Today CAN brings you a collection of videos from Canada, “Documenting Engagement: A Community Arts Media Institute.” Documenting Engagement (a project of the Pacific Cinémathèque and Roundhouse Community Centre Association with support from two(2)catsworking inc. and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation) brought together nine mid-career artists from across Canada to examine the practice of community-based arts and the potential of digital video as a means of documenting the aesthetics of engagement inherent in their work. During the three-week residency, the community-based artists worked with senior artists and producers to assemble their own footage into summary shorts. Seven of the videos are embedded in the CAN article, along with lessons gleaned from them. The collection is available on DVD from Pacific Cinémathèque. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Tipping Point," in New Orleans, La., March 18-23, 2009, is the fifth annual State of the Nation multidisciplinary arts festival, addressing social, political, and economic issues facing the Gulf South. A partnership between Alternate ROOTS, ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro, M.U.G.A.B.E.E., Junebug Productions, New Noise, 7th Ward Community Center and the NOLA Human Rights Film Festival, this year’s festival will explore "the intersection of art and activism." Performance, music, film, workshops, visual art installations and site-specific events are scheduled for the 7th Ward Community Center, The Studio at Colton and various site-specific locations throughout New Orleans. See Bruce France's video promo for the festival on the Mondo Bizarro Web site. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Raleigh News and Observer columnist J. Peder Zane wants N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue to tear down the state capitol's signature symbol, a 75-foot-tall monument to the Confederacy. In two columns (2/8 & 2/22/90), Zane says the statue of a Confederate soldier is not simply a memorial to the fallen and it cannot be separated from history. He calls it "a bald statement of white supremacy," put in a place of honor in 1895 when the Democratic party was organizing a campaign that would usher in Jim Crow, and dedicated in an hour-long address by Alfred Moore Waddell, who led the 1898 Wilmington massacre. Removal of public artworks that may no longer reflect the public's values is an interesting question, but more fascinating are 100+ readers' comments revealing that faith in white supremacy are alive and well in N.C. Zane's response is public art criticism at work. Hear Zane interviewed on WUNC Radio: http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot0224ab09.mp3/view. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"GENERATE . ACTIVATE . MAINTAIN," the ninth annual Structures for Inclusion conference, will bring designers together to explore the process of community-based practice. The conference was established to "showcase design efforts that reach out to and serve a diverse clientele, and 2) to provide information on alternative career paths available to students and young designers" and, explore "how you insert yourself into the cycle of thought and action." SFI9 includes panel and small-scale discussions and hands-on workshops organized around participant-submitted projects. Sponsored by Design Corps, the buildingcommunity WORKSHOP and Texas Schools of Architecture, the group convenes in Montgomery Arts Theatre at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Tex., March 20-22, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Several projects familiar to CAN readers are part of "Into the Open: Positioning Practice," the official U.S. representation at the Venice Architecture Biennale in New York. Project Row Houses, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, Estudio Teddy Cruz and Alice Waters' Edible Schoolyard are among the 16 participants, described as "architectural groups who actively engage communities, responding to social and environmental issues including shifting demographics, changing geo-political boundaries, uneven economic development and the explosion of urban migration." For the unusual installation, each exhibiting practice has a seat at a continuous elliptical conference table, starting outdoors in the garden and running through the galleries. A continuous storyboard above the table displays "how to" implement techniques for the community transformations exhibited. The 11th International Architecture Exhibition is at Parsons, March 5-May 3, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Arts programs for people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia will be the topic of "Creativity Matters: Health, Wellness & the Arts," a March symposium in Washington, D.C. The National Center for Creative Aging and The MetLife Foundation will present the symposium March 30-April 1, 2009. Specialists in the field will discuss dementia in the older population, the cultural ramifications of dementia, creativity theory and practice, understanding and practice of oral history interviewing and life review interviewing techniques, and best practices in arts programming for people with dementia. Presenters will provide tips for the creation of arts programming for older adults with dementia, including a focus on museum program and aging services activity program development, implementation, and evaluation. Events include professional-development and training sessions. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

iLand, artist Jennifer Monson's cross-sectoral arts organization, will present its first symposium on "Connecting to the Urban Environment" at The New School, March 28, 2009. Subtitled "Creating embodied and relational approaches to environmental awareness," the symposium will address issues emanating from creative collaborations of iLAB residencies paired with environmental organizations designing new relationships to urban space. The symposium will include oral and media presentations, workshops and small-group discussions with previous iLAB residents Michelle Nagai, Lise Brenner, Uli Lorimer, Sarah White, Gerald Marks, Angel Ayon, Karl Cronin,Theresa Duhon and Colin Grubel as well as Megan Fellerath and Brian McCormick of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative; environmental sculptor Mara G. Haseltine and her New School students who are building oyster beds; and James Cervino fo the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. iLand (Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance) says the next iLAB residency application deadline is March 20. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Italian designer Giorgio Armani will donate $1 million to the Fund for Public Schools to promote arts programs in New York City's school system, says Javier C. Hernandez in the N.Y.Times (2/17/09). The money will be used to create the Armani Arts Institute, an umbrella program that will fund arts initiatives in schools serving some of the city’s most disadvantaged populations. In a statement about the donation, Armani called it “an investment in the future generations of New York City. What excites me most is that we are not just providing the wood for dance floors and the oil paints for our future artists. More importantly, we are giving young kids a chance to dream.” [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Center for Social Media in Washington, D.C., has released "Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics," a new white paper written by Jessica Clark and Pat Aufderheide. The report, based on four years of research, argues that multiplatform, participatory media will be central to democratic life in the years ahead. "The people formerly known as the audience have reorganized themselves into networks," says Clark. "That throws open the doors for what public media can be." The paper shows how experiments in public media 2.0 are emerging across sites and sectors -- from political debates on Wikipedia, to environmental discussions in Second Life, to community-based media shared via mobile phones. You can download the report from the Center Web site (and search for Clark's slide show on www.slideshare.net). [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you "Silk Road Theatre Project's Alternative Cultural Education," a new essay by Chicago interdisciplinary artist Carol Ng-He. Ng-He teaches in "Myths to Drama," an interdisciplinary arts-integration program in the Chicago Public Schools created by Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury of Chicago's Silk Road Theatre Project. Gillani and Khoury -- of Syrian and Pakistani ancestry -- devised the program "as a creative response to the attacks of September 11, 2001," says Ng-He, and "to counter the negative representation of and sentiments toward Muslim and Middle Eastern people." They founded the theater company to showcase works by playwrights of not only those backgrounds but also from a larger geographical area visualized as the Silk Road, a network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting China, Asia and the Mediterranean world. They hope to engender a multicultural discourse addressing issues faced by the peoples along the Silk Road, their descendants and those in the diaspora who reside in North America. Ng-He interviews Gillani about their school program and also describes her own "Myths to Drama" class exploring ancient China with fifth-grade Chicago students. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Crossroads Charlotte: The Movie" premiered in local North Carolina communities this month. Crossroads Charlotte is a major civic dialogue initiative in Charlotte, N.C., that offers four stories depicting a possible future for Charlotte in 2015. The film is a cinematic version of the stories, which were written by a volunteer group of 21 community leaders in response to this question: "What course will Charlotte-Mecklenburg chart for all its residents over the next ten years as we deal with issues of access, equity, inclusion and trust in the social, political, economic and cultural life of the community?" Crossroads began in 2001 when a survey revealed that Charlotte has high levels of faith-based involvement and philanthropy but low levels of social and interracial trust. The very active project has memberships, initiatives, events and a blog. Preview the film on YouTube. (Thanks, Animating Democracy.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Marty Pottenger's Arts and Equity Initiative in Portland, Maine, is busy during the next few months celebrating its police poetry project. Recently, the initiative published the first calendar of poems and photographs by Portland police officers, detectives, local poets and photographers. On February 19, AEI photographers share their work from the project during a Pecha Kucha at SPACE Gallery. On March 5, AEI poets and police officers read their poems from the calendar at Portland Public Library, followed by a discussion. On April 3, Portland's First Friday includes "Police, Photographers and Poets," an exhibit in City Hall's Chambers Gallery. Upcoming: "Thin Blue Lines," facilitated discussions about police work, police policies and the relationship with the community as revealed in the calendar poetry (videoed for broadcast online). The calendar is for sale on the AEI Web site. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Blog This Rock," the blog of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival ("Poems of Provocation & Witness") has been added to CAN's BlogNet, a network of Weblogs from all over our community. Split This Rock (title from a poem by Langston Hughes) is a Washington, D.C., organization determined to "call poets to a greater role in public life and to equip them with the tools they need to be effective advocates in their communities and in the nation." It's sponsored by D.C. Poets Against the War, The Institute for Policy Studies, Sol & Soul and Busboys and Poets, and directed by poet Sarah Browning. Check out their online collaborative poem, their current benefit poetry contest (with prizes; deadline March 9), their upcoming poetry festival, March 10-13, 2010, and the online archive of the 2008 fest. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City" is a new addition to the CAN Bookstore, published by the University Press of Mississippi. With 150 color photographs, the book highlights significant New York neighborhood murals, their artists and sponsors, and describes the interactions between artists and residents, including the controversies that have led to the destruction of several of the artworks. It's written by community muralist Janet Braun-Reinitz and writer-artist Jane Weissman of Artmakers Inc., a politically oriented, community-based, artist-run mural organization in New York City. Its foreword is by Democracy Now's Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan; mural historian Timothy W. Drescher does the introduction. There's a booksigning at Artmakers in Brooklyn February 28 and an authors' talk at Hue-man Books in Manhattan on March 25. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Participants from the Pat Graney Co.'s "Keeping the Faith/Transitions" program for formerly incarcerated women will read from their new writing in Seattle, Wash. Appearing at Seattle's BottleNeck Lounge, 4-6 p.m. February 15, 2009, the writers will read from pieces created during the past month in classes with author Chris Leasure, and will participate in a question-and-answer discussion with the audience. The program is based on "Keeping the Faith: The Prison Project," which has been offered to incarcerated women in Washington state for the past 15 years. In July of 2008, the company began KTF/Transitions in an effort to assist formerly incarcerated women with re-entry to community, through writing, movement and the visual arts. This year's pilot program will culminate in formal readings at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival in September of 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Telling their own stories, Philadelphia teens reveal how violence has shaped their lives in Ping Chong and Co.'s newest theater piece, premiering at The Painted Bride. The oral-history production, "Secret History: The Philadelphia Story," was commissioned by the Village of Arts and Humanities to "give voice to personal stories too often left unspoken." The Villagepartnered with People’s Light & Theatre in the selection of students for this project. Part of Ping Chong and Co.'s Undesirable Elements series, the piece is written and directed by Ping Chong with Sara Michelle Zatz. It will premiere at The Painted Bride on February 20, 2009, then move to People's Light & Theatre, March 6, and to the Village, March 13. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Voices from the Cultural Battlefront will have its next gathering at the Folk Alliance International Conference in Memphis, Tenn. The meeting, titled "A Call to Action for Cultural Equity: Voices from the Battlefront's Folk Alliance Forum," occurs in the Jackson Room of the Marriot and Cook Convention Center at 1:30 p.m., February 21, 2009. Voices is an ongoing international conversation about the role of art and culture in the struggle for human rights, including social justice, cultural equity and a healthy natural environment. The conversation often occurs in concert with key arts and cultural gatherings. The February convening focuses on cultural equity viewed through the lens of hyper-capitalism and the folk arts, and features a town meeting. The moderator is Appalshop Director Art Menius; panelists include Roadside Theater's Dudley Cocke, performing artist Gretchen Peters and Imagining America's Jamie Haft. E-mail: jmhaft@syr.edu. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

While everybody's talking again about FDR and the New Deal, the CAN Bookstore has added two art-history books that came out in 2008 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the WPA. "Posters for the People: The Art of the WPA" by Ennis Carter and Christopher DeNoon (Quirk Books) coffee-table book highlights 500 of the best posters produced by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and '40s when the government employed hundreds of out-of-work artists to raise awareness about public issues and civic life in the U.S. "Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times" by Susan Quinn (Walker & Co.) recounts the rise and fall of the Federal Theatre Project and how it unintentionally set the stage for the House Un-American Activities Committee and the red-baiting and blacklisting of the 1940s and '50s. Publisher's Weekly describes it as the chronicle of "a not-so-distant time when a nation bled and great artists rushed as healers into the countryside." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Sustaining our planet, our culture and our creative enterprise" are the topics of "Systems of Sustainability: Art, Innovation, Action (S.O.S.)" at the University of Houston in March. Part arts festival, part academic symposium, "S.O.S." explores "how creative enterprise can be an integral tool for cultural growth and social change." Organized by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts and the Art Museum's Blaffer Gallery at the University of Houston, the event includes site-specific projects, participatory activities, lectures, scholarly panels and opportunities for dialogue with artists, researchers, activists and scholars such as Matt Coolidge, The Center for Land Use Interpretation; Lindsay Utz, GOOD Magazine; Robert Harriss, Houston Advanced Research Center; Liz Lerman, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange; and more. The symposium runs March 27-29, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C. has launched Arts in Crisis, a program to provide emergency planning assistance to struggling U.S. performing-arts organizations. The initiative will provide free and confidential counsel by Kennedy Center staff in fundraising, building more effective Boards of Trustees, budgeting, marketing and other areas pertinent to maintaining a vital performing-arts organization during a troubled economy. Center staff say it's a response to "current economic climate (that) has reduced earned and contributed income, decimated endowments, and has left some organizations struggling for survival." The program Web site offers an explanatory video and a form to request services. The Center also seeks arts managers around the U.S. who can volunteer to help. When a request is received, the Center will try to match it with an arts manager in that local area. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

American for the Arts has launched a campaign to counter "anti-arts" media responses to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. AftA's Arts Action Fund has issued a call for letters to local media editors in support of the Act's proposed increase of $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. The fund hopes to counter such attacks as this from the National Review: "The National Endowment for the Arts, for example, is in line for $50 million, increasing its total budget by a third. The unemployed can fill their days attending abstract-film festivals and sitar concerts." AftA suggests stressing that the arts employ people locally and enhance community development; that the NEA increase will save 14,422 jobs from being lost in the U.S. economy; and that without the proposed stimulus, 10% of nonprofit organizations will close in 2009, costing 260,000 jobs. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Media Making Change," a unique fellowship opportunity in media arts has been added to CAN's database of Places to Study community arts. The Northwest Institute for Social Change in Portland, Oregon, hosts an eight-week academic and media training program for a dozen undergraduate students each summer, June 20-August 15. Students learn how media tools can positively affect public policy. It' s a "full-ride fellowship" that can earn a full term's worth of credit from the University of Oregon School of Communication. Each student attends media-studies courses, then works with NPR producers and Academy-award-nominated filmmakers, producing both an audio and a video documentary about a local solution to a global issue. 2008 students studied with Fiona Otway, Brett Vail, Dennis Fitzgerald and Robert Greenwald; their documentaries are online. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

CAN's database of Places To Study has added an interesting new post-graduate fellowship at New Urban Arts, a community art studio for high-school students in Providence, R.I. Two year-long, paid fellowships are available in the Arts Mentoring Fellowship Program at New Urban Arts. Fellows will be an active presence in the New Urban Arts Studio, supporting artists who mentor high-school arts students and publicly sharing artwork and community-arts ideas reflecting New Urban Arts pedagogy. The fellows jointly curate New Urban Arts/Conversations/, a public series in which individuals share how they integrate creativity into their personal and professional lives. Fellows receive a financial stipend ($10,000) and studio space. The fellowship runs October 1, 2009-June 1, 2010, with an opportunity for one-year renewal. Deadline is May 1, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

California College of the Arts has announced courses for its spring Teaching Institute, training educators and teaching artists to be leaders in arts instruction at pre-K-12 grade levels. The Teaching Institute offers a range of professional-development opportunties, from weekend skill-building intensives to semester-long core courses. It also offers an Arts Learning Specialist Certificate, the first of its kind in the U.S. and a nationwide model, developed by CCA Center for Art and Public Life in partnership with the Alameda County Office of Education. Spring 2009 courses include: Collaborative Curriculum Design; "What Would an Artist Do?" Modeling Artistic Thinking and Processes; Understanding Across the Curriculum: Paper, Mask, and Puppets Processes; Introduction to the Studio Thinking Framework and Processes; Art as a Cognitive-Therapeutic Experience for Special-Education Children and Teens; and Integrating Museum Visits to Enhance Student Learning. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Applications are being accepted for the U.C. Institute for Research in the Arts/UCR Palm Desert Graduate Center Joint Residency at the Boyd Deep Canyon Research Center in Palm Desert, Calif. The residency, February 13-16, 2009, will be facilitated by members of the Luminous Green Collective, an interdisciplinary laboratory calling upon the creative sector to enrich the public debate around environmental sustainability, ethical living and eco-technology. The residency will focus on issues relevant to the Sustainable Desert Gardens Initiative: future desert ecologies, native desert knowledge systems, sustainable design strategies for a world without water, desert soundscapes, desert navigation, the new desert social order and desert food and waste cycles. The gathering is designed as an Open Space workshop. Hurry, application deadline is February 7. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Art and Activism -- Share Your Passion" is the theme of the 2009 Women's Caucus for Art Confab during the College Art Association meeting in Los Angeles. The conference, February 25-March 2, 2009, features a Feminist Art Project Day of Panels, including “Black Women, But, Are They Feminists?” and “Salon des Refuses” or who was/is “in” and “out” of the recent feminist exhibitions. The Confab also includes the opening of "Women Artists on Immigration: Crossing Borders, Confronting Barriers, Bridging Identities," an exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center Art Gallery; a screening of "Feminist Artists and Motherhood: 'Breakin in Two'“ and roundtable with artists, writers and scholars at USC; the 5th International Video Shorts Festival; and the 30th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Awards. WCA is a leading national organization for women in the visual arts, founded in 1972. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Re-defining African American: What's at Stake?" is the theme of the fourth annual international cultural conference at Hunter College in New York. The conference, February 6, 2009, is co-sponsored by the Caribbean Cultural Center, African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI) and the Global Afro Latino & Caribbean Initiative (GALCI. The purpose of the gathering is to develop thinking, terminology, programs and actions that will unite African descendants in diaspora to work together on common issues. Keynote speaker is Roger S. Wareham, lead attorney in historic lawsuits filed in the Federal District Courts suing private corporations for reparations due the descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States. Conference panelists include activists, politicians, artists and educators from around the world. See the CCCADI Web site for video excerpts from the first three "Re-defining African American" conferences. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham