"Other candidates may have decent positions on the arts. But none get the deep connection between the arts and democracy as [Barack Obama] does," writes Nick Rabkin by e-mail. Rabkin is executive director of the Chicago Center for Arts Policy and has decades of experience in the policy field. He was asked to volunteer for the Obama campaign's arts-policy committee, and says, "Obama 'gets' the central place of creativity and the arts to the kind of society we want to build. He has listened to us." The Obama campaign has issued a fact sheet spelling out Obama's arts policy; you may read the entire text in the CANblog. He promises to reinvest in arts education; support increased federal funding for the NEA; promote cultural diplomacy; attract foreign talent; provide health care to artists; and ensure tax fairness for artists. [LINK]

The Center on Age & Community at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee is calling for proposals for its 2009 Residency in Applied Arts. The three-month “developmental” residency is designed to support a nationally recognized artist interested in developing work in aging and memory loss. It’s supported by a partnership between the Center on Age & Community, which offers an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in Applied Gerontology and does research in innovative approaches to long-term care, and UWM’s Peck School of the Arts, home to departments of Visual Arts, Dance, Theatre and Music and an InterArts degree in digital arts (video/animation/sound). The objective is to encourage artists and community groups serving people with dementia to col¬laborate in conceptualizing and designing projects that result in public participation in the creative process. [LINK]

Photographer Bruce Jackson talks at Duke University, January 24, 2008, about his project on “prison as a cultural site.” His talk is part of “Cummins Wide,” an exhibition at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, N.C., now through April 6: Jackson's 1970s photographs from Cummins Prison Farm in Lincoln County, Ark., where conditions were so poor as to be judged unconstitutional. For some shoots, Jackson used a Widelux camera, approximating the normal human field of vision. “When I look at these prints, I feel as if I’m confronting something I’ve looked at before but never really seen,” Jackson says. Also, his 1979 film “Death Row” screens February 8, for the Center’s Doc U Arts Institute, and he talks with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, March 19, for the “Statements of Fact: Documentary in Performance” series. [LINK]

Georgia singer-guitarist Elise Witt was invited to fly to China in December 2007 to sing at the opening of the new wing of the Holocaust Museum in Nanjing. The museum is built upon the site of the Nanjing Massacre of 1937, when Japanese troops killed more than 300,000 Chinese civilians, raped more than 20,000 and burned down one-third of the city's buildings, according to historical documents. Witt was one of 12 singers from the U.S. invited to sing with Nanjing's Chiang-Su State Chorus, the Beijing Central Conservatory Chorus and the Jiangsu Province Symphony Orchestra. See pictures and read about the museum, the concert and Witt's other arts adventures on her wonderful Web site. Witt is known worldwide for her music and her ability to work in community settings. She is a longtime member of Alternate ROOTS. [LINK]

Liz Lerman will be keynote speaker for the Community Arts Convening & Research Project conference at Maryland Institute College of Arts in Baltimore, March 16-18, 2008. Lerman is a noted choreographer, performer, writer, educator and speaker, and her working process emphasizes research, translation between artistic media, and intensive collaboration with dancers and communities. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange company members will join her presentation and serve as convening dialogue facilitators. The 52 essays accepted for discussion at the convening have been grouped into four themes: Critical Pedagogy in the Academy; Partnerships: Campus and Community; Community Practices: Values, Beliefs and Aesthetic Forms; and Community Arts and Artist. Names of the authors will appear soon on the project Web site, with other details. Registration deadline: March 4 (online form available January 28). Special hotel rate deadline: February 16. Questions: Paula Phillips, pphillips@mica.edu. [LINK]

Jump-Start Performance Co.'s Education program just got a $50,000 boost from an unusual funder: Impact San Antonio, an all-volunteer foundation. The grant supports Jump-Start's Historias y Cuentos (Stories and Tales) program, a long-term collaboration with ten urban public schools in low-income areas of San Antonio, Texas. "Impact San Antonio," says Jump-Start's newsletter, "is a 501(c)(3) foundation committed to expanding philanthropy in San Antnio by empowering women as both donors and decision makers. Impact San Antonio's concept is simple: Recruit as many members as possile who each donate $1,000 a year and pool that money to make an annual grant to a worthy San Antonio-area nonprofit organizations." The foundation is completely staffed by volunteers to keep expenses down. Every dollar raised is passed on directly to the grantees. [LINK]

The Society for the Arts in Healthcare's 19th Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Pa., April 16-19, 2008, is themed "Embracing Our Past, Shaping Our Future: 21st Century Innovations." Hosted by Temple University, the conference features keynote speeches by scholar Ellen Dissanayake, author of "Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why"; artist Lily Yeh of Barefoot Artists, Inc.; music scholar Cheryl Dileo and music therapist Joke Bradt, both of Temple's Arts and Quality of Life Research Center; Jane Golden, director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program; and concert violinist Jourdan Urbach, 15, founder of Children Helping Children. The conference will include pre-conferences, performances, lectures, consultancies, case studies, a poster exhibition, a film festival, a Philadelphia Community Arts in Healthcare Tour and an interactive tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art showcasing its Arts Accessibility and Medical Education features. [LINK]

June's U.S. Social Forum took democracy much farther than many progressive gatherings, says writer Louise Dunlap in the first issue of New Village Online from New Village Press. "I felt confident that I was at last taking direction from leaders of color," says Dunlap, author of NVP's "Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing." Her report is a deep, fascinating analysis. The online magazine's first issue also includes the text of "Out of the Box," a lecture to the Shanti Foundation Conference by Arlene Goldbard, author of NVP's "New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development." NVO is part of a new feature on the NVP Web site: New Village Commons, which offers a regular blog, newsletter with RSS feed, audio and video selections and calendar of author and press events. [LINK]

Filmmakers and media pioneers come together February 7-8, 2008, at D.C.'s American University for a conference called "Making Your Media Matter." Sponsored by A.U.'s Center for Social Media, it's a conference for established and aspiring filmmakers, nonprofit communications leaders, funders and students looking to learn and share cutting-edge practices for creating media that matters. Panel-discussion and lunch-table topics include Plight Entertainment; Crossing Cultural Boundaries; Funding Non-profit Videos; Nonprofits and media makers partnering together; Documentaries for Non-Documentary Majors: How can non-filmmakers with a great issue or story translate that story to screen?; Short Shorts and Hot Platforms: Emerging Formats and Distribution Strategies; and BEYOND THE CHOIR: Getting your story out of the echo-chamber. Keynoters are filmmaker Byron Hurt ("Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes") and community-outreach specialist Sonya Childress. [LINK]

The documentary film "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North" will have its world premiere January 21 at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival in Utah. The film, developed in the Animating Democracy Lab, follows director Katrina Browne and nine of her relatives as they retrace the voyage and industry of their ancestors — the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history — from Rhode Island to Ghana to Cuba. “We're thrilled with this honor,” said Browne in ADI's E-news. “January 2008 marks the bicentennial of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade — a trade that unbeknownst to most, was primarily conducted from Northern ports. We are hopeful that the platform ... will help create new awareness and interest in this hidden history and its significance today.” The documentary is eligible for the jury prize for best Independent Film documentary. [LINK]

"American Evolution: Arts in the New Civic Life" is the theme of the Americans for the Arts conference in Philadelphia, June 20–22, 2008. The "Civic Engagement" program track will explore the ways the arts engage people in civic life. Case-based sessions, skill-building workshops and research and policy sessions will examine the arts as a platform for civic engagement and will build participant skills for designing and delivering arts-based civic-engagement opportunities in their own communities. Keynote speaker Rob “Biko” Baker, a hip-hop organizer, journalist, activist and scholar, will discuss hip-hop as a catalyst for voter registration and youth engagement. There's a special half-day preconference workshop in civic engagement presented by Animating Democracy. Information about additional tracks, including "Preserving Diverse Cultures" and "Public Art," a convention schedule and registration is online. Deadline for preview registration: February 1, 2008. [LINK]

Los Angeles Poverty Department continues its national residency project on drug policy when "Agents & Assets" has its New York premiere this month. LAPD collaborates on the residency with Housing Works, a visionary provider of housing for homeless people with HIV/ AIDS. In "Agents & Assets," LAPD addresses the U.S. government’s escalating “war on drugs.” The performance dramatizes a 1998 Congressional Hearing about allegations of CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking to fund the Nicaraguan Contras at a time when such funding had been expressly forbidden by Congress. The entire performance script is taken from the hearing transcript. Following performances January 30-February 1 in Harlem, lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, public discussions feature cast members along with Deborah Small, Break the Chains; Chloe Duger, ACLU; Nellie Hester Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council; and Vivian Nixon, CUNY College and Community Fellowship. [LINK]

Today CAN brings you "Reclaiming Culture: ¡Que Viva La Posada!" by Aryeh Shell, about a cultural project by the Mayfair community of east San José, California. Shell leads the Community Engagement program for Somos Mayfair (We are Mayfair), a neighborhood improvement initiative in a small immigrant community with a history of labor activism; in the '50s Mayfair was the home and base for the legendary work of César Chávez. Familias Unidas is a performance ensemble with Somos Mayfair that is using popular theater and culture to help transform the community motto from “Sal Si Puedes” (Get out if you can) to “¡Sí Se Puede!” (We can do it!). Shell tells of Mayfair's recent Posada and Pastorela event, which "grew out of a desire of the community mothers to preserve their cultural heritage." [LINK]

Four artists will unveil a collaborative, large-scale knit protest banner during "Crafting Protest," a discussion at N.Y.C.'s New School, January 26, 2008. Liz Collins, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Cat Mazza and Allison Smith will explore the idea that crafting, because it is so often social and communal, plays a vital role in the public sphere and can be used to make "diverse and timely political statements." The event, moderated by art historian/critic Julia Bryan-Wilson, includes an informal craft reception where the panelists will present tactile examples of the materials, machinery and processes they use in their work. They collaborated on the large-scale banner using an industrial knitting machine from RISD Textiles. This program is presented concurrently with the release of the February issue of Modern Painters, which features a roundtable discussion by the panelists. [LINK]

The Museum of the Person International Network and California's Center for Digital Storytelling have announced an International Day for Sharing Life Stories, May 16, 2008. The day will be an opportunity for people worldwide to gather in community halls, classrooms, parks, theaters, auditoriums, Web sites, e-mail exchanges and virtual environments to hear each other’s stories. Joe Lambert of CDS said, "This campaign is about helping all of us to claim a day to step out of our accelerated lives ... even if it is just holding a storycircle at lunch at work." Karen Worcman of the Museum of the Person (Brazil, Portugal, U.S., Canada) said the day is dedicated to "life story projects that have made a difference within neighborhoods, communities and societies as a whole." The project Web site has special features and events listings. [LINK]

"Increasingly, there are two intellectual platforms for art in public," says Jeremy Hunt, guest editor of the fall/winter issue of Public Art Review, "art in the service of political engineering and social values, and... art centered mainly on artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals." Hunt, editor of the U.K.'s Art and Architecture Journal, produced an issue on public art in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He roots the schism in "funding, power and control": Arts Council England, the government funding body with an annual budget of £411m, "has dictated that publicly funded arts should make a measurable contribution to its sustainable-communities agenda. Art is expected to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime...[etc.]. ...[I]t is little wonder that arts administrators place community interest first." Alas, it's only available in print. [LINK]

Five major arts funders in MInnesota have launched ArtsLab, a $1.85 million, multiyear venture to identify 16 small arts organizations for three years of support. Aiming to "bolster community vitality and cultural life," the collaborative will select 16 organizations from two regions with relatively high concentrations of local arts engagement: the seven-county Twin Cities metro area and 26 counties in northwest Minnesota. The ArtsLab collaborative is composed of the Bush, F. R. Bigelow, Mardag, McKnight and Saint Paul foundations. They hope to foster an engaged peer community, consolidate group resources and achieve measurable regional outcomes within the program's three-year time frame. See McKnight's Web site for details. [LINK]

New York City artists and leaders of community arts organizations of color say their artistic voices are being silenced by a lack of city funding, says Dean Meminger on NY1.com (1/14/08). Members of the coalition Cultural Equity Group say they are "the faces that make up the neighborhoods of the city," and they brought their fight to a demonstration at City Hall on January 9. Laurie Cumbo of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts said that artists of color pay taxes and that money is not coming back to their communities to give their children an opportunity for a cultural education. City laws mandate the majority of the cultural budget must go to programs on city property -- the more established cultural institutions -- who got $128 million this year, said Meminger. See video on NY1. [LINK]

Teatro Visión will host another Instituto de Teatro, February, 19-22, 2008, asking the question: "How do you initiate dialogue with a community after a performance?" It will explore specific applications for use with immigrant families. The San Jose, Calif., organization is partnering again with "First 5" funded agencies to "provide the tools for and express the values of participatory theater and popular education as a means to heal and build trust for families in Santa Clara County." Sojourn Theatre's Michael Rohd returns as instructor. Community interest is so high that participant slots were filled three months in advance. In other Teatro news, Executive Director Raul Lozano is among the planners of regionwide The Multicultural Arts Leadership Initiative Program, with an eye to impact on future cultural policy in the South Bay. [LINK]

We just added to our Places To Study database some intriguing cross-sectoral grad programs at the University of Melbourne, Australia. The Postgrad Diploma, Masters & Ph.D. in Community Cultural Development programs aim to "address increasing work opportunities in the field of community cultural development and cross-sectoral community-based arts practice." Study references the visual, performing arts and also a range of related areas of study, such as public policy, public health, public evaluation, philosophy, social science, natural science, psychology, cultural studies and cultural geography. They use diverse research methodologies, including action-based research, narrative evaluation and production-based investigation, which uses the development of working designs and prototypes as its method. CCD student and staff inquiry have included community-based research in community strengthening, housing/urban renewal, multicultural communities, arts & education, health & wellbeing, indigenous communities, justice, and the arts, nature and the environment. [LINK]

Today CAN is pleased to add to its Places To Study database two training program for community-based artists in New Jersey. 1) The Institute of Arts and Humanities Education (IAHE) is an organization training and placing artists in some truly unique community programs: teen institutes, in-school & after-school and evening family events. See the site for details. 2) The Community Artists Residency Training Series (CARTS) is part of the Transcultural New Jersey-Public Service Arts Program at Rutgers University. CARTS is managed through a partnership between Isabel Nazario, of the Rutgers office of Academic & Public Partnerships in the Arts and Humanities, and Maureen Heffernan of the IAHE. Its special focus is a Mentor/Apprenticeship Model where community artists are assigned experienced mentors who guide them through their residencies. [LINK]

USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism is offering a unique nine‐month M.A. program in specialized journalism beginning in August 2008. As a separate area of emphasis within the specialized journalism program, USC Annenberg is developing a course of study in coverage of the arts, which it hopes to offer in collaboration with USC’s five arts schools. Two‐thirds of the M.A. coursework can be customized to student’s specific interests. There are 18 units of coursework, including a master’s professional project and directed research, exclusive seminars on research methods and decision making, and advanced journalism courses in topic areas such as urban ecology, science, education, demography and religion, plus 16 units of coursework chosen by the student from graduate‐level classes across USC. All applicants are eligible for fellowships providing full tuition support and living stipend. Apply February 1-May 15. [LINK]

The Ford Foundation’s Future of Public Media Initiative grantees, an alliance of leading nonprofits, shaping the face of public media for the future, says Bree Bowman American University's Center for Social Media Web site. Highlights: Public Radio Capital’s newly capitalized Public Radio Fund for short-term financing of radio acquisitions; Link TV's One Nation Online Film Contest, revealing commonalities among Americans and challenging stereotypes of Muslims; PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, using the latest web 2.0 tools to provide interactive, comprehensive coverage; WGBH Boston's research into copyright law and public broadcasting; Generation PRX, putting the latest networking tools in the hands of youth radio groups; ITVS's Filmocracy Project, an online competition bringing new, creative life to old content; and The Sundance Institute's Stories of Change initiative, allowing visionary social entrepreneurs and exemplary documentary filmmakers to collaborate. [LINK]

Twenty-five arts journalists have been chosen from 28 states to participate as fellows in the NEA's fourth Arts Journalism Institute, February 5-15, 2008. The institute, this time in theater and musical theater, will be conducted by USC Annenberg's School of Journalism in Los Angeles by author/critic Sasha Anawalt. It's part of a $1 million NEA initiative to offer intensive training for theater critics and their editors who work outside the country's major media markets, where, said NEA Chair Dana Gioia, "journalists who cover the arts often are over-extended with multiple beats and assignments that allow few opportunities to concentrate on various artistic disciplines." The institute includes writing workshops, history lectures, acting and directing classes, observation of rehearsals, performances of plays and musicals and encounters with theater professionals -- this year including Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Program Director Ben Cameron. [LINK]

U.C. Berkeley hosts "Arts, Neighborhood and Social Practice: The Arts and Processes of Urban Community Revitalization and Engagement" January 25, 2008. The conference is cosponsored by UCB's Center for Community Innovation and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. Describing the conference, the sponsors say: " Art and artists have come to be seen as catalysts for neighborhood change. This symposium is the product of a new Berkeley initiative working to construct a multidisciplinary understanding of the arts as integral to developing neighborhood identity and activating civic engagement. The symposium will bring together artists, scholars, foundation administrators, philanthropists, policy makers and community leaders in order to think together about what it means to bring social analysis and an aesthetic imagination into the same place." Keynote speakers are CAN writers Jan Cohen-Cruz and Arlene Goldbard. [LINK]

Slum-TV, the documentary film project in the slums of Kenya, is blogging about the post-election violence there. One of the Slum-TV founders, Sam Hopkins, a Brit born in Kenya, writes about the climate of fear: "Fear and worry are the most palpable emotions. ... A siege mentality is setting in. And the tragedy is that once again it will be not be the politicians but the very poorest that suffer. Mathare and Kibera, another large slum in Nairobi, have seen the most loss of life. So far all of the Slum TV members are ok. I pray that it stays that way. I spoke [by phone from Malindi] to one of the participants earlier who said, ‘Sam, I can really say that the situation is terrible. I am at home with some friends but I am scared. In my left hand I am holding a panga (machete).'" You can read the slum-TV blog online. [LINK]

The Arts Action Fund of Americans for the Arts has been at work in New Hampshire training arts voters to help influence candidates to take strong positions for the arts. Working with New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts, they've been identifying, educating, training and mobilizing likely arts voters in advance ot tomorrow's New Hampshire presidential primaries. In November, they hosted a statewide Arts Policy Forum at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord to learn about how the candidates support the arts, and hear from and ask questions of campaign representatives. The Action Fund's Web site for the national ArtsVote2008 initiative has access to candidates' positions; campaign news; national, regional and local research information; and facts and figures about the arts. It's updated regularly with timely information on arts-related proposals, economic data and ArtsVote events and activities. [LINK]

"Cherry Blossoms" is a riveting recent public performance work by artist Alyssa Wright pointing to Americans' underestimation of the number of Iraqi civilians killed in the current war. The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a microcontroller and GPS unit. News of recent bombings in Iraq is downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative locations are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates and releases a compressed-air cloud of confetti, each piece inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war and his/her death circumstances. Wright is a master's student in the MIT Media Lab. Maps, a gallery, methodology and data sources are on the Web. [LINK]

Georgia musician Elise Witt is conducting a January residency at the International Community School in Decatur Ga., thanks to the Community/Artist Partnership Program of Alternate ROOTS. In her fourth year at ICS, Witt says: "More than half the 380 students at this unusual school outside Atlanta are refugees from some 40 countries, many torn by war. The other students come from low-income families in the community, and from middle- and upper-middle-class families in the surrounding area who want to expose their children to other cultures. Together they form an eclectic community of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Muslims, well-off and poor, of established local families and new arrivals who collectively speak about 50 languages." Read a remarkable front-page N.Y. Times article about ICS by Warren St. John (12/27/07), with a great slide show and touching video. [LINK]

High-school students in San Jose, Calif., will be talking in English and Spanish with the cast of a play about the last days of Che Guevara at Teatro Visión, February 1, 2008. "School of the Americas" by José Rivera, author of "The Motorcycle Diaries," has its West Coast premiere at Teatro Visión's Mexican Heritage Plaza Theatre January 24-Feb. 10, directed by Wilma Bonet. Based on actual events, sees Che held captive in a small Bolivian schoolhouse, befriended by a teacher "in search of her own revolution." There's also a free performance of the play on January 27 for “Domingo de Teatro”, part of the Teatro's commitment as a Chicano Theater company to assure community access to all their plays. They'll host an “Instituto de Teatro” in February, a three-day training on the use of participatory theater for social workers dealing with families and youth. [LINK]

On 12/26/07, President Bush signed an omnibus appropriations bill for FY 2008 that includes $144.7 million for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). This represents an increase of $20.1 million over the 2007 funding level of $124.562 million, says the NEA. It is the largest dollar increase in the NEA appropriation since 1979, but doesn't meet the budget high of $175.9 million in FY 1992. The new appropriation raises the NEA to its highest level in 13 years. The bill also includes changes in the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program administered by the NEA, making it more affordabel for U.S. museums to exchange exhibitions with each other and other countries. It also establishes an honorific awards category for opera artists that is similar to the NEA's Jazz Master Awards and National Heritage Fellowships. [LINK]

Anybody interested in after-school programs will love the Web site of the Robert Bowne Foundation. The New York organization supports the development of quality out-of-school-hours literacy-education programs for children and youth in the city, especially in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The site is a window into the after-school world, providing wonderful resources: a book, a bibliography, an e-newslette, links and great downloadable writings on after-school subjects -- often including the arts. They also offer program and grants, technical assistance and fellowships. Great principles too: Literacy happens in community, it develops through active engagement, is a means to self-determination and can be integrated with a wide variety of activities. It started in 1968, named for Robert Bowne, founder of the Manumission Society and the Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York. [LINK]

Teachers are finding it easier to teach writing, grammar and punctuation by using The Comic Book Project in their classrooms, says a N.Y. Times editorial (1/3/08). The Comic Book Project, run out of Teachers College at New York's Columbia University by its founder Michael Bitz, encourages struggling young readers to plot, write and draw comic books, in many cases using themes from their own lives. Since its creation, the program, which is mainly conducted after school, has spread to more than 850 urban and rural schools across the country. It has gotten a big push from the current craze among adolescents for comic-book clubs and for manga, a wildly popular variety of comic originating in Japan. The pairing of visual and written plotlines that they rely on appear to be especially helpful to struggling readers. [LINK]

Kairos Dance Theatre’s The Dancing Heart: Vital Elders Moving in Community Memory Loss Program was recently recognized by two national organizations. In Washington, D.C. on November 5, 2007, the Minneapolis intergenerational dance company's program for elders won the 2007 Award for Excellence in Program Innovation , from The Archstone Foundation and the Gerontological Health Section of the American Public Health Association. And MetLife Foundation and the American Society on Aging will award a 2008 MindAlert Award to The Dancing Heart at their joint conference with the National Council on Aging, “Aging in America,” in D.C. in March 2008. The Dancing Heart is a 90-minute chair-based program that offers structured dance and storytelling experiences. Its purpose is to delay the progression of dementia and improve participant’s physical, emotional and social health. Kairos has also developed a training curriculum for the program. [LINK]