A group of architects, designers, activists and community leaders recently unveiled a new standard and online tool to measure the impact of design. Somewhat analogous to the LEED standards for “green” buildings, the SEED standard and tool will provide guidance, evaluation and certification for the social, economic and environmental relevance of design projects. Bryan Bell, founder and executive director of Design Corps, is one of the main forces behind the effort, which took five years to develop. The online tool, SEED Evaluator, will help users through the process of creating an exemplar design. For example, it addresses issues such as public safety, job creation and sanitation, and it requires strong evidence of community participation and input for a project to be eligible for SEED certification. The hope is that designers and their clients will start to use the new tool and standard on projects large and small. [LINK]

"Platforms for Participation" is the title of an illustrated talk by public media artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer at the 138th Annual Meeting of the Fairmount Park Art Association in Philadelphia, Pa., May 3, 2010. Lozano-Hemmer creates innovative participatory art projects for the urban environment. His artwork engages new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces that utilize light projections, robotics, sound and the Internet, as well as sensors and other devices that create platforms for participation. "Vectorial Elevation," his most recent large-scale public art installation, was commissioned for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The Fairmount Park Art Association is the nation's first private, nonprofit organization dedicated to integrating public art and urban planning, founded in 1872. FPAA's Web site contains a map of more than 100 public artworks in Philadelphia as well as tips for learning about public art in that and other cities. [LINK]

Hugo Chávez's government in Venezuela is supporting an army of street artists whose murals are a central element of its promotion of the state ideology. Simon Romero writes in the N.Y. Times (4/12/10) that the Chávez government has commissioned murals all over Caracas like Carlos Zerpa's stenciled reinterpretation of Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath,” in which a warrior grasps the severed head of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “It’s a metaphor for an empire that is being defeated,” the artist said nonchalantly in an interview. “My critics can take it or leave it, but I remain loyal to my ideas.” The more overtly political images tend to glamorize Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, and his demonization of Washington is a favorite subject, writes Romero. Some of these images are painted near billboards advertising American products [LINK]

FIGMENT, a large-scale, grassroots, volunteer, annual arts celebration, is calling for proposals for its 2010 events in New York City and Boston. May 1 is the deadline to propose public arts activities for the fourth annual free participatory arts event, set for June 5 in Boston, June 11-13 in New York City. Interactive exhibits will be open on New York's Governor's Island from June through October. "In 2009," say the organizers, "over 13,000 participants came to FIGMENT to interact and engage with over 400 participatory arts projects in every conceivable medium, including interactive sculpture, performance, music, social experiments, games and lectures. This year we expect FIGMENT to grow again." Special to this year's FIGMENT are The City of Dreams Pavilion; the Minigolf Course, themed “World’s Fair"; and the Sculpture Garden. Great pix from past FIGMENTS are online. See a video on CANtv. [LINK]

Last week the New York City Police Department pre-emptively reassured the public that the figures in a Manhattan Antony Gormley public art installation were not jumpers on the verge of committing suicide. From March 25 through Aug. 15, 2010, writes Carol Vogel in the N.Y. Times (3/18/10), "31 naked men — or rather 31 slightly different sculptures of the same naked man, Mr. Gormley himself — will be perched on rooftops, standing on the grounds of Madison Square Park and dotting the sidewalks around the Flatiron district." “Event Horizon” is the first public art project in New York by Gormley, widely known for his placemaking, 68-foot-tall Angel of the North in Gateshead, England. “I understand the police are just doing their job,” Gormley said. “I never wanted to freak anyone out. ... This is meant to be an amazing celebration of New York.” [LINK]

The U.K. publisher Intellect Ltd. and the public-art think tank ixia are calling for contributions to a new journal, Art & the Public Sphere, "a crucial examination of contemporary art's link to the public realm." "There exists," writes editor Mel Gordon, "a growing body of contemporary art practice and theory that by-passes the constraints of public art, public sector and public realm, in order to explore how the most ambitious and challenging art of the day intersects with its publics, not only via public spaces and public institutions, but also through a whole range of techniques and technologies of social engagement. Such engagements link specific questions about public art to broader questions about art’s role within the history of Western democracy and art’s active participation in opinion formation, free discussion and political action." Guidelines are online; first deadline is July 10, 2010. [LINK]

This spring, Auburn University continues its annual interdisciplinary series, Art in Agriculture, which brings together artists, designers and scientists to examine a topic related to agriculture, food, the environment or natural resources. This semester’s series is titled, “Reclaiming Ground,” and includes two exhibitions, several workshops for kids and seven lectures. One exhibition combines agriculture and architecture, called “Agritecture,” and another features sustainable designs by students in the Landscape Architecture Program, Design Program and Art Department. The lectures investigate questions such as: What is the role of the artist and designer in society at large? Can ordinary citizens make a difference in their local ecologies? How can a university encourage its students to become involved in their community? Art in Agriculture is jointly hosted by AU’s College of Agriculture, College of Liberal Arts and Department of Art. [LINK]

Landscape artist Mary Miss is keynote speaker at the second annual symposium by iLand (interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance) in New York City. The March 26-27, 2010, symposium is titled "Connecting to the Urban Environment: Creating embodied and relational approaches to environmental awareness." Mary Miss developed "City as Living Lab," a framework for making issues of sustainability tangible through collaboration and the arts. Miss has collaborated with architects, planners, engineers, ecologists and public administrators on projects like creating a temporary memorial around the perimeter of Ground Zero, revealing the history of New York's Union Square Subway station and turning a sewage treatment plant into a public space. The event also features iLand Founder Jennifer Monson, choreographer, who will present her recent work on aquifers and waterways in relation to urban development. [LINK]

On March 17-18, 2010, students at Columbia College Chicago will work around the clock to create a mosaic mural designed by children participating in Chicago-area domestic-violence programs. They'll be joined in the Tile-a-Thon by volunteer mosaic artists attending the annual conference of the Society of American Mosaic Artists (SAMA). The Children and Teen Issues Committee of the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network worked with children from violent homes to design the mural, titled: "A Child’s Vision of Peace." Every year SAMA hosts a volunteer event to create a mural for a local nonprofit organization as a gesture of appreciation to the city hosting the conference. This event is also part of Mosaic Bottega, a spring mosaic celebration at Columbia that includes a March 30 panel discussion, "The Chicago Public Art Group: Transforming the City through Community Based Public Art" (see CAN Calendar). [LINK]

Art-in-Motion, a project of Imagining America, Open Hand Theater and Syracuse Stage, will feature conversations and performances centered on activating the arts and stimulating urban redevelopment in Syracuse, N.Y. Beginning next month, four public conversations will bring visiting scholars and artists together with Syracuse residents to discuss the impact of art connecting and strengthening communities. “The visiting scholars and artists will extend our understanding of cultural participation in development as relevant to both local and national initiatives across the United States,” says Imagining America Director Jan Cohen-Cruz. The centerpiece of Art-in-Motion is a community arts project whereby residents will create giant puppets and theatrical scenes reflecting their neighborhood identities, culminating in a citywide street performance with the finished puppets in mid-September. Art-in-Motion is funded by grants from Syracuse University and New York Council for the Humanities. [LINK]

This March, Design Corps will convene its tenth Structures for Inclusion conference on design activism in Washington, D.C., hosted by Howard University. “Social Economic Environmental Design: SEED” is the theme of the conference, which will take place on March 27-28, 2010. Panels and discussions will focus on “how to build on the success of the green design movement in addressing critical social and economic issues through design.” The conference was established to bring together ideas and practices about serving underserved populations through innovative design, finding value in thoughtful design, redefining the role of architect (e.g., architect as community organizer) and involving community in the design process. The conferences are held in collaboration with architecture schools and community-based organizations, and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Design Corps was founded in 1991 by Bryan Bell. [LINK]

Among events of interest at the upcoming College Art Association conference in Chicago is a panel called "The Power of the Image: The Studio Artist and Civil Society," February 10, 2010. Among the panelists in this Women's Caucus for Art event are artists Wendy Ewald and Brett Cook, who will talk about their latest book, "Who Am I In This Picture: Amherst College Portraits." The book documents issues of American institutions through portraits of and interviews with staff, students and faculty of Amherst College. The publication follows Ewald and Cook’s intimate work with 18 members of the college community in a number of contemplative, educational and creative exercises that focused on learning. The project acted as a "polycultural process of building community" and resulted in six 12½-foot by 30-foot portrait triptychs mounted across the Amherst College campus as well as an exhibition at the Mead Art Museum. See the Google map. [LINK]

Hudson Valley, N.Y., artists and communities celebrated the Henry Hudson Quadricentennial last year with processional arts events in Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck and New York City. Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles' Professional Arts Workshop facilitated the collaborative community processions. Poughkeepsie's "Walking on Air" in October opened the Walkway over the Hudson, a transformation of the Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge into a 6000'-long skyway 200' over the Hudson River. "Terra Incognita" led the 36th Annual New York Village Halloween Parade on the Avenue of the Americas: 200 people carrying a flotilla of 16th-century vessels and cartographic creatures -- in the pouring rain. "Sinterklass Returns" revived a 1980s Old Dutch Christmas tradition in Rhinebeck, with 200 community members attending a continuous, monthlong, drop-in "puppetraising" to create a flock of airborne snow geese, flying in the snow. [LINK]

Artists from all countries are invited to send a proposal for a site-specific outdoor public art installation that will involve working with local elementary school children in Taiwan. Deadline for the 19-day residency in rural Yunlin County is February 12, 2010, for proposals to create an artwork focusing on making a greener world and celebrating the importance of wetlands in Earth's environment. The Cheng Long Wetlands is a developing wetlands preserve and environmental education project in an economically depressed area of the southwestern coast of Taiwan. The Cheng Long Elementary School has about 75 children in grades K-6 (ages 5-12) who will join with the artists in this project. [LINK]

Winter's here and it's time for the Art Shanties on Minnesota's Medicine Lake: 20 public artworks and 15 mobile performances -- on the ice, January 16-February 7, 2010. Art Shanty Projects recommends a visit -- in real time or on the Web: "For an insiders peek at the creation of a lush fantasy, check out the Fanta Shanty blog. Follow the artistic process of the Shan-Tea Shanty on their Web site. The Art Swap Shanty blog is plump with construction visuals and commentary. Some highlights include finding out how the celestial bodies relate to your zodiac sign, revisiting the varied beauty of sweat bathing, non-stop dancing, filleting flawed notions in the Guerrilla Classroom, inspecting the intersection of art and science, detecting invisible reindeer, and transforming your sense of scale in the three-story Tiny Shanty." [LINK]

Artists will lead a conversation about public art and sustainability during "Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology," an exhibition at New York's Exit Art this winter. The show is a survey of a five-month voyage around the boroughs of New York by Waterpod, a floating, sculptural structure and community-building space designed as a futuristic habitat and an experimental platform for assessing the design and efficacy of living systems. It visited the five boroughs and Governors Island from June to October 2009. The discussion, February 4, 2010, includes Jennifer McGregor of Wave Hill, a public garden and cultural center in the Bronx; public artist Mary Miss; Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a “maintenance artist” known for her service-oriented artworks; Mary T. Mattingly, Waterpod founder; and members of her team. The exhibition, January 9–February 6, 2010, is part of Exit Art's SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) program. [LINK]

Museum director Richard Koshalek plans to install a 145-foot-tall inflatable meeting hall on Washington's National Mall to "foster a wide-ranging public debate on cultural values." Koshalek, newly appointed director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, wants the inflatable to swell out of the top of the internal courtyard of the museum, which sits on the Mall midway between the White House and the Capitol, says Nicolai Ouroussoff in the N.Y. Times (12/14/09). "The project could become something Washington has never had: a real democratic forum for the debate of cultural issues as varied as, say, Hollywood morals and the impact of fundamentalism on the arts. ... [T]he Hirshhorn project is informal, egalitarian and free of conventional hierarchies. ... It could also, of course, become a political punching bag." [LINK]

The Wormfarm Institute in Reedsburg, Wisc., is calling for submissions to its Roadside Culture Stand project; deadline is December 31, 2009. Roadside Culture Stands (urban/rural) are artist-designed and -built mobile farm stands that will be used to display and sell fresh local produce and the work of local artists. "The Roadside Culture Stand," says Wormfarm Project Director Donna Neuwirth, "tangibly unites art and farming – reminding us that culture surrounds our food and food imbues our culture. This project is open to artists, architects, mechanics, farmers, visionaries and handy folk throughout the upper Midwest." Each stand will be built on a 5x10-foot steel flatbed trailer, will incorporate an informational display component that highlights area food and cultural offerings and will have a home base but may also travel to local festivals, county fairs etc. Winning entries get $3500 for fabrication. [LINK]

People and animals at the bank of the Hudson River on the upper west side of Manhattan will gather with artist Aviva Rahmani as part of "350," the largest global day of climate action ever. On October 24, 2009, Rahmani will alternately walk to the water and sing Puccini's aria "Vissi d'arte," a capella, a song "about beauty and betrayal," and stop at the shore to draw pictures of the waters, reflecting on "how they are rising in some places under the assault of global warming while in other places, fresh clean water is vanishing." Simultaneously, people worldwide will be taking up to 4,000 similar actions, from climbers with 350 banners high on the melting slopes of Mount Everest to government officials in the Maldive Islands holding an underwater cabinet meeting to demand action on climate change before their nation disappears. [LINK]

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions is presenting "Mark Tribe: Port Huron Project," a large-scale video installation depicting reenactments of protest speeches from the New Left movement of the Vietnam era. The exhibition, October 21, 2009-January 24, 2010, screens reenactments that took place at the sites of the original speeches, delivered by actors or performance artists to audiences of invited guests and passers-by. The project aims to examine "artists’ relationships with the roots of American democracy, and the way in which these issues are still relevant today." Last year, LACE, Creative Time and Mark Tribe presented Cesar Chavez's 1971 speech "We Are Also Responsible" at L.A.'s Exposition Park. The documentation of this performance and other Port Huron Project reenactments, including "The Liberation of Our People: Angela Davis 1969/2008" and "Let Another World Be Born: Stokeley Carmichael 1967/2008," have been screened worldwide and online. [LINK]

The Dream Rocket project invites everyone to contribute a panel to the 36,467-square-foot Dream Quilt that will wrap the 37-story-tall Saturn V rocket replica in Huntsville, Alabama. Located at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, Saturn V will be wrapped by May 2010 in a quilt of 8,000 panels collected from contributors worldwide. Each panel will express a “dream theme” - hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow, says public artist Jennifer Marsh, Dream Rocket's director. “We want people all over the world to dream those audacious dreams, and to inspire them to make their dreams come true. The Dream Rocket will symbolize not just the dreams of individuals, but also the power of global collaboration.” Reserve a two-foot-square panel for $100 or reserve a panel for those who cannot afford the cost. Details are online. [LINK]

Math students at the Christopher Columbus Family Academy learn about angles by measuring whimsical figures of hot-air balloons, paper airplanes and pinwheels built right into the walls of their school. So says Winnie Hu in the N.Y. Times (10/2/09. The New Haven, Conn., school, says Hu, is one of a growing number of new/renovated U.S. public schools that look more like cultural centers than the austere, utilitarian houses of learning of the past, displaying museum-worthy pieces commissioned from artists. Schools that are aesthetically pleasing as well as functional turn plain brick-and-mortar walls into show-and-tell lessons. A series of 11 fiberglass panels, which look as if they were made of terra cotta, run along the outside of Columbus Academy, resembling a children’s puzzle with an array of wind- and water-themed figures, including parachutes, birds and Columbus’ ships. [LINK]

"Wonderland" is a new volunteer collaborative arts project in San Francisco's Tenderloin district involving artists, arts organizations, nonprofit agencies, business owners and community groups. The exhibition, October 17-November 15, 2009, encompasses 16 site-inspired projects set throughout the Tenderloin, created by 53 artists from San Francisco and beyond. The Tenderloin is the only largely working-class neighborhood in downtown San Francisco, home to low-income immigrant families, senior citizens, artists and homeless people. Directed by volunteer New York-based curator Lance Fung, artists have worked for a year with the Tenderloin community, including religious organizations, schools, local arts associations and the public, to develop the new artworks. Themes include giving a voice to children shuttered by the environment, human trafficking, theater, homelessness, immigrant communities, local history and embracing the beauty of historic architecture. The project is sponsored by the North of Market/Tenderloin Community Benefit District organization. [LINK]

Land Arts of the American West 2009 departed August 27 from Lubbock, Texas, for its annual semester-long field program, heading first for Twin Buttes, near White Sands, New Mexico. Their goal: "expanding the definition of land art through direct experience with the full range of human interventions in the landscape, from the inscriptions of pictographs and petrogylphs to the construction of roads, dwellings, and monuments, as well as traces of those actions." The group comprises instructor Chris Taylor, assistant Brice Taylor, eight participants and 16 field guests. The itinerary includes Ruby Ranch and Chaco Canyon, N.M.; Fire Point on the Grand Canyon North Rim; Nevada's Virginia River and Michael Heizer's earthwork "Double Negative"; Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" in Utah's Great Salt Lake; the Center for Land Use Interpretation at Wendover, Utah; and more. Details and syllabi are online. [LINK]

There's a spirited Net-wide discussion going on right now about public space following a spat between "starchitect" Frank Gehry and Fred Kent, president of Project for Public Spaces. The argument began at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July 2009, when Kent posed a question to Gehry about why iconic architecture so often fails to create good public places. Gehry promptly dismissed him and refused to answer the question. The confrontation was picked up by James Fallows (The Atlantic) in his blog, and both Gehry and Kent responded. “Around the world citizens are defining their future by focusing on their city’s civic assets, authentic qualities and compelling destinations,” Kent wrote, “not on blindly following the latest international fads conjured by starchitects.” Join in on David Sucher's City Comforts blog or the PPS blog with Jay Walljasper. [LINK]