Five interesting community arts projects are underway across the U.S. thanks to the National Performance Network Community Fund. Funds were awarded to NPN Partners: Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kent., to strengthen relationships with the African-American population of Clinchco, Va., through sharing and performance of personal stories, working with storyteller Angelyn DeBord; Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to support workshops by Nora Chipaumire with immigrant populations, examining personal histories; Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts (MECA) in Houston to work with composer Elio Villafranca to adapt a three-part concerto for an orchestra of 36 musicians, creating a contemporary, multicultural musical experience; Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis to support Kristina Wong's work with the Hmong community and emerging immigrant artists; and Tigertail Productions in Miami to support AXIS Dance Company's work with local dancers with disabilities. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Creative Arts Team at CUNY is offering three courses of interest to community arts practitioners in summer 2009. They include: "Creating Meaning Through Community Drama: Making Theatre Based on a Community's Own Stories," June 29-July 10, in Applied Theatre; "World of the Teaching Artist," July 13-18, in Education; and "Directing Devised Plays With Young People," July 27-August 1, in Education. The courses are housed in the School of Professional Studies and offered in association with the Paul A. Kaplan Center for Educational Drama. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN is glad to bring you an article arguing for art for social justice by Maria X. Martinez of the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The article originally appeared the print journal Social Justice, A Journal of Crime, Conflict and World Order. Martinez, deputy director of the S.F. Health Department's Community Programs, takes a brief look at the way artists in San Francisco "not only document social change; they promote, inform and shape it." Arguing for more policy support, Martinez notes artist-driven campaigns to end youth violence in the Mission District; fight evictions in Manilatown and Chinatown; cross the great divide between predominately white feminists and women of color; defeat censorship and found the S.F. gay political movement; educate about pesticides in farmwork; fight the death penalty; and more. Says Martinez: "...art is the intellectual underpinning of social change; nowhere is there more potential and more need for art than here and now." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Guidelines are available online for the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program supporting individual writers addressing contemporary visual art. Deadline is June 8, 2009, for grants in the following categories: articles; blogs; books; new and alternative media; and short-form writing. Grants range from $3,000 to $50,000 depending on the needs and scope of the project. "Designed to encourage and reward writing about contemporary art that is rigorous, passionate, eloquent and precise, as well as to create a broader audience for arts writing," say the guidelines, "the Arts Writers Grant Program aims to strengthen the field as a whole and to ensure that critical writing remains a valued mode of engaging the visual arts." For more details and eligibility criteria, see the program's Web site. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Global Lives Project is seeking help making a collaborative online video encyclopedia of human life experiences. Global Lives is an international collective of filmmakers, designers, architects, activists and institutions from around the globe, including the U.S., Japan, Brazil and Malawi. The goal is to record 24 hours in the lives of 10 people that roughly represent the diversity of our planet's population, creating an innovative video installation with the materials. Local teams participate in a process-of-elimination procedure for choosing the basic demographic characteristics of their subjects based upon geography, gender, age, income and religion. Shoots have been done with a 57-year-old cable-car driver in San Francisco and a hip-hop and rap singer from the Brazil. The Project is currently seeking involvement from video makers, exhibition hosts, translators and funders. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Want to take part in an international eco-art project? The Sachaqa Art Center is building an Eco Art Village in the heart of the Amazon jungle, in Tarapoto, Peru. "The main aim is to build a creative community where painting, music,writing, sculpture, ceramic artists can find inspiration from the natural environment and each other," says English artist and Sachaqa founder Trina Brammah. The Center is currently located in the village of San Roque De Cumbaza, Lamas; studios there cost $200/month, including kitchen, accommodation and shared studio space. Sachaqa is in the process of building a new center near the village, designed to use ecologically friendly materials and renewable energy sources, using an Eco-Dome Plan designed by architect Nader Khalili. They invite participation in the building process as well. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today we've added The Park, a blog from India, to Blognet, our network of Weblogs from all over our community. It's by artist Sreejata Roy, community art coordinator of Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education in New Delhi. She was recently awarded a public art grant to shape a community park on an abandoned lot where children play in a working-class area of the city. Her blog follows the process of the project,"... how the children cultivate and learn about self, friendship, family, school, neighborhood, community, locality and city through building up a park." Says Roy, "The goal of the project is to celebrate the contributions of community and children and emphasize the pivotal and unique role that art plays as an experimental pedagogy in learning, sharing and developing bond in the neighborhood for a long term." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

In London this June you can participate in a public art intervention about the colonization of public space by surveillance cameras. A kiosk in Peckham Square, by Neal White and the Office of Experiments, will be staffed daily, June 21-28, by "a new type of security person" talking to the public about civil liberties, inviting responses to the phenomenon of public surveillance in Britain and distributing local information suggesting "alternative ways to navigate the environment." The project, "Limitations Permitted," states: "The apparently benign public zones of libraries, playgrounds and shopping malls are all under observation, generating information about the people who inhabit them via CCTV cameras, ATMs and card readers. ... [A]re our liberties being compromised?" "Limitations Permitted" also features a public talk, "Civil Liberties and Art," and films by Manu Luksch and FLIX about privacy regulations, seen through view finders. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Thanks to Vancouver's Pacific Cinémathèque, CAN has been able to enhance its recent feature, "Social Imagination: Documenting Engagement in Canada," in the French language. 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 to document 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. CAN is so happy to bring you the delightful video collection in French. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The 37th Annual Symposium on the American Indian is a celebration of 100 years of higher education at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma. Following a century of Cherokee Nation education, NSU, home of the Center for Tribal Studies, was founded on the established site of the pre-statehood Cherokee National Female Seminary in Tahlequah, now known as the historic capital of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The symposium, "Legacy 1909-2009," April 15-18, feature Native American celebrities and scholars, many of whom are NSU graduates. NSU faculty will present on topics from healthcare to American Indian influence on jazz. Also slated are Native American film screenings and discussions, games, the Traditional Clothing Style Show, the third annual Cherokee Language Forum and panel discussions on legal issues, American Indian literature and Indian and Cherokee education. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Citizens of Tahlequah, Okla., are gathering for an advance screening and discussion of "Trail of Tears," an episode of a new PBS multimedia project looking at history through American Indian eyes. The series, "We Shall Remain," premieres on Public TV April 13, 2009, and runs weekly through May 11. "We Shall Remain" events have been organized nationwide by local PBS stations, community coalitions, public libraries and tribal community colleges; locate events on the project Web site's interactive map. The Oklahoma event, April 14, is part of "Legacy 1909-2009: The 37th Annual Native American Symposium," April 15-18, hosted this year by Northeastern State University. Special guests are actor Wes Studi, "We Shall Remain" Executive Producer Sharon Grimberg, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith, the Cherokee National Youth Choir and local cast members of "Trail of Tears." A series preview is available online. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Los Angeles Poverty Department has a new project, "CPR: a Public Training in Life Saving Skills," opening at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, Calif., May 1 and 2, 2009. The new work is developed and performed by members of Santa Monica's OPCC (Ocean Park Community Center) and the LAPD All-Stars, directed by John Malpede and Henriette Brouwers. "At a time when home foreclosures, job loss and staggering medical bills are forcing more and more people onto the streets," says LAPD, "undercover LAPD (Lost And Presumed Dead) heroes share the extraordinary wisdom that accounts for their return-from-the-edge, against-all-odds survival." The performance, May 1, is part of the 20th anniversary celebration of Highways, where LAPD was the first company to perform. Highways was founded in 1989 by artist Tim Miller and CAN's Linda Frye Burnham, as part of The 18th Street Arts Center. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you a review of a new book by artist Beverly Naidus: "Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame" from New Village Press. Critic Anusha Venkataraman calls it "just the sort of book that reassures socially engaged educators that they are not alone." Naidus focuses on her work in higher education, currently at the University of Washington in Tacoma. She delves into the historical movements and thinkers that influenced her socially engaged artistic practice, and describes, says Venkataraman, what they all have in common: "...that they advocate, implicitly or explicitly, a politics of pedagogy that fundamentally shifts the power dynamics between student and teacher, haves and have-nots, oppressor and oppressed." She also addresses critical questions that the engaged educator faces in his or her endeavors, and presents examples of her students' work. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The CAN Bookstore has an exciting new addition: "Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds: The Extraordinary Work of WritersCorps Teachers" from City Lights. City Lights describes it nicely: "The poems and short stories collected in this volume are the outcome of fifteen years of an amazingly successful experiment: asking accomplished writers to teach workshops in juvenile detention facilities, homeless shelters, inner-city schools, and schools for newly arrived immigrants." These writers work for San Francisco WritersCorps, a project of the San Francisco Arts Commission. One writer-teacher describes their motivation: "Writing in community gathers us around the proverbial campfire and reminds us why we do this: because hearing stories helps us make sense of the world, and because telling them helps us make sense of ourselves." There's a book launch and reading at City Lights, April 15, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

May 30, 2009 is the deadline for proposals for the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness in Washington, D.C. Split This Rock invites "poets, writers, activists and all concerned citizens to Washington, D.C., March 10-13, 2010, for four days of poetry, community building and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis and other social and environmental ills." The festival wants proposals for readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism -- "opportunities to imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change," says Sarah Browning, co-director. "Challenge us." Proposals forms are online. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Artist Ann Reichlin will hold a reception in "Translucent Home," her latest public art work on the site of an abandoned house in Utica, N.Y. The reception, slated for April 22, 2009, on the grounds of Utica's Sculpture Space, will introduce visitors to the third part of a ten-year project she began in 1998, when she built "Insert," a large stainless steel wall penetrating the abandoned house at 914 Whitesboro Street. In 2001, she created "Solitary View," an exploration of the inside of the house. By 2006, the house became structurally unstable and was demolished. The stone foundation was retained for "Translucent Home," which mimicks the size and volume of the demolished house. "We tend to think of houses as permanent, when in fact they are in constant state of flux," says Reichlin. The Sculpture Space Web site has photos of all phases of the project. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The role that art, architecture and design play in land reclamation and urban ecology is topic of an upcoming panel at Parsons the New School for Design in N.Y.C. The panel, set for April 10, 2009, will discuss transdisciplinary fieldwork in art, landscape architecture and industrial reclamation, focusing on the field methods of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech and the Incubo Atacama Lab in Chile. Land Arts, directed by Chris Taylor, is a field program that investigates the intersection of geomorphology and human construction beginning with the land and extending through the complex social and ecological processes that produce contemporary landscapes. The Incubo Atacama Lab project began when the curatorial exchange organization Incubo invited Taylor to bring the working methods of Land Arts to Chile. Taylor will participate along with Incubo artists and more. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Visual Restoration" is a program that showcases two murals created by Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program with the Albert M. Greenfield Restorative Justice Program. Showing April 17-May 29, 2009, at the MAP's Lincoln Financial Mural Arts Center, the project used public art to "re-engage youth who have committed harm within their communities through a form of visual restitution" by creating murals and fostering community revitalization efforts. This included workshops with youth from St. Gabriel’s Hall, DHS’ E3 centers and men at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford, led by restorative-justice professionals from the Pennsylvania Prison Society. Restorative justice is a process of encounter and exchange among victims, offenders and community members that is instrumental in healing wounds inflicted by violent crime. Phoebe Zinman's new book, "Visual Restoration," recounts the story of the Greenfield Restorative Justice Program. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

During renovations throughout 2009, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem, N.C., is presenting Inside Out: Artists in the Community II. The artists in the public art program will respond to the city, its people and its many unique places, says SECCA. Each artist will visit Winston-Salem to install his/her respective project, conduct an artist talk, lead classes and/or workshops and interact with the local community. The SECCA Web site offers descriptions outlining each project, photos of related past works and podcasts like artist's lectures, public responses to the work, radio shows and special videos like N.C. artist Lee Walton's plea for local participants to act in "Small Plots," scenarios that will pop up in the landscape, or Virginia's Charlie Brouwer's request for donated ladders for his complex installation, "Rise Up." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Actor Kal Penn is leaving television to work in the Obama White House. Penn (born Kalpen Suresh Modi), until very recently a cast member on "House," told Entertainment Weekly: "I was incredibly honored a couple of months ago to get the opportunity to go work in the White House. I got to know the President and some of the staff during the campaign and had expressed interest in working there, so I'm going to be the associate director in the White House office of public liaison. They do outreach with the American public and with different organizations. They're basically the front door of the White House. They take out all of the red tape that falls between the general public and the White House. It's similar to what I was doing on the campaign." (Read more to see what happened to Kutner, his "House" character.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Rising Tide: The Arts and Ecological Ethics" is an upcoming conference in San Francisco, Calif., organized by California College of the Arts and Stanford University. The conference, April 17-19, 2009, is an interdisciplinary gathering, bringing together artists, activists, community organizers, venture capitalists, philanthropists, students and educators who are described as "helping to push the green revolution to a tipping point." Conference events in a variety of media have titles like "Bioanthrophony," "Material/Culture Sustainability" and "Green Capitalism." Keynotes are by artist David Buckland, leader of The Cape Farewell Project in the High Arctic, "widely acknowledged to be the most significant sustained artistic response to climate change anywhere in the world"; and Sheila Kennedy, a founding principal of the interdisciplinary design practice of KVA MATx, which explores relationships between architecture, technology and emerging public needs. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Hundreds of international art and healthcare professionals and students will gather in Buffalo, N.Y., for “Approaching Health Creatively," the Society for the Arts in Healthcare conference. This 20th annual convening, April 22 – 25, 2009, will explore strategies and best practices for incorporating the arts into healthcare settings through hands-on workshops, participatory seminars, posters, tours and performances. Special events include the Society's second annual Film Festival; a celebration of the Society's new journal, "Arts and Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice"; a monologue, “God Said Ha,” by comedian Julia Sweeney, about surviving a period when both she and her brother were diagnosed with cancer; performances by Heidi Latsky Dance and Babik; and a keynote on healing architecture. Tours visit Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo and Burchfield-Penney Art Center. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

April 8, 2009, is the last day of the 14th Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, this year showing works addressing the global climate crisis. The show, presented annually by the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), opened March 24 at the Duderstadt Center Gallery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Curated by UM Professors Buzz Alexander, Janie Paul and Jason Wright, it shows 300 works by 200 artists from 40 prisons. Events included a keynote speech by Chicago Citizen of the Year William Ayers, a panel discussion on women and children inside prison, a speak-out by Detroit youth, an artists talkback, a conversation about Michigan Parole and Commutation Board practices, a film about art inside Jackson Prison and release of the first annual Literary Review of Writing by Michigan Prisoners. "Acts of Art," a PBS documentary about PCAP, was broadcast across Michigan in March and April. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

A unique Prison Performing Arts program is underway in St. Louis, Mo., as former prisoners present short performance pieces about Old Masters works that inspired them. The participants are graduates of Employment Connection, a Missouri workforce-development agency assisting former inmates. They have been exploring the Old Masters exhibition at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and studying writing, movement, voice, diction and performance with Washington University students from the Performing Arts, English, Design and Visual Arts Departments. Concurrently, specialized classes through Employment Connection help them bridge their work in class to the development of employment and life skills. For five weekends in April and May 2009, they're showing their work at Pulitzer during "Staging Old Masters." The project Web site has a schedule, bios, interviews, photos and links to Prison Performing Arts and similar programs. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Global education nonprofit World Savvy will host a May Global Youth Media & Arts Program Festival in San Francisco, Calif., with 500 students from 20 Bay Area public schools. The MAP festival will showcase student artwork and performances around the program theme of Immigration & Identity. "In a city where over 37% of the population is foreign born and where over half - 49% - of students speak a language other than English, global and cultural literacy is essential," says World Savvy. The MAP program has been underway over the past five years in San Francisco and New York City, providing students with the opportunity to "explore, develop and express their unique perspectives on immigration and diversity through the arts." See Dana Edell's 2008 story on CAN about last year's World Savvy festival in New York. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham