Today CAN brings you a new, thoughtful essay by artist Michael B Schwartz, "Neighborhood-based Cultural Programs and the Emerging Eco-industrial Era." "The practices, tools and techniques employed in community-based cultural development," writes Schwartz, "are symbiotic with the green-job training process and struggles for self-determination. ... Community artists exist at the center of this change, equipped with the skills and sensibilities essential to focusing group creative energy and building grassroots social, cultural and economic networks." Schwartz illustrates this link with examples from the work of his community-based mural collective, Tucson Arts Brigade, and his own collaborative work in Delaware and Philadelphia. He also presents themes for a curriculum for green community arts training programs. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 2. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham