"The Curriculum Project Report: Culture and Community Development in Higher Education" from Imagining America is available online. The report is intended to "take stock of how we educate community arts practitioners," inspired by "the field’s rapid growth in writing and documentation, educational programs and work bridging culture, community development and social change." It includes a description of the field and remarks on CCD education, current perceptions of the field and ideas of what is needed now. The report also contains a glossary of key terms and an extensive sampling of current courses and programs at higher-educational institutions. Hundreds of community artists, educators and friends of the field took part in the interviews and surveys on which the report is based. The project was initiated by Jan Cohen-Cruz, Dudley Cocke and Arlene Goldbard. [LINK]

New York's Creative Time is winding up the largest public art initiative in its 34-year history, "Democracy in America: The National Campaign." Celebrating the end of the year-long, cross-country project, "Democracy in America" culminates in an exhibition, participatory project space and meeting hall, through September 27, 2008, at the historic landmark Park Avenue Armory, showing work by 40 artists and punctuated by speeches from leading political thinkers, community leaders and activists. The exhibition includes an installation by Critical Art Ensemble, showing the physical artifacts of the 2004 FBI investigation of Steve Kurtz. "Democracy in America" has featured performative artist commissions from coast to coast and at the RNC and DNC, and mobile projects visiting communities in Queens and Brooklyn; upcoming: a publication containing artists’ projects and written contributions that address the political art and activism of the past eight years. [LINK]

The Los Angeles County Arts Commission has awarded five pilot grants of $18,000 each to arts programs designed for and serving the homeless community. The goal of the new program, Artful Solutions: Pathways from Homelessness, is "to stabilize the lives of participants and improve their access to permanent housing." Each grantee is partnering with a housing, shelter or social-service agency: Armory Center for the Arts partnering with Union Station; California Institute of the Arts with My Friend's Place; Imagination Workshop with New Directions; Los Angeles Poverty Department with Lamp Community; and Venice Arts: In Neighborhoods with Ocean Park Community Center. "The concrete effect that the arts have on homelessness has never been formally documented," says the Commission. Data gathered from the projects will result in a national study, fall 2009, informing future strategies for resolving homelessness. Details are downloadable. [LINK]

A symposium, screenings and discussions will accompany "Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now," an upcoming exhibition at Exit Art in New York City. The show includes hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips and ephemera from 40 years of activism, political protest and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee as part of Exit Art's Curatorial Incubator, the exhibition runs September 20-November 22, 2008, and goes to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, January 23-March 8, 2009. Exit Art events include a September 25 symposium featuring international artists, activists historians and critics on two panels: "Producing and Distributing Social Movement Culture" and "Assessing the History and Future of Social Movement Culture: A Critical Analysis." Events also include a film premiere, a book release, screen-printing workshops and "Election Night at Exit Art." [LINK]

The San Francisco artspace CounterPulse continues this fall with "Shaping San Francisco," its series of community discussions about local "politics, history, ecology and..." September 17, 2008, is the 40th anniversary of the student/faculty strike at S.F. State College, and original participants will talk about that movement. October 8, the S.F. Print Collective will talk about their years of postering the city with silk-screened images on politics, police, immigration. October 22, members of Bay Area collectives Rainbow, Inkworks, Box Dog Bikes, Design Action and NoBAWC will discuss democratic organization and its effects on the local economy. November 12, Grey Brechlin of California's LIving New Deal Project will talk about S.F's "Invisible Public Legacy of the Great Depression." And November 19, green designers will discuss "Green Streets -- Redesigning San Francisco One Street at a Time." Nice model. [LINK]

The Thousand Kites Team will be in Oakland, Calif., to attend Critical Resistance 10, a national gathering of people working for social justice in the U.S. prison system. Critical Resistance seeks to "build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe." At CR10, September 26-28, 2008, Kites will gather interviews with participants about their experiences with the criminal-justice system and hold a workshop of the Thousand Kites Play. Also, Kites is gearing up, in partnership with grassroots groups across the country, for the ninth annual "Calls from Home," a special holiday broadcast for prisoners and their families, broadcast on over 200 radio stations December 9. Thousand Kites is a national dialogue project using video, theater, radio and the Web to address the criminal-justice system. [LINK]

Eight mid-career arts journalists have been selected as Fellows for the 2008 USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program. The principal topics of this year’s Fellowship will be the current state of national and international journalism, the opportunities and ethical challenges presented by the digital-media era, and the specialized arts-and-culture journalist’s role within these contexts. Fellows include David Brinn, The Jerusalem Post; Laura Emerick, Chicago Sun-Times; Nate Chinen, The New York Times; Carolina Miranda, C-monster.net; Erik Piepenburg, Nytimes.com; Michele Siegel, Public Radio International And WNYC Radio’s “Studio 360'; David Sillito, British Broadcasting Corporation News; and Adeline Sire, Boston radio's “The World.” The three-week program begins November 1. They will converse with artists Peter Sellars and Ry Cooder, as well as architects, museum directors, journalists and critics, and see performances. [LINK]

Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is calling for papers for the second annual national Community Arts Convening and Research Project. The convening, to held at California State University Monterey Bay in the spring 2009 (exact date TBA), will provide a platform for college and university faculty and students, community-based practitioners and community leaders and members to meet and generate new ideas, to share resources and models for best practices in the field, to reflect new curricula and pedagogy, to define and solve problems, to identify and conduct new research, to develop leadership in the field, and to cultivate new partnerships. Deadline for 100-word abstracts is November 15, 2008; abstracts must be followed by a preliminary text of no more than 1250 words, due by December 1. Those texts accepted by the Project's editorial committee will be notified by January 9, 2009, for further development. Revised, full-length drafts of selected texts will posted for online review by March 12, 2009, in advance of the second annual convening. After the convening, the finished texts will be published on CAN in the second volume of Community Arts Perspectives, summer and fall 2009. For full details, see the MICA site. [LINK]

Durham, N.C. is awash in murals at the conclusion of "Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life," artist Brett Cook's collaboration with the city's residents. On Saturday, September 13, 2008, Cook will take visitors on a "bus or bike" tour of the 13 new murals now installed on the exterior walls of businesses, schools and other public places in Durham. Connecting university faculty, students, staff and Southwest Central Durham residents through an artistic endeavor, the project was co-sponsored with the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University and the Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project, which works to unify a sector of the city historically segregated. The residents and organizations that make up the Quality of Life Project are working to bring down economic, social and cultural barriers by building "intentional bridges of common experience and shared concern." The mural tour begins at CDS at 2 p.m. [LINK]

Issue Four of Community Arts Perspectives: A Publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project is now available on CAN. The issue includes essays by Ron Bechet and Amy Koritz on the ins and outs of "HOME, New Orleans"; Luisa Bieri de Rios on whether we can really choose a community; Whitney Frazier on colaborations around youth gang violence in Baltimore; Gwylene Gallimard and Hope Clark on the working principles of Alternate ROOTS' Resources for Social Change; Cinder Hypki on egalitarian relationships in community arts mentoring; Jordan Simmons on the Comparative Arts training program at East Bay Center for Performing Arts; David Sloan on planning and evaluation as measurement of excellence in art for social change; and Stephani Etheridge Woodson, comparing the educative and youth-development models for working with young people. Perspectives is co-published with Maryland Institute College of Art. [LINK]

Media arts organizations working to increase technology access and education to underserved communities may be interested in CTCnet's November conference. The Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) is a national membership network of community technology centers (CTCs) and other nonprofits united in their commitment to making digital tools and skills more accessible to underserved populations and to providing resources and advocacy to improve the quality and sustainability of CTCs. The 2008 Technology Conference, "Toward A Connected Future," November 12-14, in Los Angeles, has topics on workforce development, social media and panel discussions will address the leading digital inclusion issues, resource-sharing venues to expand your organization's capabilities and more. (Thanks, NAMAC.) [LINK]

The deadline is fast approaching for applications to the National Alliance for Media Art + Culture's Capacity Building Support grant program. NAMAC annually provides one of the very few operational grants available in the field. Offered on an annual basis, these grants have been used by media-arts organizations for projects that strengthen internal operations and systems; support internal governance and leadership development; develop strategic fiscal and human resources; and create innovative strategies for community engagement and support. The award is $3,000 and no matching funds are required. Deadline is September 26, 2008. [LINK]

Teachers looking for materials to enhance units on the crisis in Darfur should visit the Web site of Facing History and Ourselves. Facing History and ENOUGH have partnered to create and distribute classroom materials to accompany the movie "Darfur Now" and the book "Not On Our Watch." The teaching unit includes four lessons that provide an introduction to the genocide in Darfur; help students identify how activists have responded to violence in the region; encourage students to think about the complexity of activism; and ask students to connect this material to their own experiences and ideas about activism, genocide and conflict resolution. There's also information on establishing sister-school relationships with schools in the Darfurian refugee camps. And Facing History offers copies of the Darfur unit DVD and the book. [LINK]

The Beehive Collective is preparing a graphics campaign to increase public outrage against the coal industry's latest method of coal extraction, "mountaintop removal." The Hive is a volunteer-driven nonprofit political organization based in Machias, Maine, that uses graphical media as educational tools to communicate "stories of resistance to corporate globalization." Of the Coal Campiagn, the Hive says, "Understanding the devastation of Mountaintop Removal is perhaps primarily a visual undertaking - the vastness of the altered landscape cannot be conveyed with words alone." The Web site shows samples from their work on a storyboard learning tool capturing "the human and ecological scale of totalitarian resource extraction while reinforcing and participating in the rich storytelling tradition of Appalachia." The Bees have been working with communities in Appalachia, trading ideas and getting feedback. (Thanks, BrushFire.) [LINK]

The MetLife Foundation has launched the Museum and Community Connections program, which expects to award grants totaling $1 million to U.S. art museums. The purpose of the program is to encourage art museums to reach out to large numbers of people of all ages and backgrounds through imaginative programs and/or exhibits that "help us understand and appreciate each other and our world." Grants of $100,000 will go to museums in select states for artist residencies, exhibitions, offsite programming and more. The guidelines and definitions of funding categories are intentionally broad to encourage innovation. Details are on the MetLife site. Application deadline is October 17, 2008. [LINK]

Traditional performing arts presenters may soon have a national network if participants in this month's "Water the Roots" gathering succeed. Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music, in partnership with the Fund for Folk Culture, will host the small, invitational national convening, September 25-28, 2008, with the intention of creating such a network. Invited are representatives of some 20 organizations that support traditional, grassroots, community-based arts. They will discuss the structure of existing models, like the National Performance Network, and the services a new network might provide: membership benefits, communications, funding, advocacy, touring support and, "a paradigm for contending with the issues of racial and cultural diversity that plague most presenters." CAN's Linda Frye Burnham will attend; writer Arlene Goldbard will facilitate. (No info on the Web at this writing.) [LINK]

New Orleans artist John O'Neal has established a formal training program and cultural laboratory, the Free Southern Theater Institute. O'Neal's Junebug Productions (JPI) "rose out of the ashes of The Free Southern Theater (FST) and now JPI envisions a new Phoenix rising," says Junebug Managing Director Theresa Holden. The Institute is both university-affiliated and community-based; partners include Tulane, Xavier and Dillard Universities and Ashe Cultural Center. FSTI's mission is "to develop and support artists, organizers, educators and managers who wish to create theater that serves the needs and interests of African Americans in the Black Belt South and others similarly oppressed and exploited the world over who are working to improve the quality of life for themselves and others." FSTI is seeking an Endowment Campaign Consultant; proposals are due October 7. To receive the RFP, email Theresa Holden: th@holdenarts.org. [LINK]

More than 300 artists, activists and educators from all over the world will gather in New York City, October 2-5, for Performing the World '08. Focused on "the emergence of performance as a new way of relating to, understanding and changing the world," the conference will present dozens of performances, workshops, panel discussions and lectures, by practitioners involved in performance work related to cultural, economic or psychological development, community-building, social justice, individual and social transformation and social entrepreneurship. Conference tracks include Youth Development; War and Peace/Ethnic and Nation State Identity and Conflict/Global Issues; Therapeutics/Counseling/Healing/Health/Wellness/Medicine; Students, Schools and Teachers; Organizations and the Workplace; Inquiring of and in Performance; Philanthropy and Fundraising; and AIDS Education. It's sponsored by the All Stars Project and the East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy. [LINK]

VibranC, a public art project by IN:SITE, continues in Milwaukee's Sherman Park neighborhood this fall with new temporary artworks and community-involvement pieces. Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis will install "Public Heat," made from altered "powerblankets" primarily used at construction sites to help cure concrete. They will be mounted outside Sherman Park Community Association "to keep people warm in winter." At Sherman Perk Coffee Shop, Bridget Frances Quinn will mount "I've Just Seen a Face," creating brief glimpses of neighborhood people. Kamryn K. Boelk and teens from Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club will wrap recycled plastic bags into 200 feet of park chain-link fence to depict a panoramic horizon line dotted with natural symbols. Artists will discuss their work at the Community Association on September 27, and follow up by answering questions at their installations [LINK]

"My Vote Performs" is a unique project that will produce performance art at 12 different polling places in Milwaukee, Wisc., on November 4, 2008. Nonpartisan and approved by the State Elections Division and the Milwaukee Election Commission, "My Vote Performs" will occur at a widely diverse selection of polling places, including Charles Allis Art Museum, Pulaski Indoor Swimming Pool, Wisconsin Humane Society, United Community Center and Albright United Methodist Church. Artists will present five-to-ten-minute pieces, showing every 20-30 minutes between the highest-volume polling hours of four to eight. "The projects will not interfere with people voting and will celebrate and encourage discussion about citizenship," say co-producers John Loscuito and Pegi Taylor. A free forum at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, November 25, will present documentation of the projects, and some live performances. [LINK]

The UnConvention is a series of nonpartisan programs in art, education and journalism about participatory democracy during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul Currently underway through September 4, 2008, the UnConvention was initiated by Northern Lights and is co-sponsored by Intermedia Arts and the Walker Art Museum, along with dozens of other arts and education organizations. Events and exhibitions include a video installation made from a former police car and transformed into an electrically powered vehicle; media artists strapped with laptops around their shoulders creating the One on One Film Festival; a Video Booth On (bicycle) Wheels; a New Stations installation that puts you on-air; Political Science 101, A Crash Course in Civil Discourse on Political Blogs; giant peace puppets, YouTube projections, the Great Hymn of Thanksgiving and POLITAOKE, a participatory political karaoke bar. [LINK]