http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/ News and information about community-based arts from the Community Arts Network and Art in the Public Interest. Copyright 2008 Thu, 08 May 2008 16:23:49 -0500 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.21 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss The show features the work of 152 artists from 17 Connecticut correctional facilities. See the CPA Web site's home page for the remarkable poster (downloadable). Community Partners in Action, Inc., (formerly the Connecticut Prison Association) is one of the nation's oldest nonprofit agencies. It began in January 1875 as the Friends of Prisoners Society to work in the brand-new field of criminal rehabilitation. The Prison Arts Program, started in 1978, provides classes and projects, as well as publication and exhibition opportunities, to people incarcerated in several of Connecticut’s correctional facilities. The program has an annual Journal and a permanent collection that travels to public schools, universities, libraries and community centers. The program is supported by donations and the sale of artworks by prisoners, which are available on the CPA Web site. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/annual_cpa_pris.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/annual_cpa_pris.php Corrections Thu, 08 May 2008 16:23:49 -0500 In February 2007, San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts, the city’s oldest alternative arts space, launched The Prison Project, a yearlong exploration of the California prison system. The Prison Project’s first public performance was an Open Process Event in which representatives from the Prison Activist Resource Center, California Prison Focus and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women entered into a public conversation with Intersection artists and staff. This essay emerges from Billone's Ph.D. dissertation research on U.S. penal-welfare performance in the 20th and 21st centuries. "In examining performance practices that spill over the boundaries between culture work and social work," she says, "I have been working to develop language with which to speak about performance practices that, like those of The Medea Project and Intersection for the Arts, are 'neither that, nor that.'" http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_the_7.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_the_7.php CANnews Thu, 08 May 2008 14:17:52 -0500 "When The Waitresses first marched in the 1979 Pasadena DooDah Parade, women made 43 cents to every dollar a man made. Now, women now make 77 cents, and people of color make 71 cents for every dollar a man makes - for the same job," says original Waitress, artist Jerri Allyn. Join Allyn and bandleader Chutney Berry, decked out in white uniforms, accented by red polka dot aprons and bowties. Rehearsal is 10:30 to 12, parade at noon, Unhappy Hour 5 p.m. The event is in conjunction with the exhibition, “Making it Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community" (March 2 - August 4), curated by Carey Lovelace. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/waitresses_to_m.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/waitresses_to_m.php Activism Thu, 08 May 2008 13:56:35 -0500 Mañjon is director of the Center for Art and Public Life at California College of the Arts, where she developed one of the first “Community Arts” majors in the U.S. In July, she becomes vice president for diversity and strategic partnerships at Weslyan University. Hillman is a poet, folklorist, anthropologist and arts-and-education consultant, based in Austin, Texas. Natarajan is a playwright and founding executive and literary director of Pangea World Theater in Minneapolis, Minn., a theater committed to bringing people together from different backgrounds and ethnicities. Turner is a 2007 graduate of the MFA in Arts Administration program at Virginia Tech, now working at Synchronicity Performance Group in Atlanta, Ga. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/api_names_new_c.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/api_names_new_c.php Infrastructure Wed, 07 May 2008 14:50:28 -0500 Shell was an ArtCorps volunteer in El Salvador, where she lived in the rural flatlands, forming popular-theater groups with youth to develop their skills as community leaders and actors for social change. The Revolutionary Youth Theater was an ensemble Shell brought together with survivors of the Tierra Arrasada or Scorched Earth massacre of October 20-24, 1981, which took the lives 600-800 innocent people, mostly women, children and elders. "The memory was buried under the scorched earth for 20 years," says Shell. The young people turned the survivor's memories into a play called "¡Qué No Se Vuelva a Repetir!" (We want it never to happen again.) This article first appeared in art’ishake, Issue No 5 Winter-Spring 2007, an e-publication Art4Development.net. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_a_yo.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_a_yo.php CANnews Wed, 07 May 2008 14:32:47 -0500 They are participants in an award-winning arts mentorship program by City Without Walls, New Jersey's oldest nonprofit alternative art space, founded 1975. The program features Newark artists mentoring gifted students in their studios for a semester, interns receiving real-world gallery experience, prominent artists lecturing at Newark high schools, and a culminating exhibition. Many of the students are from low-income families, and to make it possible for them to participate in ArtReach, each receives a stipend of $400. ArtReach has been called a "model" education program by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. This year’s exhibition opens with a performance by the Newark Boys Chorus School and features student videos, wall murals, photography, painting, sculpture, installations and time-lapse video. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/artreach_xvi_at.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/artreach_xvi_at.php Education Wed, 07 May 2008 13:36:07 -0500 The Lehigh Valley Black African Heritage History Project and Touchstone Theatre partnered on the new theater work with New York theater artist Peggy Pettitt, playwright Linda Parris-Bailey of Carpetbag Theatre in Knoxville, and composer Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock in D.C. They gathered oral histories and songs of the African-American citizens of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton to create the show, which features Pettitt and 25 community actors, and travels to the three cities during its run (through June 14). The History Project partners Muhlenberg College, Lehigh County's Senior Center and Historical Society, Kutztown University, Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society and Touchstone. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/another_river_f.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/another_river_f.php Theater/Performance Wed, 07 May 2008 12:00:17 -0500 The museum proposed the idea to the Mayor in recognition of two Mexican anniversaries and celebrations: the 200th anniversary of Mexican Independence and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. The National Museum of Mexican Art (formerly Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum is the largest and leading Méxican cultural institution in the U.S. In addition to visual-arts exhibitions and performance festivals, the museum has an education program serving more than 200,000 people annually ,including 60,000 K-12 students. 90.5 FM Radio Arte is the museum's youth-driven, bilingual public radio station committed to "advancing the voices of a multilayered society through socially conscious journalism, media literacy, training and programming." http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/2010_the_year_o.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/2010_the_year_o.php Cultural Democracy Tue, 06 May 2008 13:34:05 -0500 It's part of his ongoing PhotoBooth Project to document communities across the U.S. and create public installations of the collected portraits in those communities. Dogpatch is a nine-square-block area on the Waterfront with a distinctive and colorful history that "... contains architecturally and historically significant workers' cottages, factories, warehouses and public buildings constructed between 1860 to 1945," says John Borg in "The Story of Dogpatch," online. "It is one of the few neighborhoods to survive the 1906 earthquake and fire." The unveiling, which Irion calls "a great party and a chance for the neighborhood to get together and meet each other" is on the sidewalk at 900 Minnesota St., 5-7 p.m. Refreshments will be served. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/irions_sf_dogpa.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/irions_sf_dogpa.php Media Arts Tue, 06 May 2008 09:39:32 -0500 It's a long, deep look (with video) into a multi-arts collaboration out of Appalshop that's starting a national conversation about the U.S. prison industrial complex. The Thousand Kites project comprises a call-in hip-hop radio show, “Holler to the Hood” (H2H), which has become a national communications nexus for prisoners and their loved ones, especially through an annual “Calls from Home” special that is distributed nationally; a documentary film, “Up The Ridge”; a play, “Thousand Kites,” based on stories collected from a wide range of people whose lives have been touched by the prison system; other initiatives that combine these, such as a radio program interweaving documentary and dramatic elements; and an interactive Web site providing a connection point and a toolbox for people who want to work on this issue. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_gold.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_on_can_gold.php CANnews Mon, 05 May 2008 14:05:59 -0500 For the title exhibition at the Centre of Contemporary Art Thessaloniki, May 5-June 14, 2008, curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes (translocal.org) borrowed a banner slog from May 1968 in France, when "the whole heart of France was beating to the pulse of revolution." Focusing on "the interplay between the politics of the street, radical philosophy, and the explosion of creative responses in the period," it brings together artworks created in the immediate aftermath of 1968 and more recent responses to contemporary struggles for change. The show is one of a series of events organized under "Days of '68." Accompanied by a book, the show will travel to Budapest in September and Birmingham, England, in November. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/post_25.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/post_25.php Visual Art Mon, 05 May 2008 13:10:33 -0500 In "No Child...," May 11-June 1, 2008, Sun plays an entire classroom of children, their teachers, their parents, the principal, the janitor and even a security guard in what the Rep calls "a master class on overcoming the challenges in public education with humor and hope." They've augmented it online with video from the show, an MP3 interview with Sun and director Hal Brooks, and a great page of Educator's Resources. They're also offering low-cost student matinees including Q&A with Sun and free Teacher Study Guides linked to California Standards, as well as free Teaching Artists Organized workshops from the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, May 18 & 25, June 1 & 8. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/berkeley_rep_co.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/berkeley_rep_co.php Education Fri, 02 May 2008 14:17:40 -0500 Presented by the international children’s charity Plan and photography-event organizers Shoot Experience, the contest asks entrants to portray the current effects of climate change on their lives, how they can act now to reduce these effects, how their environment will change in the years to come and how they might adapt to that change. Entries are accepted May 1-July 31, 2008. The best entrants will have the chance to win a trip to New York and be exhibited at the United Nations HQ as part of International Youth Day, August 12. Last year the competition received 1,500 entries from 85 countries. More than 4,500 people attended exhibitions of Shoot Nations photographs on four continents. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/shoot_nations_2_1.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/shoot_nations_2_1.php Media Arts Fri, 02 May 2008 12:33:47 -0500 Co-presented with the Community Informatics Initiative at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the symposium is titled "Aesthetics as Resistance: The Act of Community Building." The schedule include speakers from surrounding universities and Turabo University, Puerto Rico, as well as DuSable Museum of African American History, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the PRCC and community and government representatives. Activities, all within the Paseo Boricua neighborhood, include a mural tour on the Paseo, Community Informatics Initiative workshops on working with teens and early-childhood learners, a play by Tato Laviera, performed by Pedro Albizu Campos High School students, and participation in the 30th Anniversary People's Parade. http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/community_as_in.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/community_as_in.php Community Development Fri, 02 May 2008 12:10:54 -0500 http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_percapita_f.php http://www.communityarts.net/apinews/archivefiles/2008/05/new_percapita_f.php Activism Thu, 01 May 2008 13:27:07 -0500