"Entering Cultural Communities: Diversity and Change in the Nonprofit Arts" is a new book on the trend in audience expansion among arts nonprofits. Diane Grams and Betty Farrell conducted a study through the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago, drawing on interviews with leaders, staff, volunteers and audience members from 85 nonprofit cultural organizations to explore how they have revised their goals as they seek to broaden their audiences to involve a more racially and ethnically diverse group of people, those from a broader range of economic backgrounds, new immigrants, families and youth. The authors differentiate between "relational" and "transactional" practices, the former term describing efforts to build connections with local communities and the latter describing efforts to create new consumer markets for cultural products. Interviewees range from San Francisco Symphony to Appalshop. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The final report, "Scholarship in Public: Knowledge Creation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University," has been released by Imagining America. "Publicly engaged academic work is taking hold in American colleges and universities," say authors Julie Ellison and Timothy K. Eatman, "but tenure and promotion policies lag behind public scholarly and creative work and discourage faculty from doing it." The report proposes giving such work full standing as scholarship, research or artistic creation, as well as "enlarging the conception of who counts as 'peer' and what counts as 'publication.'” These changes are "part of something bigger: the democratization of knowledge on and off campus." IA says the report is a toolkit for faculty, staff and students to "create enabling settings for doing and reviewing intellectually rigorous public work." Download it from the IA Web site. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Liverpool is arts-crazy this summer, celebrating its designation as the European Capital of Culture 2008. The Liverpool Culture Company says it is "overseeing the largest public and community arts scheme in Europe -- Creative Communities. ... At the core of Creative Communities is a simple aim - to harness the creativity of Liverpool's people by making creativity an integral component of everyday life." There are dozens of diverse celebrations, including a Free Thinking Festival and Around the City in 80 Pubs, plus Community Shakespeare; arts-education showcases in every school; a whole-city exhibition of "A City in Progress"; a European Youth Parliament; "Alice in Wonderland" in parks all over Merseyside; arts & health events; neighborhood-based arts projects; an Internet gathering place and clearinghouse, "Open Culture"; and hundreds of performances and participatory opportunities in every creative direction (in Europe that includes Sport). [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Los Angeles Poverty Department will present the Skid Row History Museum, June 28-August 2, 2008, with an exhibition, workshops, performances and public conversations. At The Box Gallery in L.A.'s Chinatown, a map of Skid Row will be on the floor, marking significant sites where Skid Row's stories have unfolded. Also included will be images and videos "highlighting the community’s efforts and strides," say the organizers. Videos feature speakers at public meetings and performances by LAPD. Visitors will be invited to contribute ideas for Skid Row’s own “Walk of Fame,” honoring people and organizations that have bettered the community. The ultimate vision behind the Skid Row History Museum is to create permanent public artworks (plaques, signs, etc.) actually installed in downtown's streets in a “museum without walls.” Funding came from the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

California College of the Arts' Center for Art and Public Life has new co-directors, replacing Sonia BasSheva Mañjon. Sanjit Sethi, chair of CCA's Community Arts Program, and Ann Wettrich, the Center's associate director of arts education, are the new co-directors. Sethi, a visual artist, was recently director of the MFA program at the Memphis College of Art, focusing on interdisciplinary collaboration. Wettrich, with the Center since 2001, developed its SMART (Subject Matter Art) teaching concentration program and has been a leader in the innovative Bay Area art education community for 30 years. The Center for Art and Public Life, through service-learning programs and community-building art projects, plays a key role in connecting the college to the diverse communities surrounding it. Mañjon, Center director 2000-2008, is now vice president of diversity and strategic partnerships at Wesleyan University. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

California artist Kent Twitchell has won what is believed to be the largest payout ever under the Federal Visual Rights Act and the California Art Preservation Act. Two years ago, Twitchell's massive Downtown L.A. mural of pop artist Ed Ruscha was "rudely painted over by work crews," said Richard Guzman in the Downtown News (5/2/08). "Now, following last week’s $1.1 million settlement between the artist, the federal government and 12 other defendants - including the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles, which was readying the building at 1031 S. Hill St. for a new YWCA Job Corps Center when the mural was painted over - the 70-foot-tall 'Ed Ruscha Monument' could find a new home in Downtown." Twitchell spent nine years working on the mural, starting in 1978. A work crew erased it in a matter of hours. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

July 21, 2008, is the deadline for nominations for The Collaboration Prize -- $250,000 for nonprofits that have chosen collaboration over competition. The Collaboration Prize was created and is funded by The Lodestar Foundation in collaboration with members of the Arizona-Indiana-Michigan (AIM) Alliance. To be eligible, a collaboration must involve two or more nonprofit organizations that each would otherwise provide the same or similar programs or services and compete for clients, financial resources and staff; have a structure that is evidenced by a formal agreement that uses the resources of each party in a more effective way; and have begun 18 months to eight years prior to nomination. The winner will be a collaboration that demonstrates significant impact, represents an innovative response to a specific challenge or opportunity, better positions the collaboration as a field/sector leader, or more effectively uses human and financial resources. (Thanks, Lynne Elizabeth.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Go to the Legion Arts Web site for news about the condition of arts organizations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the wake of the recent flood. While their own offices, on the upper floors of the CSPS building, remain undamaged, they say "the ground-floor businesses of CSPS, all of the New Bohemia district, and block after block in every direction, are an utter and heartbreaking disaster." Photos on the site show streets under water, huge piles of debris, furniture in the trees and masked volunteers working hard to clean things up. The site has an e-mail address where Iowa artists can report their conditions, and a button for donations to the Iowa Artist Relief Fund. We at CAN send out our best wishes to John Herbert and the Legion crew. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Open Society Institute has announced new initiatives to advance democracy and progressive reform in the United States. The Institute's U.S. Programs, says OSI's Web site, aim to "address the core threats to open society in America today," including "increasingly punitive national security, criminal justice and immigration policies; decreasing transparency and accountability in government; entrenched structural racism; enduring inequality; massive and growing rates of incarceration; and the eroding image of the United States in the world." Watch the OSI Web site for details and guidelines on specific new campaigns focusing on national security and human rights, torture, illegal rendition, free speech and racial profiling; black male achievement and the reversal of stigmatization, criminalization and exclusion; climate change; drug and alcohol addiction; and the subprime mortgage crisis. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The UNESCO Creative Cities Network will present The Santa Fe International Conference on Creative Tourism in New Mexico, September 28-October 2, 2008. The Network was launched in October 2004 to promote the social, economic and cultural development of cities in both the developed and the developing world. "The cities that apply to the network seek to promote their local creative industries," says UNESCO. "They share interest in UNESCO’s mission towards cultural diversity. Once a city is appointed to the network, it can share experiences and create new opportunities for itself and others on a global platform. One such activity is based on the notion of creative tourism." Conference speakers include creative-tourism experts and pioneers like Rebecca Anderson of HandMade in America, Robert McNulty of Livable Communities, L. Kelley Lindquist of Artspace Projects, writer Jay Walljasper and more. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Our series "Bridge Conversations: People Who Live and Work in Multiple Worlds" closes this week with three new discussions on art, organizing and generational transition. Molly Sturges and Valerie Martinez of the New Mexico artist-run nonprofit Littleglobe talk with Rosina Roibal and Robby Rodriguez of the South West Organizing Project, with whom they are collaborating on a large-scale, multi-year project based in Cuba, N.M., and the two nearby eastern agency Diné (Navajo) communities of Torreon and Ojo Encino. Esther Robinson of New York's ArtHome talks with Brad Lander of the Pratt Center for Community Development about "anthropological listening," and whether being holistic is important. And we listen in on an intergenerational discussion from the State of the Nation Arts & Performance Festival in Jackson, Miss., facilitated by the late artist-organizer Nayo Watkins, as the younger people challenge "the rigid nature of institutions as well as the overall 501(c)(3) model as a means to create real impact and social change." This set of three talks closes the series of Bridge Conversations commissioned by CAN and the Center for Civic Participation, but they have sparked some new stories to look for in the future. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Art & Social Change Funding Circle, a new initiative of the Zing and Threshhold Foundations, has included API/CAN in its first round of grants. In the Funding Circle's model, donors from different networks pool their money and make grants to projects using arts to address pressing world issues. The circle raised $136,389 during 2007-08 to be distributed among 14 grantees: All-Ages Movement Project (San Francisco); Co-Operative Image Group, The Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture, Young Chicago Authors and Chicago Freedom School (Chicago); Lava Studio and The League of Young Voters (Brooklyn); Ananya Dance Theatre, In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and the Iraqi/American Reconciliation Project (Minneapolis); Choral Earth (Charlottesville, Va.); ArtCorps, (Beverly, Mass.); Centre for Playback Theatre (New Paltz, N.Y.); and Toronto Playback Theatre (Ontario, Canada). [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

July 25, 2008, is the deadline for submissions to the first issue of "The Journal of Arts and Community," a new peer-reviewed journal from Intellect in Bristol, England. Available in 2009, in print (and, by subscription, online), the international journal will "provide a critical examination of the practices known as community or participatory arts, encompassing work which incorporates active creative collaboration between artists and people in a range of communities of place and interest. The Journal will take a cross-artform and interdisciplinary approach, seeking to include work originating in performance, visual arts and media, writing, multimedia and collaboration involving digital technology and associated forms. The journal seeks original researched articles, case studies, reports of projects in progress, particularly from practitioners and research students as well as, book reviews, conference reviews and reports." Principal Editor is Hamish Fyfe, University of Glamorgan. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Infringement Festival in Montreal is celebrating its fifth year of opposing the corporate takeover of culture, through June 29, 2008. In 2004, artists and activists in Montreal, fed up with art as a commodity and a culture for sale came together to form the first infringement festival, nonhierarchical and democratic. Since that time, the festival has spread to Regina, Ottawa and Toronto and around the world to Buffalo, New York City, Bordeaux and Barcelona, welcoming "critical artists" and "anyone who wants to artistically infringe on the monoculture." The Infringement Festival International Web site offers plenty of amazing pictures, videos, "alternative advertising" and links, as well as "Does Your Community Need an infringement Festival? A Guide To Creating Your Own." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

British artist Nick Crowe's public artwork in the Whitstable Biennale depicts "The Drowning of Tuvalu," modeling a group of South Pacific islands, the first landmass that is destined to be entirely lost to the sea. From June 21 to July 6, 2008, on "The Street," a long tidal spit at Tankerton Slopes in Whitstable, Kent, the tides will alternately reveal, then "drown" Crowe's large, shallow lime-concrete sculptures shaped like the nine islands of Tuvalu, population 10,000, a group of low-lying reef atolls and coral islands that are disappearing due to global warming and rising seas. Whitstable itself is a low-lying town with a history of flooding, and also likely to feel the effects of climate change. Other Biennale events include films imagined by audience members with a hypnotist and a symphony played by a fleet of ice-cream vans. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

L.A.'s Latino women tell their stories in “La Llorona, Weeping Women of Echo Park,” the latest community performance by Los Angeles Poverty Department. Based on the Mexican legend of la Llorona ("the weeping woman"), who wanders the earth in search of her lost/killed children, the bilingual play features local women from Mexico, El Salvador and Uruguay who, says Director Henriette Brouwers, "had to leave their children behind when they came to this country. Some became modern slaves and, like La Llorona, they wander the earth in search of their lost children. With the recent wave of immigration raids, families are again being broken up as parents are faced with the prospect of being deported and of having to leave their American-born children here." Echo Park is a suburb of downtown Los Angeles, Calif. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Black Docs film Series continues this month in Washington, D.C., with the theme "Through The Eyes of AfroMexico/American Indian Heritage and Free Slave Movements." Today, June 12, 2008, the series screens "De Florida a Coahuila" (From Florida to Coahuila, 2002) by Rafael Rebollar Corona, about a small population near Muzquiz, Coahuila, Mexico, called El Nacimiento de los Negros, descendants of the mascogos, or "black Seminoles." These were people of African origin who assimilated with indigenous groups in the Florida region, formed the Seminole confederation, sought asylum in Mexico in 1850 and were given lands and Mexican nationality. Also screening is another Rebollar Corona film, "La Raíz Olvidada" (The Forgotten Root, 2001), examining the harbors of Veracruz, Pánuco and Campeche, the main channels through which African slaves were introduced to Mexico. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Our series "Bridge Conversations: People Who Live and Work in Multiple Worlds" continues this week with dialogues on the arts and Southern organizing, media activism and community health. They include Tufara Waller Muhammad and Javiera Benavente on the long tradition of arts and culture in Southern organizing and the danger of putting the spotlight on individuals; Dee Davis and Michelle Miller on the aesthetics and mathematics of social change; and Paula Allen (Karuk/Yurok) and R. Lena Richardson on traditional arts and culture as resources for Native community health. The series was commissioned by CAN and the Arts & Democracy Project of the Center for Civic Participation. The project is directed by Caron Atlas and coordinated by R. Lena Richardson; they co-edited the interviews with help from Vanessa Whang and Linda Frye Burnham. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines" is a new book by CAN writer William Cleveland from New Village Press in Oakland, Calif. The volume comprises six stories of artists working to rebuild the social infrastructure in cities devastated by war, repression and dislocation -- in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, South Africa, the United States (Watts, Los Angeles), aboriginal Australia and Serbia. Cleveland tells tales of artists who "heal unspeakable trauma, give voice to the forgotten and disappeared, and re-stitch the cultural fabric of their communities." Cleveland, director of the Center for the Study of Art & Community, is author of "Art in Other Places: Artists at Work in America's Community and Social Institutions" and CAN's "Making Exact Change." Foreword is by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, psychoanalyst, post-trauma specialist and author of "Women Who Run with the Wolves." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

“Who can afford to have — or not have — children, and who can’t?” asks "Someday," a new community-based play in Cornerstone Theater's Justice Cycle. "Someday," written by Julie Marie Myatt and directed by Michael John Garces, "breaks the cycle of polarized abortion debates" and draws on testimonies from women with disabilities, surrogates, sperm and egg donors, IVF users, reproductive-rights advocates and nontraditional families. Performances, post-show talk-backs and community dialogues on such topics as "Disability and Reproduction" and "Single Mothers by Choice," run through June 22, 2008, at Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles. Community partners for the project include Feminist Majority Foundation, National Organization for Women (NOW) Hollywood Chapter, South Asian Network, Women Lawyers Association of L.A. and Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me?" asked artist Steven Kurtz, after being cleared of all charges against him. Kurtz, a SUNY Buffalo professor and co-founder of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), was charged with mail and wire fraud in 2004 in conjunction with his artwork. On April 21, 2008, Federal Judge Richard Arcara dismissed the government's entire indictment against Kurtz as "insufficient on its face," i.e., even if the actions alleged in the indictment were true, they would not constitute a crime, says a press release from CAE Defense Fund. The U.S. Department of Justice had 30 days to appeal and did not do so. Said Kurtz: "As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Water Ambassadors" from around the Great Lakes will bring water from their communities to add to the water celebration that ends Luminato, Toronto's annual festival. The festival finale, June 15, 2008, "Luminat'eau: Carnival H20," features the Ambassadors pouring their local waters through "Lake Spirit, lady of the Great Lakes," a sculpture standing silhouetted against Lake Ontario at Harbourfront Centre, holding a vessel from which water pours down her body, mimicking the Great Lakes Watershed. The event culminates with a procession and the launching of giant Taiwanese lanterns on which participants can write good wishes for the future. Luminat'eau Artistic Director Kristen Fahrig says, "It is hoped that ... our understanding of community will expand to include all who live in this Great Lakes ecosystem so we can move together to protect it." Luminato, June 6-15, features hundreds of arts events involving a million participants from Toronto's vastly diverse community. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Emotional fallout happens with the best of plans," says consultant Lisa Mount in an article about leadership change at Cornerstone and Dance Exchange. Mount was the facilitator for three historic conversations in 2006 and 2007 when key individuals from two influential community arts companies, Cornerstone Theater and Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, shared what they were going through as their founders moved on: Bill Rauch resigned and Liz Lerman took on a new role. "Rather than draft another treatise on the process of searching for a new artistic director or transitioning a founder into an advisory role," says Mount, "the group chose to use questions and stories — two key creative elements for both companies — to illuminate [their] discoveries." Her story is posted in the Reading Room of Animating Democracy, which partially funded the conversations. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Artists from Resources for Social Change (RSC), a training program of Alternate ROOTS, will lead learning exchanges, "At the Crossroads of Art & Activism," this summer. Through June and July, gatherings will occur in Charleston, S.C.; Atlanta, Ga.; Lexington, Ky.; New Orleans, La.; and a site TBA in Maryland. Some questions to be addressed: How do we effect transformation through community artmaking? What is the change we want to make? How do we become aware of the power relationships when we work with/in a community? How do we build trust and forge equitable partnerships with our community colleagues? How do we structure programs and organizations so that power in the relationships between artists and community and organizers is inherently shared? Can we imagine an aesthetic that values beauty and justice equally? [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

CAN is very proud to bring you the first issue of Community Arts Perspectives, a peer-reviewed, periodic, online publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project.

Community Arts Perspectives is the realization of a dream talked about for years among the scholars who have shaped the growing number of university courses in community-based arts across the U.S. In order for the field to advance, they felt an urgent need for a publication meeting academic standards, reviewed by peers and shared with colleagues working in communities.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) provided funding to support the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, making possible a national convening, research, and publication of research and new writing.

This first volume of Community Arts Perspectives, published by CAN and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), contains writing generated through that initial convening, sponsored and hosted by MICA, March 16-18, 2008. Issues of Community Arts Perspectives will appear monthly throughout summer and fall of 2008, after which a new cycle of the Project will begin.

The essays in Volume 1, Number 1 bridge many boundaries – from the documentation of a challenging community-based university course to a national survey about the place of the arts in a time of shifting worldview. The issue contains an introduction by Editor Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and essays by Laura Agnich, Kimberly Baker, Megan Carney and Shannon Turner, recently graduated from Virginia Tech; William Cleveland, Center for the Study of Art and Community, and independent consultant Patricia Shifferd; E. Blaise DePaolo, Morgan State University; Jane Hirshberg, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; Karma Mayet Johnson and a team from Cooper Union's Saturday School; Ken Krachek, MICA; Meade Palidofsky, Music Theatre Workshop; Johanna Poethig, CSUMB; and Rachel Marie-Crane Williams, University of Ohio.

The Editorial Team for the first volume of Community Arts Perspectives includes Editor-in-Chief Amalia Mesa-Bains and Managing Editor Ken Krafchek, plus the Editorial Review Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Sonia Mañjon,, California College of the Arts; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University; and Ken Krafchek and Amalia Mesa-Bains.

The full Advisory Committee of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project includes the Editorial Board members, above, and Jan Cohen-Cruz, Imagining America/Syracuse University; John Giordano, Massachusetts College of Art; Robert Leonard, Virginia Tech; Ian Watson, Rutgers University; Marianne Petit, New York University. Project director was Ken Krafchek and Paula Phillips (MICA) was project coordinator.

For more than five years, NCF’s Art and Culture Program has supported universities that are teaching their students how to use art as a tool for community organizing. Each year, the number of universities creating these programs has grown, and in the spirit of community-based work, these universities have shared curriculum, they have partnered on grants, and five of them published a casebook. In 2006, NCF grantees convened in New Orleans and developed a strategy for strengthening the community arts program at Xavier University in New Orleans—recommendations that are being implemented this year. Additionally, universities from across the county convened at California College of the Arts in November of 2006. The 2008 meeting at MICA enabled faculty, students and community members to generate new ideas, solve problems, share practices and identify new research questions.

We at CAN and Art in the Public Interest are extremely glad to be a publishing partner in this project. We have been watching the field grow for several decades and we believe the Community Arts Convening and Research Project and its publication provide a significant new plateau for community-based arts. Congratulations to everyone involved with this issue and to all the writers in issues to come.

[LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

South Asian theater artists will meet in Minneapolis at Pangea World Theater June 4-5, 2008, for DESI DRAMA: ACT 2, the second meeting of the South Asian Theater Arts Movement. The meeting is being held in conjunction with the 2nd Annual National Asian American Theater Conference at the Guthrie Theatre, June 5-7. In summer 2006, 60 theater companies and individual artists attended the first National Asian American theater conference, "The Next Big Bang," held in Los Angeles, Calif. Surprised by their numbers at the conference, the South Asian artists held an impromptu meeting where they decided to join as a community and create a national presence for South Asian Theater Arts, using the larger Asian American theater movement as a model. SATAM is developing a network, archives, an online community, an artistic development initiative and a festival. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Labor organizers, activists and artists converge on the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., June 22-24, 2008, for the 30th Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative Organizing. The Conference on Creative Organizing trains union staff, organizers and activists to use songs, chants, skits, game shows, costumes, theater and other creative strategies. Participants exchange experiences, brainstorm about specific union campaigns, share resources and return home with new ideas and tools to make their campaigns more compelling. The Great Labor Arts Exchange, on the other hand, is a gathering of union members, union staff, union officials, artists, labor educators and youth who already use the arts to celebrate the culture of working people and strengthen the union movement. Both events are sponsored by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the National Labor College. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Project Girl, a summer "Multimedia Exhibition & Guide to Un-Mediafying Your Life," gets underway at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Minn., June 6, 2008. In partnership with the National Conference for Media Reform, the nationally touring visual-arts exhibition and series of hands-on events and workshops is designed to equip girls 10-18 with the tools to become more critical and informed consumers of media. Project Girl starts at Intermedia June 6 with arts-based media-literacy workshops for over 100 Minneapolis-St .Paul middle- and high-school girls; the exhibition opens with a reception that night. A Media Literacy Curriculum Training takes places June 24 for educators, parents, artists, activists, policy makers, youth leaders and individuals concerned about "the significant challenges resulting from the transformation of children into America’s number one marketing demographic," and a Summer Camp for girls, featuring the curriculum, happens July 14-17. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

AXIS Dance Company will host its third Physically Integrated Dance Summer Intensive, August 3-10, 2008, at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland, Calif. AXIS and Eric Kupers of the California State University East Bay Dance Department will teach physically integrated contact improvisation, technique, choreography and performance, as well as site-specific dance. The intensive will culminate with an informal performance by workshop attendees and faculty. People ages 18 and up, of all dance levels and experience, with and without physical disabilities are invited to attend. Application deadline is June 15. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham