Today CAN brings you "From Ghana to Greece to Lakota Sioux Nation: Cultural Diversity in Arts in Corrections," a new essay by Claire Schwadron, director of Project Youth ArtReach, Silver Spring, Maryland. A project of Class Acts Arts Inc., PYA has 40 artists from around the world working with incarcerated people in the Washington, D.C., area. D.C. corrections facilities have a diverse population that reflects the fact that immigrants from 193 nations have moved to the area since 1990. Drawing on interviews with artists, inmates and correctional staff, Schwadron describes a type of educational exchange that promotes respect and tolerance while teaching skills, and taps into the vast diversity within the D.C. area, incorporating artists from across the globe, including Ghana, Bulgaria, Greece, Argentina, Brazil, the Lakota Sioux Nation and South Africa. "By being made aware of distinct attributes of an artist’s culture," she writes, "the inmate participants learn to recognize differences and commonalities among cultures." This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you "Urban Bush Women and Community Engagement Pedagogy" by San Francisco Bay Area dancer Sophia Chakos-Leiby. This essay investigates the author's summer intensive experience with the noted New York dance company through an exploration of its community engagement curriculum and the culminating performance that served as the "public face" of the work. She shows how Urban Bush Women’s community engagement method "provides a blueprint for the field of community-based performance that outlines a creation process to radicalize diverse communities in society." Chakos-Leiby uses a theoretical framework situated in postcolonial studies and the ideas of dance-studies scholar Ananya Chatterjea, who explores dance as a form of embodied cultural resistance in her analysis of the work of Urban Bush Women. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The National Endowment for the Arts presented a live Webcast on of a forum about U.S. artists and other cultural workers who are part of the country's economy. The archive is now online. Academics, foundation professionals, and service-organization representatives came together to discuss improving the collection and reporting of statistics about arts and cultural workers, and to develop future research agendas and approaches. It includes three panel discussions with researchers, economists, union representatives, government analysts and public scholars, speaking on "What We Know About Artists and How We Know It," "Putting the Research to Work" and "Widening the Lens to Capture Other Cultural Workers." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The second annual Police Poetry Calendar debuted at a press conference at Police Headquarters in Portland, Maine, on November 25, 2009. The calendar includes poetry and photographs written by police officers in the Art at Work project of the Arts & Equity Initiative, a program conceived and directed by artist Marty Pottenger in Portland since 2007. Lt. Mike Sauschuck presented Pottenger with a Certificate of Appreciation at an annual awards ceremony, saying, "We couldn't think of anything more heroic than walking into police headquarters and asking if any of us would be willing to write poems in order to improve morale." Since 2007, the initiative has led workshops for city employees, whose prints, poems, collages and photographs now hang in a new City Hall gallery and in the mechanics garage, landfill, healthcare facility, general assistance offices and police roll callroom. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Michelle Obama announced winners of the 2009 Coming Up Taller Awards at the White House this month, saying achievement in arts and humanities is “a bridge to achievement in life.” CUT annually honors exceptional after-school and out-of-school arts and humanities programs in the U.S., China, Egypt and Mexico. This year's international winners were Mexico's Estrellas con Ángel in Campeche, a dance group that focuses on children with Down’s syndrome, and a rural Chiapas children's radio program, Radiombligo; Green Path of Art, Arts Training for Youth in Sichuan, China, helping students living in poverty pursue higher education and discover their creative potential through the arts; and Alwan wa Awtar in Cairo, an after-school and summer arts program in the poor district of Muqqatum. Go online for a complete list and to nominate programs for the 2010 awards: deadline: January 29, 2010. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

CAN has added to its Places To Study database a BFA/MFA program in a new signature discipline at the University of New Mexico: Art and Ecology. Building from Bill Gilbert's successful Land Arts of the American West program, Art & Ecology is an umbrella that includes undergraduate and graduate curriculum offering students an understanding of and participation in representation, land use, ecology and classic land art in the U.S. Southwest in preparation for careers in not only public art, fine art and education, but also in activism and land-use interpretation. The curriculum engages ecological scholars, artists and activists within and outside of academia. A&E also umbrellas Robin Ward's psychogeography studio, "Re-Wilderness Studio," and Michael Cook's field-intensive "Nature and Technology" course, which takes place in residence at the Young Ranch in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

A collection of global and local perspectives on the meaning and significance of cultural rights through music was recently published by the University of Illinois Press. “Music and Cultural Rights,” edited by University of Pittsburgh ethnomusicologists Andrew N. Weintraub and Bell Yung, frames timely and pressing questions concerning music as a means for the transmission of a society’s histories and ideas. Essays in the book explore various interpretations of cultural rights across societies; how definitions of rights have evolved; and how rights have been invoked in relation to social struggles over cultural access, use, representation and ownership. Case studies demonstrate musical aspects of cultural rights in communities in the Philippines, China, Hawaii, Peru, Ukraine and Brazil. The book’s development was supported by the Ford Foundation’s Human Rights Division of the Peace and Social Justice Program. [LINK] Posted by Jamie Haft

NEH Chair Jim Leach recently told the National Press Club, "Culture is more powerful than politics and surprisingly capable of withstanding change wrought disproportionately by force of arms." Leach, former congressman (R-Iowa) and founder of the Congressional Humanities Caucus, was appointed by President Obama to head the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2009. He spoke to the National Press Club, November 20, 2009, outlining his Bridging Cultures initiative, a program aimed at enlarging our understanding of America’s diverse cultural heritage and the history, language and art of other societies. "What I’m suggesting," said Leach, "is that strategic thinking that lacks a cultural component is inadequate for the times. ... Citizenship is hard. It takes a willingness to listen, watch, read and think in ways that allow the imagination to put one person in the shoes of another." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Gordon Knox, whose work explores the transformative role of the arts in society, was recently appointed director by the ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. As a core collaborator at the Stanford Humanities Lab at Stanford University, Knox developed and implemented international projects that combine the arts, humanities and sciences to inspire grassroots social change. At the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, Calif., Knox established the institution’s reputation for ambitious projects often involving unusual collaborations. Knox’s interest in art and society stems from his extensive training as a social anthropologist. Dean and Director of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts Kwang-Wu Kim said Knox will bring "unique perspectives to the work of redefining the role and purpose of a university art museum.” Knox will begin full-time on July 1, 2010. [LINK] Posted by Jamie Haft

At a recent conference on learning, arts and the brain, Jerry Kagan, a leading researcher in developmental psychology, boiled down six scientific reasons why arts education is "more than a luxury." Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham reported on the talk in the Washington Post (11/23/09). Arts participation, he says: 1. offers students who would otherwise drop out a chance to feel successful, that they belong at school; 2. offers children a rare opportunity for sense of agency, of creation; 3. offers a unique means of communication, in a way that words do not; 4. allows children to see the importance of creating beauty, of creating an object that others may enjoy; 5. offers children an opportunity to work together, growing a concern for others; 6. offers children a chance to express feelings that they otherwise might be unable to express, improving their health. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Art in the Public Interest, CAN's publisher, is pleased to announce that Jamie M. Haft has been appointed assistant editor for the Community Arts Network. Haft's appointment is part of a collaboration between API/CAN and Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA), where Haft is program coordinator. Haft will work part-time on the CAN Web site under the direction of CAN’s editor, Linda Frye Burnham, contributing content about community cultural development in the arts, humanities and design sectors. Beginning in January 2010, the content Haft contributes to CAN’s Web site will also be streamed on IA’s Web site. "For Imagining America," said IA Director Jan Cohen-Cruz, "the collaboration with CAN is an opportunity to experiment with new modes of communication." The experiment will extend though May 2010, at which time its benefit to both CAN and IA will be evaluated. At IA, Haft organizes local and national programs and contributes to IA publications. She is also a national organizer for Voices from the Cultural Battlefront: Organizing for Equity, and serves as the editor of its Web site. Her article, “Voices from the Battlefront: Achieving Cultural Equity through Critical Analysis,” was recently published on CAN in Community Arts Perspectives, the Community Arts Research and Convening Project’s online journal. Haft graduated in 2007 with a BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you a new essay by the artists of the Neighborhood Writing Alliance in Chicago. "Sharing Space: Collaborative Programming Within and Between Communities" by Mairead Case, Annie Knepler and Rupal Soni explores the ways this small nonprofit community writing program partners with larger organizations to "provoke dialogue and promote change by creating opportunities for adults in Chicago to write, publish and perform works about their lives." Much of the writing generated by the program is published in the organization's Journal of Ordinary Thought. In this essay on CAN, they write about partnering with the Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council and ten other organizations on events around community and public health. Another project paired NWA writers with a production of Ifa Bayeza's “The Ballad of Emmett Till” at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in 2008. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

CAN has added a new graduate program in applied theater to its Places To Study database listing community-based arts training programs in the U.S. and beyond. The University of Southern California's School of Theatre has launched an M.A. in Applied Theatre Arts that will explore how theater can be applied to nontraditional theatrical settings. The rigorous one-year (plus one summer) program has a Boal-inspired curriculum that teaches students theory and practice of Forum Theatre, Rainbow of Desire and Legislative Theatre. Students partner with Los Angeles grassroots organizations to develop community-based theater projects that advance social, political or therapeutic change. The program culminates in a four-week externship abroad with an applied theater organization; students receive travel and housing subsidy. Apply in January for a fall 2010 start. The program is directed by Brent Blair. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you a new essay analyzing the politics and ethics surrounding a Maryland urban redevelopment project and what happens when an art school is in the mix. Sarah Tooley's "New Beginnings for Old Stories? A Problematic Institution/Community Partnership" looks at the East Baltimore Initiative, Baltimore''s plan to revitalize the 88 acres around Johns Hopkins Medical Center in the Middle East neighborhood. Maryland Institute College of Art has been offered a three-story historic residential building in the project and MICA has requested a proposal from MACA, the institute's Master of Arts in Community Arts program, for the building's use. Tooley writes about the implementation of eminent domain to evict residential tenants in situations like this, and wonders about the ethics of involving one of the country's only community arts majors in a plan into which the community currently has no input. She makes some recommendations for proceeding with equity and justice in mind. Tooley is an artist and director of the Better Waverly Community Arts Center in Baltimore. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The NYS Cultural Equity Group in collaboration with Americans for the Arts held a seminar, "Arts for All," November 17, 2009, to "lobby for cultural equity at the national level." The informational seminar at Pregones Theater in the Bronx, N.Y., explored "making the case for the recreation of expansion arts at the National Endowment for the Arts and creative economy in communities of color." The NEA's Expansion Arts program (1971-95) supported artists and organizations that presented culturally specific traditions and reached underserved communities and populations. Seminar speakers included Marta Moreno Vega, Caribbean Cultural Center; Bill Agauado, Bronx Council on the Arts; Narric Rome, Gladstone A. Payton and Robert Lynch, Americans for the Arts; Michael Unthank, Harlem Arts Alliance; and Sandra A. Garvia Betancourt, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Thousand Kites is calling on poets and writers to submit a work for its national radio broadcast “Calls From Home,” heard on 200 U.S. radio stations December 8, 2009. "We want to gather a thousand poems to reach the 2.4 million people in our nation’s prisons," says the Kites team. "Submit a work on the themes of incarceration, family, the power to endure and anything that would lift the spirits and spark creativity in our thousands of prisoner listeners. Speak from the heart." Poems will also be added to the Kites Web site, and released as part of a CD "celebrating our ten years of creativity, radio and the power of community." Submit your poem by calling 877-518-0606 (toll-free) and recording it on the Kites answering machine. Thousand Kites is a national dialogue project addressing criminal-justice reform. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Laura Halilovic, 19, recently won the UCCA Prize at the Bellaria Film Festival in Italy for her documentary film "Me, My Gypsy Family & Woody Allen." The film received special mention by the jury "for the ability to describe in a soft, at times ironic, but always direct way her own story, that of her family, and the difficult conditions of Gypsies in Italy." Halilovic's documentary tells the story of her family, who went to Italy from Bosnia and Herzegovina. She works for a youth association in Turin that assists Roma children with schooling. The film was produced with support from the Open Society Institute Roma Decade Matching Fund in cooperation with The Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005–2015, an unprecedented political commitment by European governments to improve the socioeconomic status and social inclusion of Roma. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Poets, Prophets and Music of Social Justice" is one of the courses to be offered next summer by the second annual Canadian School of Peacebuilding, June 14-July 2, 2010. A program of Canadian Mennonite University, the school will be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, offering three five-day sessions, each with two or three courses running concurrently,academic credit or for training for practitioners, professionals, activists, students, nongovernmental organizations and faith-based groups engaged in peacebuilding. Other interesting courses include "Our Contested Food System: Cultivating a Just Peace" in collaboration with Canadian Foodgrains Bank, "A Cree Perspective on Non-Violence," "Mennonite Approaches to Peace and Justice" and "International Perspectives on Restorative Justice" with Howard Zehr [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Native American filmmakers will discuss the importance of sharing one’s own story and the future distribution of contemporary Native American cinema at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Minn. The November 21, 2009, event, part of the Indigenous Voices Series by Intermedia and Pangea World Theater, will feature filmmakers Missy Whiteman, Elizabeth Day, Ryan Red Corn and Sterlin Harjo. The series will present a limited showing of Harjo's "Four Sheets to the Wind," November 20-21. The Indigenous Voices Series was created in 2001 by Pangea World Theater to explore first-nation issues. Since 2002, Pangea and Intermedia have been co-presenting national and international indigenous artists who raise issues that affect their community. The series has included youth workshops, slams and a global indigenous summit featuring speakers from across the world. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

“We at home might not have been on the battlefield, but it sure feels like it,” said an audience member in a discussion following a recent performance by Theater of War. Patrick Healy in the N.Y. Times (10/11/09) recounts the anguished conversation after a November 9 readers'-theater performance of works on war by Sophocles, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. The Pentagon has provided $3.7 million for an independent production company, Theater of War, to visit 50 military sites and stage readings from two plays by Sophocles, “Ajax” and “Philoctetes," questioning whether war can drive warriors to acts of evil. "The investigation of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 at Fort Hood, loomed over the reading" for dozens of service members, veterans, relatives and Pentagon officials at a Manhattan hospital, writes Healy. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you a new essay by community artist and educator Cinder Hypki, "Lessons from the Art of Solidarity: A Teaching Experience in Nicaragua." In 2008, Hypki was one of four faculty members from Maryland Institute College of Art that accompanied nine MICA students on a two-month visit to Nicaragua, where they collaborated with local activist groups, artisans, families and high-school students. The experience was one of intensive cultural immersion. The Art of Solidarity is a new international community arts program in Nicaragua MICA, coordinated by Maria Aldana, the program coordinator, is a Nicaraguan-American community artist and former MICA student. In the progressive regional hub of Esteli and the small town of San Juan de Limay, students worked in one of two areas, documentary video or mural arts, based on their interests and talents. Here Hypki and Aldana talk deeply about the program’s pedagogy and impact -- what they call "the act and art of solidarity." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

December 21, 2009, is the deadline for proposals for presentations during "At the Crossroads: A Community Arts and Development Convening," in St. Louis, Mo., March 25-27, 2010. The Community Arts Training Institute of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission calls for proposals for papers, presentations, dialogues and workshops focused on new strategies and provocative thinking for the future of community arts development and art for social change. Among the participants are CAN writers Bill Cleveland of the Center for the Study for Art and Community and Barbara Schaffer Bacon and Pam Korza of Animating Democracy, a program of American for the Arts. Artist Marty Pottenger and researcher Chris Dwyer will present a preconvening workshop, "What Difference Are We Making? Assessing Social Impact of Arts for Community Change," on an evaluation framework they created around Pottenger's Arts & Equity Initiative in Portland, Me. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you a new essay by community artist Laura D. Cohen, who asks, "How many of us who work with community choose to leave when things get tough? Cohen observes, in her essay, "The Choices We Have and Our Privilege To Move On," that "when working in a community that is different from our own, it is essential to reflect, address and confront our own privilege in order to become conscious and committed to the work and to the community." Her evidence comes from her work in an afterschool program involving Kids With A Statement, boys and girls 13-18 who were investigating themes of social justice, community and the arts to create interactive performances surrounding power and community problem solving. The class worked in extremely difficult conditions in a public school where there was almost no heat but plenty of rats, mice, cockroaches, trashcan fires and hallway shootings. She relates her agonizing decision-making process about whether to stay or leave, and vows to "configure ways to encourage those who are working in communities foreign to their own to stay on and keep going." This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Collaborative public projects that invite community participation will be among the artistic practices explored in the new Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) at MIT. The program, formerly titled the Visual Arts Program (VAP), examines the role of art, culture and technology in society and considers artistic practice to be knowledge production. The emphasis is on how cultural and artistic practices critically engage science and technology and envision their transformation. The program hosts a weekly lecture series of artists, urbanists and scholars from a broad range of disciplines from the campus, the region and from around the world. The faculty includes Program Director Ute Meta Bauer, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Joan Jonas, Gediminas Urbonas and Antoni Muntadas. The two-year program grants a Master of Science in Visual Studies degree; applications are due December 15, 2009. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

The Yes Men set up a mock U.S. Chamber of Commerce Web site, October 19, 2009, and held a press conference announcing that the Chamber was changing its position on global warming. The Blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship reports that, in response to the mock announcement that the Chamber was shifting its opposition to serious efforts to address global warming, the Chamber tried to have the mock site taken down by sending a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice to the site's upstream provider, Hurricane Electric, and is suing for trademark infringement. "This may be a good thing," says NCAC. "The current case should make it clear that political commentary is protected no matter whether it appears as a screed in a newspaper or takes the form of a satirical art prank." See video on CANtv. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

ArtRising, the innovative funding program founded in 2006 by the Zing Foundation, has announced its plans for 2009-10 and included CAN as one of the five projects for this year's Giving Circle. The program was launched to engage individuals to learn about and support arts and social change. Over the past two years 80 individuals have contributed to the funding circle, and 50 people have been more actively involved, distributing 20 grants totaling $230,000; Art in the Public Interest received two of those grants for the support of the Community Arts Network. ArtRising has reorganized to allow donors of smaller amounts to participate in its membership program and giving circle. Members can establish a giving account and direct their donations to any of this year's five selected grantees. ArtsRising will host dinner parties across the U.S. in the coming year. See the Web for details. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"We took the road of least resistance and ... shied away from the heavy lifting: the work of public policy," says Janet Brown, director of Grantmakers in the Arts, in the GIA blog (11/3/09). In "What's Up with Arts Education?" Brown asks "why forty years of funding has not produced the desired results." We should, she says, have done "the work of harnessing the will of the people to advocate for schools and children. ... Instead, we’ve asked them to support artists in the classroom and to allow children to visit the museum, symphony or ballet once or twice a semester [and] asked our arts organizations to go beyond their missions to become educators." Arouse the sleeping giant of parents, artists and organizations," says Brown. "Something needs to change before another 40 years goes by. We just need to join hands and get it done." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

President Obama has named 25 new members to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which combines representatives of federal cultural agencies with presidential appointees from the private sector. The list includes celebrities like Edward Norton, Anna Wintour, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Sarah Jessica Parker and Yo Yo Ma. Cultural critic Arlene Goldbard is not impressed. As she says in her latest blog post (11/5/09), "there is not a single appointment reflecting the knowledge and perspective" of the community artists and teaching artists who support the Obama arts platform and are actually practicing cultural democracy. "Nor is there anyone who is known for a body of work on the important issues of culture, community, democracy and equity that ought to inform the deliberations of any such body. Nor is there anyone whose work focuses entirely on art in the service of social justice." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

"Standing Up/Acting Out: Activism & Social Justice in the Traditional Arts" is a panel discussion during the upcoming "Performing Diaspora" symposium at CounterPulse in San Francisco. The panel addresses the question: Can tradition-based forms of cultural expression be used to convey messages of political protest and express social justice-oriented concerns related to class, gender, race? Other topics in the symposium, November 7, 2009, include criticism and aesthetics, representation and appropriation. It's co-presented by CounterPULSE and the Alliance for California Traditional Arts in association with the African and African American Performing Arts Coalition, Dance Mission Theater, and the Dance Studies Working Group at UC Berkeley. "Performing Diaspora" is a two-year initiative including a festival (November 5-22), residency program and commissioning program "at the intersection of traditional arts, contemporary performance and California's changing demographics." [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Iowa Poet Laureate Mary Swander’s poetry classes at Iowa State University are collaborating on "More Than Words," an "accessible" poetry and art event, December 1, 2009. Swander's classes and the Iowa Department for the Blind partnered to create “tactile poetry," says Riki Saltzman, Iowa ARTS Council accessibility coordinator, in Iowa Arts News (11/09). It's a new, nonvisual way “to enjoy poetry that is more accessible to the blind. They are recording poems that they’ve infused with music and sound, and some are creating tactile pieces of art to go with the poetry.” They'll present it at the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, December 1, and exhibit it at ISU in spring. Last year, Swander's students authored "Farmscape: Documenting the Changing Rural Environment," a play based on interviews with Iowa farmers. It spawned Agarts, a campus group that formally explores agriculture and the arts. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver wonders why "politics have such a peculiar relationship to the arts in the United States," in New Hampshire's Portsmouth Herald (10/20/09). Talking with interviewer Deborah Mcdermott about her new novel, "The Lacuna," Kingsolver says, "Art and politics are considered fairly inseparable in other parts of the world, but why not here? I had a feeling it happened during the McCarthy era, but why would it last 50 years? Why didn't we get over it? What happened in the middle of the 20th century that left us so suspicious of political art? . ... After Sept. 11, 2001, the whole country was primed to react fiercely against artists who betrayed any sense of dissident politics. And I came to understand it's bred into us as Americans. We're not just suspicious of political art but of dissidents." (Thanks, Sarah Ingersoll.) [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you an essay by artist Stephanie Johnson on the personal and pedagogical challenges of working with today’s student population. Johnson teaches the Community Research Service Learning course in the Visual and Public Art Department at California State University Monterey Bay. She addresses training this generation "for community arts placements with skills of analysis, compassionate observation, active cultural alliance, self-reflection and, most important, an understanding of issues related to ethnicity, gender, race, class, language and disability." Here she explores bridging the age, race and lived-experience gaps between herself and her students. An African-American baby boomer the age of their mothers, she's teaching primarily Latina/o and white students, most of whom are immersed in fast, long-distance, disembodied contact with numerous friends, groups and strangers through electronic communications, and for whom 'otherness' is perceived as nonexistent. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham

Today CAN brings you "The Art of Discussion: Defining Community Art Methodology" by Rebecca Yenawine, offering six strategies for success in making community art that addresses social issues. Yenawine, an artist who founded Kids on the Hill (KOH) in Baltimore and directed it for 12 years and is currently the director of New Lens, writes, "The quality of discussion that happens prior to art making can make the difference between getting students engaged or not, between a superficial message and a probing one, between a project that has meaning to the greater community and one that remains personal." In 2008, Yenawine and Mark Carter wrote an essay for CAN explicating Art Action for Social Change, a pedagogy they developed by KOH staff for the creation of community art with a focus on social justice. Here Yenawine drills down on the discussion phase of their process, based in dialogue theory and Visual Thinking Strategies. She breaks it down into six steps, illustrated with examples from past KOH work. This essay is part of Community Arts Perspectives, a publication of the Community Arts Convening and Research Project, Vol. II, Issue 3. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham