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« March 2009 | Main | May 2009 » 
April 29, 2009 Happy Birthday, Highways, May 1Linda Frye Burnham / 11:23 AM Here's a Happy 20th Birthday to Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, Calif., founded by Tim Miller and myself on May 1, 1989. Highways is celebrating with a performance by the Los Angeles Poverty Department, John Malpede's performance company of homeless and formerly homeless. LAPD was the first company ever to perform at Highways. We had to hire a fireman to stand in the lobby every night so the building and safety department didn't shut us down for having too steep a wheelchair ramp in the space. It was hilarious. Malpede and his wife, Henriette Brouwer, are now residents at the 18th Street Arts Center, where Highways is located. 18th Street was 20 last year; for several years it was the former home and publisher of High Performance magazine, the forerunner of the Community Arts Network. Kudos to Leo Garcia, current director of Highways, for keeping the ball in the air. And love to Tim, wherever you are touring right now. I will always remember our initial little gathering, May 1, 1989, when I couldn't help singing a few lines from James Taylor: "First day of May, things are beginning, our side is winning, hip hip hooray."
April 28, 2009 Call for chapters, contributionsLinda Frye Burnham / 10:47 AM Chapter proposals are due May 29, 2009, for a new book, "A Way Out of No Way: The Arts as Social Justice in Education," edited by Mary Stone Hanley, George Mason University; George Noblit, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Thomas Barone, Arizona State University. The book is intended for researchers, theorists, teachers, teacher educators, artists, graduate students, and policy makers who are interested in the ways that the arts might address issues of equity and excellence in education. The book will include conceptual work and examples of practice and experience.
April 24, 2009 Back from CaliforniaLinda Frye Burnham / 10:53 AM The Community Arts Convening and Research Project (CACRP) gathering at Cal State U. Monterey Bay was both mellow and stimulating. CSUMB's Amalia Mesa-Bains and her crew did a fabulous job of making everybody at home and guiding us gently to workgroups on important topics. We also got presentations by young (teen) artists who have been working together with CSUMB and The East Bay Center for Performing Arts in Richmond (with CACRP mini-grants). Of course, we all shared sad news from around the country about cutbacks in everybody's budget and the demise of several community partner organizations, thanks to the current economic crisis. The CSUMB campus is on an old Army base a little north of Monterey: the most unusual campus I have ever been on. Check it out. There was a rare heat wave while we were there. Of course the central coast is just stunning any time of the year, What I enjoy most about these CACRP gatherings is the mix of people, especially all the young folks. CACRP goes out of its way to attract students and community partners as well as academics and we heard about some truly inspiring projects among the students. There was a lot of talk about the future of CACRP. It's still a kind of ad hoc coalition, not a formal organization, funded by yearly grants, so there's no guarantee of support. So far it's been running on $100,000 a year (for two years) from the generous Cummings Foundation. It's amazing what they get done for that small amount of money: publishing AND convening AND six community dialogues across the country. But the part-time staff at MICA are faculty who get no release time for CACRP activities and they are knackered! Will be interesting to see where it goes from here. The group has at least four tracks of intense activity going at once and I think they could stop and take a breath and make a case to funders for a much larger budget for a long-range plan. It's really our only national coalition focused specifically on community arts and it would be tough to lose it. In any case, you will be reading the next volume of their writings in Community Arts Perspectives on CAN. Community Arts Convening and Research Project
April 23, 2009 At U. Wisc.-Madison: first scholarly spoken-word, hip-hop programLinda Frye Burnham / 04:04 PM The First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community is a multicultural artistic program for incoming students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, "the first university program in the country centered on spoken word and hip-hop culture." The First Wave offers students the opportunity to live, study, and create together in a close-knit, dynamic campus community. Administered by the Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI), the First Wave Learning Community's inaugural cohort of 15 students began their UW-Madison career in the fall 2007 semester. (Thanks, Bob Leonard.) First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community
April 20, 2009 Hi from Monterey!Linda Frye Burnham / 03:43 PM I'm at Day Two of the second annual CACRP (Community Arts Convening and Research Project) meeting at Cal state University Monterey Bay, hosted by the Visual and Public Art Program. Looks like about 100 or so people: academics, working artists and community participants of all ages and backgrounds (really!). It's HOT, meaning about 80 degrees. Pretty unusual for Monterey. I'm in a small group talking about international networks and so far it's very interesting and the food is great. Tonight we're going to the Steinbeck Cetner to learn about their African-American history project and EAT SEAFOOD. More later.
April 13, 2009 Chris Taylor on paneling in the middle of a protestLinda Frye Burnham / 11:07 AM Chris Taylor (Land Arts of the American West) wrote to the Land Arts listserv about his recent panel at Parsons/New School in N.Y.C., "Reclamation of Post-Industrial Territories: Land Arts and The Incubo Atacama Lab," which had to fight its way into the building through a student protest (about the role students play in the operation and future of the school). Taylor's report about the struggle is available on Jamie Kruse's Smudge Studio site, followed by a nice report on the panel conversation by Kruse herself. "Land Arts listserv: Land Arts and Atacama Land at Parsons/New School"
April 09, 2009 An artist's dream house in the desertLinda Frye Burnham / 02:56 PM If you've ever dreamed about building a house in the desert out of found objects, you must read "The Master Builder Cuts Loose" by Penelope Green (NY Times, 4/0/09). It's about sculptor Randy Polumbo's Jackrabbit Homestead in south Joshua Tree, Calif. Wonderful audio slide show of the house and the "Grotto." Not to miss. (Thanks, Kim Stringfellow.) "The Master Builder Cuts Loose"
April 06, 2009 Why Big Art matters in bad timesLinda Frye Burnham / 04:04 PM By Barry Johnson, The Oregonian April 01, 2009. Excerpt: "The arts are the way we humans come to grips with our condition and then figure out how to transcend it, one way or another. They are more important to us in bad times than in good. They aren't a "luxury" item; they are squarely in the middle of our researches into what it means to be human. And our large arts organizations do a lot of that work. They reach more of us; they have the resources to hire full time researchers (which is one good way to think of an actor or dancer or musician); they have a history of dedication to the task. ... The bigger companies/organizations are the ones with the resources to have education programs and departments. We might have more smaller companies if the big trees vanished, but would we have 70+ symphony-level classical musicians living in town? Probably not. Same with dancers and actors. But I don't really want to find out what would happen!" Thanks, Michael Rohd (who added a comment to the article, about smaller orgs). "Why Big Art matters in bad times"
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