey Herald (5/11/07), deals primarily with interpretations of traditional Chicano altars, both in contemporary formal terms and in their ties to the Chicano community and its history. As an author of scholarly articles and a nationally known lecturer on Latino art, she has enhanced understanding of multiculturalism and reflected major cultural and demographic shifts in the United States. [LINK]

New York's Dancing in the Streets teams up with four Red Hook organizations for "Hip Hop Generation Next," a five-hour block party in Brooklyn's Coffey Park, June 9, 2007. Streets Director Aviva Davidson got the idea from watching Brandon Albright lead a 2005 community dance session in the park. After performing with Rennie Harris Pure Movement, Albright invited the audience to join him, says Davidson, and 50 kids stormed the stage. "Within seconds, Brandon organized the young people into an orderly parade of solo performers. The audience clapped and cheered nonstop for 30 minutes. The air was full of enthusiasm, joy and community pride and the idea for 'Hip Hop Generation Next' was born: an event that would focus on the upcoming hip-hop generation ... and place their contributions in a historical context." [LINK]

A new grant program will provide substantial funding to international partnerships between museums and communities in the U.S. and abroad. Museums and Community Collaborations Abroad (MCCA) is a program of the American Association of Museums and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to develop replicable models for international collaborations that reach beyond museum walls to directly engage the public. "Through innovative museum exchanges, participants will identify stakeholders in the communities they serve and will work to meet their communities’ needs while broadening knowledge about and understanding of diverse cultures in communities in the U.S. and abroad," says AAM. MCCA grants will be awarded in amounts between $50,000 and $100,000 to U.S. museums and their non-U.S. partner museums. Deadline: June 15, 2007. [LINK]

Thirty years of tensions in the cultural, social and political landscape of Cuba are exposed in "Killing Time," a program opening at Exit Art in New York City this weekend. Curated by Elvis Fuentes, Yuneikys Villalonga and Glexis Novoa, the project includes an exhibition, panel discussions, artist talks, performances, a dinner and a catalog focusing on the work of 70 Cuban artists from the '70s to the present with little or no exposure in the U.S. The curators selected works that approach the subject of time, declaring, “The Revolution has been a symbolic intervention on Cuban Time. In return, time has shaped discourses of and on the Cuban Revolution." One feature spotlights origins of performance and conceptual art in Cuba through documentation never before shown in the U.S. [LINK]

L.A.'s Cornerstone Theater Company is embarking upon The Justice Cycle, a series of five new community-based theater works about the ways laws create and disrupt communities. "Los Illegals" by Michael John Garcés and directed by Shishir Kurup, May 31 – June 24, 2007, kicks off the two-and-a-half year series of plays, the first major long-term project under Garcés’ leadership as new artistic director. Inspired by Lope de Vega’s "Fuente Ovejuna" and fueled by true stories gathered from rallies, protests, job centers, work sites and individual interviews, "Los Illegals" will be performed in a mixture of English and Spanish by a cast of 30, including professional actors and community participants. Cornerstone is now running its first online story circle, where you can tell a short justice-related story from your own life. [LINK]

Paul Hawken's Natural Capital Institute has come up with WiserEarth, an international online directory and networking forum for working on environment, social justice and indigenous issues. WiserEarth is described as an open-source, community-editable that "maps, links and empowers the largest movement in the world – the hundreds of thousands of organizations within civil society that address social justice, poverty and the environment." It includes six different arts areas of focus. All recorded information on WiserEarth is searchable, filterable and referenced, with mechanisms inviting users to take on leadership roles and help maintain an Area of Focus portal, facilitate a resource category, support a help desk, start a discussion and invite friends and colleagues. (Thanks, Chelsea Combest-Friedman.) [LINK]

Dance students from the streets of Cali, Colombia, and Fortaleza, Brazil, will talk with local youth at the International Center for Tolerance Education in Brooklyn, N.Y., this month. At the “Dance for Tolerance” forum, May 30, 2007, they will address discrimination and poverty and how dance can be a form of activism and self-transformation. Colombian students, once in rival street gangs, will discuss a unique “conflict resolution” dance program that saved their lives. Brazilian students will discuss how the Edisca School of Dance helps young women escape the prostitution rings rampant in nearby communities. It's part of a weeklong dance and cultural-exchange program by DanceTheatreEtcetera (DTE) and the Third Millennium Foundation, culminating in performances choreographed by students at DTE's 14th annual Red Hook Waterfront Arts Festival, June 2. [LINK]

Participants in the Seeing Beyond Salon, in San Francisco, May 17, 2007, will be taking photos blindfolded, with their pictures uploaded live to the Web. The event celebrates a new book by Tony Deifell , "Seeing Beyond Sight: Photography By Blind Teenagers" from Chronicle Books. The salon at Minna Gallery is called "an evening of social networking, creativity and big-picture thinking." Deifell is a visual artist , teacher and social entrepreneur who creates youth-generated media projects. He will be on hand, along with Reba Drew & Merlett Lowrey, two of the book's blind photographers. The picture-taking salon event is presented by SFO, a "Collaborative Production Game" with these goals: "meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities." [LINK]

Artists and activists will gather at the Luggage Store in San Francisco May 12, 2007, for a discussion accompanying a solo exhibition by Rigo 23. The exhibition, "Backtracking 199485," May 11-June 16, portrays activists and events that influenced and shaped the artist and local, national and global politics 1985-1994, but "have all but been forgotten in the Bay Area." The show "pays tribute to, honor and thanks those who have sought to preserve and extend freedom," including Black Panther Huey P. Newton, UFW Co-founder Dolores Huerta, Brian Wilson of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Judi Bari of Earth First!, among others. May 12 panelists include Rigo 23, Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs, homeless advocate Garth Ferguson, representatives of the ARC/AIDS Vigil of 1985 and San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and others. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you "Speaking in Poems" by Spoon Jackson, a published poet and writing teacher who is serving life in prison. Jackson, who was sentenced to life when he was 19, took his first poetry class in San Quentin more than 20 years ago with writer Judith Tannenbaum. He writes with eloquence about how it freed something inside him. Jackson moved on to others teachers, other prisons, and now teaches writing workshops and poetry classes at "New Folsom," California State Prison Sacramento and mentors poets through the mail. He writes here about his teaching techniques with the prisoners, including those who cannot read or write. The story includes two of his own poems and link to his Web site. Jackson's article was first published in the Teaching Artist Journal, a valuable new quarterly edited by Nick Jaffe and published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [LINK]

Creative solutions to 21st Century problems worldwide are on display in "Design for the Other 90%," an exhibition all summer at Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC. The show explores a growing movement among designers to create low-cost solutions to the fact that 90% of the world's people have almost no access to things the rest of us take for granted, including shelter, health, water, energy and transport. "Design for the Other 90%." collected objects from all over the globe addressing these needs -- low-cost, sustainable solutions created by designers, engineers, architects and social entrepreneurs. The project Web site shows some of the exhibition's treasures, along with founders, team members and donors. The show was curated by Cynthia E. Smith, who has an intriguing blog on-site. [LINK]

A documentary about creative aging is traveling the film-festival circuit and is airing on PBS stations nationwide from American Public Television. Created by Melissa Godoy and Eileen Littig, the film features in-depth portraits of three remarkable artists over the age of 80 and the work of Gene Cohen, the Creativity Discovery Corps and Arts for the Aging. "The film," says U.S. Senator Herb Kohl (Wisc.), Senate Special Committee on Aging, "emphasizes how mutually beneficial it is for seniors to continue exercising their creative force—both to the society that reaps the benefits of their creations, and to the elderly whose quality of life is maintained.” Showings include panel discussions with artists and filmmakers (next: Corcoran Gallery of Art, May 10). See Web site for screening schedules. [LINK]

News from Susan Perlstein, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging (NCCA) and Elders Share the Arts (ESTA). Perlstein, who founded ESTA in 1979 and NCCA in 2001, both in New York, will step as E.D. of both organizations. On June 7, 2007, Perlstein receives ESTA's first annual lifetime achievement "Bel Kaufman Flamekeeper Award." She becomes NCCA's director of education and training at its new facility at George Washington University in D.C. ,in partnership with the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities (CAHH). "This important partnership will inform how we think and teach about aging, extending our impact to the national and global communities," says Perlstein in the May NCCA e-newsletter, Creative Aging. Gay Powell Hanna, E.D. of the Society for Arts in Healthcare will be the new NCCA director. [LINK]

Americans for the Arts has stepped way up technologically, providing online media from its Arts Advocacy Day activities in Washington, D.C., in April. You can witness it all on the AftA Web site through video and audio clips, photographs, podcasts, mp3 files, transcripts and RSS feeds. This year AftA brought some 450 arts, education, entertainment and policy leaders to Capitol Hill, including 93 national cosponsors, and Congressional visits took place in 300 offices. The site offers video and audio clips of speakers at the Congressional Arts Breakfast, including Wynton Marsalis; photos and transcripts of testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior; and downloadable files of Robert MacNeil's Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, the Congressional Arts Handbook and a summary of current legislative issues. [LINK]

Winners of the 2007 Blair L. Sadler International Healing Arts Competition were recognized at the Society for the Arts in Healthcare’s 16th annual conference in April. Winners were Inge Mulvad Eje and Niels Eje, who designed the MusiCure sound and music program proven to reduce stress, anxiety and pain in hospital patients; Lorna Hastings and Beverley Healy, who coordinated the Dreams Art and Health Research Project to assess beneficial effects of their participatory visual-arts program; and Amir Lahav, who tested a musical human-computer interface for stroke rehabilitation that converts body movements into musical feedback. Each won a cash prize. [LINK]