Pangea World Theater continues to mix it up with wildly diverse community-based programs and audience interactions in Minneapolis and on the road. The new season opens with "A Disease Called Freedom" by artists in the multidisciplinary Bridges program, which works across art forms and cultures. The Indigenous Voices series exploring first-nation issues, now in its seventh year, will feature a collaboration between Northern Cheyenne and Choctaw performance artists, and an artist gathering hosted by the director of Native Arts Circle. Sri Lankan artist D'Lo will present a solo performance reconciling her "gay, Hindu, hip-hop" aspects. And in its Voices of Exile series, Pangea will work with artists to create an intergenerational dialogue among Liberian-Americans in the Twin Cities, home to the largest community of LIberians outside Liberia. All arts events include discussions. [LINK]

"The Politics of Creativity - Artists and Educators as Leaders" is the topic of a discussion led by cultural activist Tom Tresser at Columbia College Chicago, October 30, 2007. Questions, according to Tresser, include: Do artists and other cultural workers have any special set of values, skills or experience that might make them excellent leaders in the public sector? Do creative professionals have any special civic obligations as citizen-creators? Tresser currently teaches "The Art of Crossing the Street - The Artist as Citizen" at the School of the Art Institute. Panelists include folklorist/activist Susan Eleuterio and artist/educator Allison Spicer. The event is presented by the Center for Teaching Excellence at Columbia College and the Chicago Teaching Artists Collective. [LINK]

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Peter DiMuro is hosting a dance-making Web log about alternative families as part of his project Funny Uncles, which explores "the reality of contemporary families" through movement, theater, video and spoken word. It questions the persistent image of family as a traditional, nuclear unit, "while the number of blended families, adoption, single parents by choice and gay parenting are all on the rise." The Funny Uncles blog is an LLDE experiment to collaborate with audiences before, during and after performances. It contains video of rehearsals and encourages users to add movement phrases and theatrical direction to the piece. The project also includes a Halloween Debut Blog-a-Thon and Cabaret, Family Dancing Workshops, a three-city performance tour of “Gumdrops and The Funny Uncle” and a community dialogue, "Hot Chocolate Chat: Making Art with Communities." [LINK]

Today CAN brings you a story about a different kind of focus group: the Thousand Kites Summit. Linda Frye Burnham writes about an October meeting to brainstorm about Thousand Kites, a multi-arts initiative that will roll out in spring of 2008 from Kentucky's arts-and-media center, Appalshop. Thousand Kites is an artists’ response to the burgeoning U.S. prison industry, sometimes called Incarceration Nation. In particular, it shed light on the Supermax prison boom in the Appalachian coalfields. The components of Thousand Kites include free community-based theater, Web, video and radio projects created with inmates, prison employees and their families. Appalshop and North Carolina's Working Films invited a dozen artists, writers and activists to Philadelphia to brainstorm this question: How can this material be part of your movement in a way that helps you best? Burnham calls the event an example of cross-sector thinking that's integrating the arts into real-world change. [LINK]

"Pluralism? -- Ethnicity/Race, Social Justice and the Arts" is a panel discussion in Chicago, October 28, 2007, featuring Latino and Palestinian artists and activists. The panel accompanies an exhibition at the Cuentos Foundation by Hannah Diab, paintings and drawings exploring "issues of family and life as a Palestinian-American." Diab joins the panel, which also includes: Aasia Muhamad, Pakistani/Mexican Chicago-born activist and U.S. coordinator for the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios de Comunicación Comunitaria, which provides media equipment, computers and training to indigenous communities in southern Mexico to create their own media.; and Elvia Rodriguez Ochoa, artist and community organizer in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood and director of community programs at Pros Arts Studio. The moderator is Gonzalo Escobar, Latino community activist and community-radio producer. [LINK]

The Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago has published a new issue of Teaching Artist Journal and has a new Democratic Vistas forum coming up. TAJ Fall 2007 includes essays by: Arnie Aprill on the life and work of playwright, visionary and teaching artist Sterling Houston; Courtney Lee Weida on digital possibilities for teaching ceramics; Lisa Hochtritt on teaching artistry and “working corners”; Jennifer Smith on developing integrated dance curricula; and Mary Sutton on crossing social, economic and racial boundaries with theater. "What are the Real Benefits of Arts Education?" is the next Democratic Vistas Forum, November 7. It features new research by Lois Hetland of Harvard Project Zero showing that art programs teach persistence, careful observation, reflection and revision, envisioning and planning, learning from mistakes and more. Details on the Web. [LINK]

A gallery at Arizona State University Art Museum was recently turned into a bike repair shop for a new museum initiative called Social Studies: Artist Community Residencies. During "Cicloviaérea," the inaugural residency of the community-engagement initiative, Brazilian artist Jarbas Lopes proposed the bicycle as an alternative for transportation, a source of enjoyment and an object that balances function with aesthetic beauty. Lopes converted the gallery, September 7-October 12, to a studio to create an installation, inviting the community to collaborate with him using bicycles, sculpture, drawing, installation, video and performance. Tempe's Bike Saviours Cooperative pitched in with an operational bike repair shop. The Lopes exhibition, co-curated by Marilyn Zeitlin and John Spiak, runs through December 30, with three community dialogues about the process and a dance party. See video on the Web. [LINK]

Responding to provocations ain't easy, says rapper Aisha Norris, who helped Bronx teens craft a play about violence in their lives. "In fact, it's crazy hard." The play, "Ain't Easy," is the newest work by Mass Transit Street Theater & Video, showing through October at the Bronx's Hostos Center for Arts and Culture. It's the real-life story of a Bronx youth incarcerated in maximum security for killing a classmate in self-defense, along with stories of four Bronx teens, their attraction to violence and how they opt for a "cool" alternative. Some cast members tell their own tales. Community organizer Lyn Pyle, who co-directs Mass Transit, collected stories and collaborated with Norris to weave them together into the theater/music/video piece. After each show, the cast does q & a with teens in the audience. [LINK]

The NAMM Foundation is requesting proposals for projects that further NAMM’s mission of creating more active music makers of all ages and expanding access to music making. Grant categories include a couple of possibilities for community-based arts partnerships: Their Program Grants support innovative music learning programs from nonprofit public-service organizations that reach new audiences with new protocols. And The Sounds of Living: The Impact of Music Making initiative supports research that examines the role of active participation in music for children, youth, adults and seniors. Research funded under the initiative explores the effects of music learning and music making outside of formal educational settings and expands the understanding of the role of music making in health, wellness, socialization and the interconnections between mind, body and spirit that contribute to wellness and overall quality of life. (Thanks, ArtsEdMail.org.) [LINK]

Arts-based civic engagement will be the topic of a panel at October's 2007 Independent Sector Annual Conference, themed "Opportunity and Responsibility." "The Arts of Civic Engagement: Uncommon Approaches" features Debra Padilla, Social and Public Art Resource Center; Josephine Ramirez, Music Center/Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County; and Shay Wafer, Cornerstone Theater Company. Other panels feature Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Animating Democracy; and Laura Chasin, Public Conversations Project. Independent Sector has included a profile of arts-based civic engagement (based on stories from Animating Democracy) in the new publication on civic engagement that will debut at the convention in Los Angeles, October 21-23. Independent Sector serves as a meeting ground for leaders of America's charitable and philanthropic sector. (Thanks, Animating Democracy October 2007 E-News.) [LINK]

CAN is proud to be the first to link with Thousand Kites Radio, a 24-hour online broadcast that is part of a national arts project to creatively explore and challenge the U.S. criminal-justice system. In prison jargon, "kite" means to send a message. Thousand Kites Radio broadcasts interviews, news programs, spoken word, music documentaries and shout outs created with inmates, prison employees and their families. It's part of Thousand Kites, a national storytelling project based at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, that plans to use community theater, radio and the Web to create tools for grassroots organizing and community education about the justice system in the U.S. You can access Thousand Kites Radio from CAN by going to the BlogNet page and clicking on the Thousand Kites logo (right center). [LINK]

With its Third Annual Arab Film Festival, Michigan's Arab American National Museum hopes to "provide a forum for discussion of questions raised by films that challenge our beliefs.” The Dearborn festival, November 2-4, 2007, includes an audience discussion with film critic Serena Donadoni and Wadad Abed, co-founder of the Bustan Al-Funun Foundation for Arab Arts in America, following showings of the Oscar-winning "West Bank Story" and "Driving to Zigzigland" (about the social struggle of Arab immigrants in post-9/11 America). A discussion about identity politics with University of Michigan scholars follows screenings of "Heavy Metal Drummer" and "Le Grand Voyage" (the first feature film shot in Mecca). Other films include "Dunia" (starring an Egyptian pop star and banned in that country), "These Girls/El-Banate Dol" (about abused girls in a Muslim society), and more. [LINK]

Salem College and three North Carolina arts councils have announced the Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts to encourage arts-based community development in central N.C. The purpose of the two-year PTICA is to educate community organizations and leaders, artists, arts organizations and funders about the possibilities of "the application of the arts to change individual lives and communities for the better," according to Salem's Douglas Borwick. Activities include workshops by Barbara Schaffer Bacon and Pam Korza of Americans for the Arts’ Animating Democracy Initiative, and by consultant Tom Borrup of Community Cultural Development, artist Marty Pottenger of Maine’s Arts and Equity Initiative and Becky Anderson of Handmade in America. Also planned is a demonstration project with student engagement around school-dropout issues. Among project goals is a center that would encourage future community arts collaborations. [LINK]

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission has an interesting certificate program that provides artists with training to teach in K-8 classrooms. The Professional Artist School-based Training Program for January-June 2008 is part of Arts for All: Los Angeles County Regional Blueprint for Arts Education, a ten-year strategic plan to restore arts to L.A. County's 80 school districts. Sixteen professional artists in music, dance, theater and visual arts will participate and receive a Professional Designation in Arts Education certificate. Training emphasizes California Content Standards including Visual and Performing Arts standards; knowledge of child-development issues; various teaching strategies and models; classroom-management techniques; interdisciplinary models; and assessment methods. It's open to all professional artists with youth teaching experience. Program partners include Armory Center for the Arts, The Music Center and Culver City schools. (Application deadline: October 30.) [LINK]

''There's this terrible thing that women do called their crime. Then there's the rest of them," says "Vagina Monologues" creator Eve Ensler in the Miami Herald (10/14/07). In a Sunday front-page story about an upcoming prison-arts event by ArtSpring, Christine Dolen quotes Ensler, "Isn't there something about people transforming themselves and becoming new kinds of people that can benefit society? Wouldn't that be honoring the people that they hurt, rather than just punishing and just holding people forever?'' "Any One of Us: Words from Prison" is an October 18 ArtSpring benefit in Miami, featuring Ensler and singer-songwriter Amy Carol Webb and staged by ArtSpring's Leslie Neal, with original music, dance pieces, video of prisoners talking about their lives and readings by a cast of community leaders and former inmates. Dolen's story beautifully describes ArtSpring's work in prisons. [LINK]

Los Angeles Poverty Department's "Glimpses of Utopia" series continues October 25 at Red Dot Gallery on L.A.'s Skid Row. Part of the UTOPIA/dystopia Project, local presenters speak on their vision for the area: Deputy City Attorney Gordon Turner on patient dumping on Skid Row; L.A. Community Action Network's Steve Diaz on housing advocacy; Dwight Lewis on St. Vincent Cardinal Manning Center; Downtown Women’s Center's Lisa Watson on a 75-unit housing project for low-income women; Vernon Main Neighborhood Council's Deacon Alexander on more community resources and facilities access for Skid Row residents. Photographer Fridgeir Helgason shows a film he made while living at the Midnight Mission. At 4 p.m., November 16, 220 people make a "Glimpses of Utopia movement-line" from Skid Row to City Hall. A fruit-of-research performance event runs at REDCAT Theater, December 6-9. [LINK]

Artists Brett Cook and Wendy Ewald are working on a collaboration anchored in Ewald's Amherst College fall class, "Collaborative Art: Theory and Practice of Working with a Community." It involves large-scale public works created collaboratively by students, faculty and staff, using the two artists' creative processes. Cook describes it as "making photos of 18 participants, interviewing the 18 models, making nine projections with students on 12' H X 10' W banners, and facilitating a celebration with the college food service staff and local farmers, Jazz musicians, a DJ, art making stations, and the entire college community (faculty, students, staff) - in two weeks." The artworks are bring mounted outdoors on campus and the collaboration culminates in an exhibition at Mead Museum, November 29, 2007-January20, 2008. As usual, Cook is documenting the heck out of it on his Web site. [LINK]

Yesterday (10/11/07) in Buffalo, N.Y., Federal District Court, Robert Ferrell pleaded guilty to lesser charges rather than facing a prolonged trial in the Critical Art Ensemble "bioterrorism" case. In an e-mail from CAE posted on the Web, we learned that Ferrell, professor of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health pleaded guilty "rather than facing a prolonged trial for federal charges of 'mail fraud' and 'wire fraud' in a surreal post-PATRIOT Act legal case that has attracted worldwide attention." Ferrell, a colleague of indicted artist Steve Kurtz, has been under unusual physical strain during the ordeal: He was indicted just as he was preparing to undergo an autologous stem cell transplant, the second in seven years. He has been under treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, malignant melanoma and three strokes. [LINK]

Training and professional development in community-engaged performance is the topic of a Public Conversation at Northwestern University, November 10, 2007. The conversation is part of a three day convening at Northwestern that brings together leaders in the field from New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Portland, Ore.: Urban Bush Women's Jawole Willa Jo Zollar & Stevie Mckee, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's Peter Dimuro & John Borstel, Cornerstone Theater's Michael John Garces, Sojourn Theatre's Michael Rohd & Hannah Treuhaft and Talvin Wilks from Animating Democracy. The conversation takes place 10 a.m.-noon at Northwestern's Theater/Interp Center, Wallis Theater. Follow the link for directions. [LINK]

Artists, scientists, writers, historians and social scientists will come together for "POLAR: the Art & Science of Climate Change," a cross-disciplinary event series in London. The November series by The Arts Catalyst, the British Library and the Open University explores cultural and scientific issues surrounding climate change in the context of the International Polar Year (2007-08). It incorporates a publication, public lectures and a symposium, "POLAR: Fieldwork & Archive Fever," November 19-20, that will consider: the important claims and policy decisions based on our knowledge of the polar landscape and archive; the way it has been produced; and new work that suggests it could be structured and interpreted in alternative ways. This exploration "might give rise to alternative visions and uses of polar landscapes and their connection to a wider global picture," say the producers. [LINK]

"Engaging Documentary: Community Values and Artistic Visions" is a new series of events with documentary artists at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. The events, set for Fall 2007-Spring 2008, will feature photographers, filmmakers, writers and audio producers who, says CDS, "work in the space where creative expression and community dynamics intersect." The series, with its focus on the documentary arts as active engagement, "raises questions and presents perspectives on topics central to the pursuit of transformative goals in a complex society." October events include ethnographer/novelist Norma Cantu, “Celebrating Identity: Three Fiestas in Laredo, Texas”; filmmaker Christie Herring, “Community Documentary Filmmaking: The Tension Between Observing and Belonging”; and jazz composer/pianist Jason Moran, “In My Mind: Monk at Town Hall 1959.” [LINK]

Today CAN brings you the second part of Kevin M. Bott's project journal, "Notes on Prison Theater in Northern Uganda." In this installment, Bott returns to Uganda to conduct a three-week prison theater workshop. Terrified that he is unprepared to conduct the kind of work he promised to do, and almost frozen by the complex ethical issues and cultural differences he faces, he works through his process of wrestling with his own values as a facilitator, of seeking support from institutional insiders, and negotiating decisions of inclusion and exclusion. Bott requested 20 or 30 prisoners for the project, but found that many more were interested in participating. At the end of Part 2, he faces more than 100 collaborators. [LINK]

Artist Lara Lepionka is at it again, uncovering the hidden value of work -- this time in a supermarket in Gloucester, Mass. Gail McCarthy reports in the Gloucester Daily Times (9/18/07) that Lepionka spent a week observing and photographing the workers at Shaw's Eastern Avenue store as they worked at everything from cutting meat to operating a cash register. At her request, Shaw's named her artist in residence (with a badge that said "artist). Lepionka used five photographs as templates to carve the workers' images into small Styrofoam meatpacking trays, then, because they were fragile, reproduced them on banners to hang in the store. "In the break room we all talked about it," said meat-cutter Jim Johnson, "recognizing the motions that we make. It sparked conversation about what we do every day, which we don't usually talk about." [LINK]

Fall visitors to a British museum will be able to use the latest digital technology to create an exhibition "soundtrack" exploring the musical legacy of slavery. The exhibition, "Seeing Slavery," at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, October 13-December 9, 2007, occurs 200 years after the British Parliament passed The Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Aiming to raise awareness of the subject both historically and in a contemporary context, the event consists of four interrelated elements; objects taken from the Museum's collection, including an 18th- century punch bowl, inscribed with "Success to the Africa Trade"; a schools project; Brazilian dance and a play cited within the exhibition; and a newly commissioned work by the artist Pogus Caesar, "80 lbs of Chains." This piece includes a soundscape depicting the sounds of a slave ship. During the course of the show, the museum will hold digital workshops in which visitors will be able to create their own soundtracks to the exhibit. [LINK]

A Chicago judge has decreed that artist Chapman Kelley's "Wildflower Works I," destroyed by the Parks District, was a federally protected work of art. "Wildflower Works," created in 1984, was a 1.5-acre field of wildflowers in Daley Bicentennial Plaza. In 2004 the Parks District, without consulting Kelley, reduced it by half and surrounded it with a knee-high hedge and closely cropped lawn. A plant expert during the three-day trial estimated Kelley's garden was worth $1.5 million, says Andrew Herrmann in the Chicago Sun-Times (9/27/07). Kelley's attorney said the case is the first time an artist using "alternative materials" has successfully sued under the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act. Kelley could be compensated, but won't visit the reduced garden. To see what's left would be like "going back to where your mother was run over by a train,'' he said. [LINK]

Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program is having a landmark year, with a national conference, a new home, Mural Arts Month and a profile in Time magazine. This month, MAP hosted the first-ever arts in criminal justice conference, where hundreds of artists and activists networked, learned new strategies, spent a day in a maximum-security prison and discussed a national coalition. MAP will soon open the doors of its Lincoln Financial Mural Arts Center, doubling space for programs with three state-of-the-art studios, a 13-station multimedia lab with cutting-edge technology, a new gallery space and a three-story indoor mural. October is MAP's Bank of America Mural Arts Month in Philly, filling the city with openings, tours and exhibitions. And in the September 3, 2007, issue of Time, Brendan Lowe's "Postcard: Philadelphia" profiled the program. [LINK]

There's a new degree program in Theater in Education and Community at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Located in the Department of Theatre with faculty including playwright Bernardo Solano, the new program educates artists, teachers and advocates for theater in educational settings and communities and "prepares them for employment in these fields and life-long commitment to civic engagement and socially responsible art." Curriculum includes history, theories and methodologies of theater in education, community-based theater, theater for youth and using theater to teach across the curriculum. The program offers access to nationally recognized community-based theater companies like Cornerstone Theater Company and the Fringe Benefits Alliance. Students take part in community-based performance projects and service-learning opportunities with regional community partners. [LINK]

Some fascinating community events accompany MICA's presentation of a traveling exhibition, "Black Panther Rank and File," November 8-December 16, 2007. "Rank and File," initiated by San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, will be explored all over Baltimore with: a hands-on animation workshop by Kids on the Hill; a town meeting, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Black Panther Party Revisited"; a symposium on aesthetics, community & revolution; a four-film series; a Nkenge Toure dialogue on the women of the Party; guest-docent tours of the exhibition; and slide lectures, plays and additional exhibitions. To "make the exhibition relevant to Baltimore's history and present condition," students in MICA's Masters in Community Arts program have completed oral histories of local Panthers, and they are posted on the Web, along with details of all the community activities. [LINK]

Pennsylvanians have spent the past two years creating and placing banners along the 19-mile Steel Valley Trail section of the Great Allegheny Passage, between Clairton and Pittsburgh. The Community Art Trail Initiative, a project of the Steel Valley Trail Council, seeks to increase grassroots participation and stewardship of the trail. Artist Ann Rosenthal's Youth Earn & Learn Program (YELP) is producing unique trail banners designed by local graphic-design and art students in middle-, high-school, and undergraduate studies, and painted by 100 citizens through a series of community workshops in McKeesport and Pittsburgh. Thirty banners were mounted in June to welcome 500 bike-riders from 34 states cycling from D.C. to Pittsburgh for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s 6th Annual Greenway Sojourn. YELP uses public art to connect youth to cultural and natural landscapes where they live, helping reclaim post-industrial landscapes and economies. [LINK]

"Live in Public -- The Art of Engagement," a community public art symposium initiated by a group of Canadian artists, is set for October 10-13, 2007, in Vancouver, B.C. The emphasis is on an artists' definition of these practices, say the planners. "Rejecting notions of social work or community development, the conference looks at the roles artists play in community public art. It looks at expectations and reality and the role of art within the process. ... Funders and governments have responded to this newer area with programs that often limit the activities possible through funding restrictions or city or provincial bylaws limiting what artists can do. The conference looks to develop standards among artists to see how we can develop this area." It's sold out, but there's a free online conference, October 12, open to all. [LINK]

Over the next two years, Joanne Rice of Mobius Artist Group will count the human cost of war in a public artwork at Boston's Trinity Church. "The Human Cost of War: A Daily Action" starts October 7, 2007, on Copley Square. Rice will bring 100 small stones to a site at the corner of Boylston and Clarendon Streets by the Trinity Church sign every day at noon; they will eventually number over 70,000 if the site goes undisturbed. Rice says she asks, "What is the human cost of war? I hear the numbers and think: my brother, my sister, my mother, my father . . . The action remembers the daily toll of war." Trinity Church, the host, says it has a long history of praying for peace and "supporting innovative forms of artistic expression." [LINK]