|
| |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 » 
April 30, 2007 Rufus Wainwright's art for social changeLinda Frye Burnham / 09:27 AM Canadian-American singer/composer Rufus Wainwright has a new album coming out and the single just might change the world. The album, "Release the Stars," comes out May 15, but you can buy the single right now on ITunes. It has the innocuous title "Going to a Town," but I think the lyrics are portentous. Here are a few lines: I'm going to a town that has already been burned down Those of us who travel already know that the rest of the world has changed its minds about Americans. Even those who used to love us have begun to dislike Americans intensely. You can see it in their eyes. Artists who want to change the way things are going should tap that sentiment. It will affect more people than art against war. Imagine a huge chorus of superstars from around the world expressing their disaffection. Americans can't stand to be hated. Not by everybody.
April 25, 2007 What if hip-hop didn't matter much?Linda Frye Burnham / 01:14 PM Kelefa Sanneh has an interesting article called "Don't Blame Hip-Hop" in the N.Y. Times (4/25/07) mulling over the hip-hop industry's role in the Don Imus flap and succeeding censorship debates, saying the strangest thing is that "hip-hop isn’t in an especially filthy mood right now. It sounds more light-hearted and clean-cut than it has in years. Hip-hop radio is full of cheerful dance tracks.." And closing with: "What if hip-hop’s lyrics shifted from tough talk and crude jokes to playful club exhortations — and it didn’t much matter? What if the controversial lyrics quieted down, but the problems didn’t? What if hip-hop didn’t matter that much, after all?"
April 23, 2007 Help plan an arts-ed conferenceLinda Frye Burnham / 03:25 PM Forwarded form the National Association of Community Schools of the Arts: Hello! The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts is conducting a survey to guide programming for the 2007 Conference for Community Arts Education (November 8-10, Los Angeles, CA). We're interested to know your thoughts as to how the conference can best meet the professional development and networking needs of community arts education leaders. The conference chiefly serves executive directors, program directors and trustees of community-based arts education programs and organizations. Here is a link to the survey, which should take just a few minutes to complete: Also, please feel free to share the link with anyone you feel might be interested in the conference. The survey closes on Monday, April 30. Thank you for your participation, Ken Cole
April 19, 2007 No, but I saw the movie.Linda Frye Burnham / 02:38 PM Thirty-three movies have been based on books made possible by NEA Literature Fellowships. You can read the list on the NEA Web site's Writer's Corner at http://www.arts.gov/features/Writers/Films.html. The Writer's Corner, which highlights the work of NEA Creative Writing Fellowships recipients from 2001 to the present, has been updated to include work, bios and statements by 39 of the FY 2007 recipients of Creative Writing Fellowships in Poetry.
April 16, 2007 Word from Virginia TechLinda Frye Burnham / 09:49 PM Forwarded from Ann Kilkelly at Tech: Carol and I are home, safe, shocked, after spending the morning in locked rooms, where we got news from CNN and people calling in from other offices on cell phones. Carol was teaching, I was at a Commission on Equal Opportunity and Diversity meeting discussing a project called, with predictive irony, "Safewatch" and listening to sirens screaming outside. We were informed that we were in lockdown because of the earlier shootings, , but it emerged that there was a shooting in progress in one of the classroom buildings. When the meeting was over (although the meeting mostly consisted of people trying to occasionally have group conversation while the rest of use read our computer screens), we were released to get away as fast as possible. Meanwhile the Pres of the University was in a room adjacent, explaining what he knew and/or was willing to say. They released us around 12:30, when the full horror began to register. Now we watch the screen waiting to understand why they didn't cancel classes after the first shooting, if this is connected to the two bomb threats last weekend, constructing scenarios in our minds that won't end up as awful or incomprehensible as this one, and on and on. Thanks for your concern. it has been an afternoon of communicating with a circle of loving people, whom we love.
Alleviating grief through performance: participate Linda Frye Burnham / 06:04 PM Performance art Paul Coulliard is spending eight hours a day for a whole month in Toronto's Offthemapgallery creating "Sitting with the Mountain," a performance piece in which he is "on a hunt for images that open up possibilities for moving through and alleviating trauma." He began April 16, 2007, and it's being documented in photographs posted online by artist Miklos Legrady. April 21, the midpoint of the performance, is scheduled as an open forum. Says Couillard: "Please feel free to participate in this project aimed at addressing the particular traumas associated with loss. One friend, when he heard about 'Sitting with the mountain," indicated to me that writing and speaking eulogies has been an important way of dealing with loss in his life. For the Open Forum, I invite you to visit and deliver your own eulogies for whatever you have lost (people, places, situations, ideals, objects...). If you are unable to attend, you can email me your eulogy and it will be read aloud, entering it into the aural texture of the performance. You may also consider sending texts that you think of as serving the function of eulogy -- e.g. pertinent literary passages, quotations, etc. In order to guarantee their inclusion in the Open Forum, any texts you wish to have read aloud would need to reach my email box by 8 pm local time (EDT) on Friday, April 20." E-mail:
CANu folks planning for Imagining America Linda Frye Burnham / 05:45 PM There's an interesting planning session going on at CANuniversity, CAN's training and education listserv on Yahoo. Academics and scholars in community-based art are conferring with each other about making presentations at the annual conference of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, September 7-8, 2007, in Syracuse, N.Y. The CANu list, with 168 members, is a great way for educators, trainers and students to keep in touch with each other. If you'd like to join the listserv (free), go here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/canuniversity/.
Our best to Virginia Tech Linda Frye Burnham / 05:39 PM Thirty-three people are dead after two shooting rampages on the campus of Virginia Tech today. Our best goes out to the university, academic home of Theatre Professor Bob Leonard and Interdisciplinary Studies Professor Ann Kilkelly, both co-founders of CAN. Virginia Tech helped CAN with its initial funding and we think fondly of it.
April 13, 2007 Two great foundation jobs!Linda Frye Burnham / 07:13 AM (Thanks, Craig Zelizer.) Program Officer, Performing Arts Program (Two Positions Available) The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1966 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy, population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
April 11, 2007 Vote for an Art Project on Net2Linda Frye Burnham / 02:24 PM NetSquared (Net2) is an online community that was developed "to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations." Describing their project, they say: "There's a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as 'Web 2.0'; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable." Why do social benefit organizations need Net2, you ask? "Non-profits and NGOs thrive on relationships – which means the social web holds tremendous potential to transform their effectiveness and impact. We want to help you build the strategic capacity, knowledge and skills you need to put these powerful new online tools to work achieving positive changes." Right now, Net2 has 150+ projects listed on its Web site, eligible for the first Net2 Innovation Fund Awards for most effective use of the social web for social change. You can vote online for your favorite project through noon PDT, April 14. Artist Erika Block suggests you vote for SEE, Siti's Extended Ensemble, one of the few arts projects on the list. You have to join to vote but it's free. http://www.netsquared.org/PROJECTS/VOTE
Work in Central America Linda Frye Burnham / 10:57 AM Are you an artist who would like to live in Central America promoting civic engagement, environmental conservation, sustainable agriculture, public health and women's and children's rights? Get in touch with ArtCorps by May 7, 2007, for an 11-month placement starting early 2008. If you're fluent in Spanish and satisfy other qualifications, you can be placed with an NGO in Guatemala or El Salvador, strengthening international development. Benefits include international transportation, food and lodging, $1,300 art-project expenses, medical insurance, training with a Peace Corps trainer, a mid-year retreat with the other artists and ArtCorps staff, including transportation to the site and food and lodging during the retreat, and more. See the ArtCorps Web site for details, advice and reports from previous ArtCorps artists at http://www.artcorp.org/.
April 10, 2007 Michael Rohd to NorthwesternLinda Frye Burnham / 04:18 PM Forwarded from Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon: Artistic Director Michael Rohd has accepted a two year visiting appointment at Chicago’s Northwestern University as the Ethel M. Barber Assistant Professor in Theater, a newly created position on the faculty of the University’s School of Communication in the area of Devising Performance. He begins in September 2007. Rohd has been a guest faculty member at Northwestern the past two academic years, regularly traveling back and forth between Portland and Chicago. Sojourn Theatre’s work will continue, through special projects at the company’s home-base (which will remain Portland) and through Rohd’s work in Chicago and around the nation. Sojourn continues to be a flexible, expansive means for the ensemble and its collaborators, under the leadership of artistic director Rohd, to develop a unique body of theatrically adventurous, often civically engaged work. The potential for collaboration with Northwestern University is clear, and the exploration of university based projects that act as a Lab for the work Sojourn does around the US has already begun.
More Goldbard: Podcast from Wisconsin Linda Frye Burnham / 03:14 PM Arlene Goldbard is still on the road talking about her new book "New Creative Community" (New Village Press, 2006). She was interviewed on the Bat Segundo podcast show (#107) discussing "artistic individuality vs. creative community, the benefits of 20th century funding for the arts, the WPA, community murals, public plays, happenings, the political agenda of “creative community,” collective absolutism, the Forum Theatre and “spectactors,” collaborations between professional and amateur artists, the Great Wall of Los Angeles, the dangers of constant artistic modifications, impoverished people and art, art and fame, reality TV, Stalinism, the Ukiah Players Theatre, and government artistic subsidization." (That's Segundo's list). You'll find it at http://www.edrants.com/segundo/.
No One Belongs Here More Than You Linda Frye Burnham / 10:06 AM OK, this doesn't have much to do with community art, but I just have to share with you a Web site by writer Miranda July, http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/. She's trying to publicize a new book of her stories. She writes the text of the Web site on the top of her refrigerator with a dry-erase marker, then switches to her stove top because it's easier to erase. Keep clicking, even past the all-black page. Just delightful. (Thanks, Steve Durland.) July, who you might remember from her film "Me and You and Everyone We Know," is also a collaborator with Harrell Fletcher in a fabulous participatory Web project called Learning To Love You More (http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/). Go there too.
April 05, 2007 HeartwarmerLinda Frye Burnham / 01:10 PM Want to read another of those powerful statements about how art saves lives? Read an interview with Native American Stewardship Council member Jeanne Givens about an experience at the Coeur d’Alene Schitsu'umsh Indian reservation in Idaho, where she works at the Coeur d’Alene Tribal School.
April 03, 2007 Go Singing in the Golden Isles in MayLinda Frye Burnham / 05:13 PM "Singing for Fun in Our Natural Environment" is a singing and natural-history workshop on Ossabaw Island, Ga., May 4-6, 2007, with singer Elise Witt & Mary Elfner, cultural historian of the Georgia barrier islands. Owned by the Nature Consevancy of Georgia, Ossabaw is seven miles south of Savannah and accessible only by boat. It has been inhabited by humans for 4,000 years. Here's the workshop description: This workshop is an opportunity for individuals to learn more about their own voice, to build community through group singing, and to celebrate the natural environment in song. Each session will begin with breathing and relaxation to find the most natural and efficient way to use the voices we have. Exercises and games combining vocal and physical activities follow, as participants begin to join their voices into a group sound. Through songs from many cultures and exciting vocal improvisations, we will explore the rainbow of colors of which our voices are capable. We will let ourselves be inspired by the beautiful nature of Ossabaw Island. This workshop is open to and appropriate for experienced and new singers alike, and music reading is NOT a prerequisite. Cost of this unique weekend workshop is $375. Price includes boat transportation to and from Ossabaw, accommodations, meals, a natural and cultural history tour of the island, and the singing workshop with Elise Witt. Registration is limited to 20 participants.http://www.mindspring.com/~emworld/pages/classes.html |
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
