The CAN Report

The State of the Field of Community Cultural Development: Something New Emerges

A Report from the CAN Gathering, May 2004

By Linda Frye Burnham, Steven Durland and Maryo Gard Ewell

Published by Art in the Public Interest July, 2004

Table of Contents Summary The Charge of the Gathering, Its Methodology and Terms Comparing the Field: 2001 to 2004 Emergence of a New Energy What Must Happen for This Field to Develop? Appendices

COMPARING THE FIELD: 2001 TO 2004

"Creative Community" was published in 2001. At that time, Adams and Goldbard characterized the “state of the field” in the United States this way.

• Infrastructure: Little professional infrastructure — journals, support sources or training
• Membership: “Atomized and dispersed” and “invisible” in contrast to many other countries; internally has “no clear identity as a profession”
• Financial support: minimal
• Marginalization: “Because it employs the same art forms as conventional arts disciplines (e.g., dance, painting, film), work in the field has mostly been treated as a marginal manifestation of mainstream arts activities.”
• Language: Practitioners constantly forced to frame their work in the language of social service or arts funders[3]

Since Adams and Goldbard described the field as it was in 2001, the environment has changed, and these changes influence current ideas and practice. Some of these changes have been the exponential growth of the Internet and technology; the shrinking and shifting of resources; globalization; change in public values; urgency of training for the next generation of cultural workers; the increasing importance of collaboration as a vehicle to affect change; and the expansion of audiences.

Three initiatives have become visible and influential for the field — nationally and internationally — in the last five years, indicating an upsurge of interest and participation in CCD work:

• The Animating Democracy Initiative (from Americans for the Arts, funded by the Ford Foundation), which ended its initial phase in 2003, fostered art-based civic dialogue with 32 new projects, publications, profiles, training, interdisciplinary critical writing and discussion, a rich Internet site, and more. Perhaps most important, ADI created a number of cross-disciplinary, face-to-face convenings where roughly the same group of CCD participants met to delve deeply into the work and related social issues. At the final meeting in Michigan in 2003, the 200 participants facilitated the meeting themselves and resolved to meet again under their own steam. In this case, a bonded network was created in the field and civic dialogue was stimulated across the U.S.
• Rockefeller's PACT (Partnerships Affirming Community Transforming) program, which went on hiatus in 2004, has funded 97 CCD projects; has supported one national convening of PACT grantees and one international gathering of artists, activists, scholars and others involved in the CCD field all over the world; and has supported the production of two landmark publications. In its most recent RFP (for 2003), PACT sought projects that would address further development of the CCD field. The number of applications received topped 500, an indicator of participation and need in the field.
• The Community Arts Network became a central meeting place in cyberspace for the field. Online usage increased from about 4,000 visits a month in 2001 to 29,000 visits a month in 2004. Essays in the archive topped 300; its growing list of links to CCD projects on the Web number over 600; 1,300 individuals receive its monthly e-mail newsletter. CAN receives about 900 visits every day, especially from students and interested non-arts researchers — an indicator of broad public interest and the importance of an accessible, free online resource.

The 2004 Gathering clearly demonstrated that the field has been evolving — in some cases, dramatically. Indicators of this evolution follow, organized by Adams and Goldbard's outline in 2001: infrastructure, membership, financial support, marginalization and language.

Infrastructure

Longevity of Key Organizations

Community cultural development has been practiced in many ways in the United States since early in the 20th century, but it was not until the 1960s that independent nonprofit organizations were formed to incubate, support and extend the work. Many of these organizations have celebrated their 35th anniversaries and continue to lead the field. Some examples from organizations whose founders were at the CAN Gathering: Appalshop (1969), Junebug Productions (1963), Carpetbag Theatre (1969), Alternate ROOTS (1976), SPARC (1976), Teatro Pregones (1979) and Elders Share the Arts (1979).[4]

These, and many other organizations, continue to create new work and experiment with new approaches to artist/community collaborations. There are, in short, “elder” organizations in this field. Many of these them still include their founding artist-visionaries, who have been mentoring and training a new generation of leadership — a subject of deep interest and concern to them

Proliferation of New Organizations

In addition to the presence of “elder” organizations, the field is seeing a proliferation of new organizations and initiatives — testimony to the timeliness of the ideas of community cultural development. Examples created recently by Gathering participants are the National Center for Creative Aging and Artists Without Borders.[5]

Established Organizations Experimenting with Cultural Development

Another indicator of the growth of this field is the incorporation of its ideas into the work of established organizations — organizations not formed with a community cultural development mission. In the universe of arts organizations, for instance, we can point to the energy of the National Performance Network's Community Fund. Among non-arts organizations, in Detroit, the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services has a Cultural Arts Department launching the first Arab American National Museum. Collaborations between the arts and non-arts universes include such projects as Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE).

At the university level, there are several instances of significant programs that help faculty and students create partnerships with community groups.[6]

National Recognition/Engaging in Policy-Making

In addition to national awards in the arts and local awards, leaders of the community cultural development field are receiving national attention and accolades for leadership and social activism. Programs citing CAN Gathering participants include: The Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World, the Guggenheim Fellows Program, the National Council on Aging and the Federal Administration on Aging, the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership program and the MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program.[7]

Awards such as these bring awareness to the field and individuals can use this attention to position the ideas of the field in national conversations. But as important is the increasing participation of CCD practitioners in policy-making for their own communities.[8]

A Shared Body of Theory, Methodology and Practice

The values that are shared by the practitioners of the CCD field have already been described. With these foundational values, we are seeing many activities that build the field for academics/observers and for practitioners.

The CCD field is documenting its work. Stories, case studies and testimonials are available by the hundreds. Videos abound. Most CCD organizations have Web sites. Sources include CAN, Roadside Theater and SPARC.[9]

A field must go beyond documentation, however. Story upon story can be told that CCD practitioners “know” exemplify good practice; but they are beginning to analyze and codify these practices. Examples of those engaged in this effort include The Animating Democracy Initiative, Jan Cohen-Cruz, The Wallace Foundation, Caron Atlas and Tom Borrup, NPN and CAN.[10]

Practitioners are learning to evaluate their work. The field has primarily used story or anecdote as its evaluation technique, telling of the young person who discovered her latent leadership qualities during a community art-making process, or of the homeless person who discovered his voice in exposing the mendacity of law-enforcement agents through participation in a theater piece. Stories tend to reflect a single individual, or a single group, at a single moment in time. There had been relatively little quantitative evidence about the long-term impact of cultural projects, but practitioners are becoming increasingly systematic about collecting evidence. Examples include Roadside Theater, NPN and the Urban Institute.[11]

Sharing Information

Until very recently, there had been relatively few books available about community cultural development. There were some under different rubrics from earlier in the century (Robert Gard, Percy Mackaye). There were books about “socio-cultural animation” published by the Council of Europe in the 1970s, but these are no longer available.

Recently, however, we are seeing more. For example: Limited only to CAN Gathering authors of books useful to CCD and published since 1990: Arlene Goldbard, Arnold Aprill, Caron Atlas, Norma Bowles, Linda Burnham and Steven Durland, Ron Chew, William Cleveland, Dudley Cocke, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Susan Perlstein and Barbara Schaffer Bacon.[12]

There are numerous other seminal, recent books and works in all media and on the Web that inform the CCD field, including works that are indirectly related (for example, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," Freire, 1972, "Bowling Alone," Putnam, 2000, or "The Creative City," Landry, 2000). CAN is developing a bibliography database for the field; a beginning list is available in Appendix IV.

While Americans for the Arts and Arts Extension Service both publish and sell materials related to the field, to our knowledge there is no commercial bookseller or publisher concentrating on this work in a serious way.

Most fields have at least one, if not multiple, journals. Five years ago, API began trying to fill this need for the field of community cultural development with the establishment of the Community Arts Network. It was preceded by API's High Performance magazine (1978-1998), which covered community arts for its final ten years.

An Archive

Thanks to the Internet, it is more possible than ever to locate and investigate work done by others, and with audio and video streaming, it is possible to experience it, at least in part. CAN is a virtual archive for the field, and there are other archive examples.[13]

However, despite the comprehensive documentation undertaken by most of its practitioners, there is no central place for this documentation (except that which is online) to reside; there is no single place where interested people can start seeking information; there is no repository for the many important historic documents and books that are not scanned. People and organizations with valuable collections are naturally hesitant to give these materials away unless they are confident that they will be appropriately catalogued and preserved, that finders' aids will be produced, and that funding will be provided for upkeep, maintenance, expansion and marketing.

Training

The wealth of training for the new or aspiring practitioner in community cultural development is a strong indicator of the importance of the field.

There are at least 55 college/university experiential training programs available in the U.S. and U.K. — degree programs, certificate programs and workshops where students both study academically and work in the community.

“Training” in community cultural development must be more than formal study. Mentoring was mentioned frequently during the Gathering — both as a way for new practitioners to learn from the experience of the veteran, and for the veteran to learn from the fresh visions of the newcomer. Just as important is the training of a new generation of administrators to take over the elder organizations as the founders retire.[14]

Places to Meet and Interact

A professional association’s annual conference is, of course, the traditional answer to this need: field-evolving papers are read, new ideas discussed, skills sharpened, networks strengthened. There is no equivalent in the CCD field, especially as practitioners deem it undesirable (at least for now) to create a new professional organization. Some use national gatherings of other organizations as a chance to meet with their peers, often a fruitful opportunity for sharing as practitioners move amongst various conferences representing various fields. For the moment, however, occasional gathering such as this one fill the need, coupled with the opportunity to gather in cyberspace.[15]

Incorporating the Field into Broader Conversation

Building the field of community cultural development requires that conversation with other fields be a “two-way street.” CCD practitioners draw from other fields so that their knowledge — and most important, their effectiveness — can evolve. But they have something significant to offer those fields, as well. Whether “other fields” refers to “the field of dance” or “the field of urban development,” those fields need to be aware of CCD practitioners, and of what they offer, so that the ambitions of those fields can be furthered as well. Participants at the Gathering indicate that they have begun to dialogue with practitioners from other fields, read their books and attend their conferences in order to create mutual awareness and enhance dialogue. Certainly projects such as the Village of Arts & Humanities in Philadelphia or Project Row Houses in Houston or Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education could not have been achieved without the participation and support of city planners, school leaders, municipal officials, visionary lenders and developers and others.

The challenge, now, is to transform this situational awareness into more general awareness in these fields. In the world of business and government, this challenge would be met with a public-relations campaign to "sell" the value of this work to the broader public, but such a task would most likely be undertaken by a dedicated service organization, which the CCD field lacks at the moment.

Some CCD practitioners are delving into other fields in newer ways. This will be described in another section of this report.

Membership

Linda Burnham, API co-director, observed that “The field of community art is growing fast … I am finding more and more wonderful stories to tell and publish.”[16] Nonetheless, identifying the “membership” of the CCD field may be its greatest challenge. The seemingly simple question “Do we know who we are?”[17] posed by participant Lonnie Graham was daunting.

There were people at the Gathering who seemed genuinely surprised by the spread of this activity across the country, as represented by the 27 participants, many of who did not know anyone in the room. Said API's Steven Durland later, "Lonnie's 'who are we' question certainly indicates that it's not just that we don't know who all of us are, but that some of 'us' don't even know we're 'us.'"[18]

Potential “members” (here used to refer to “like-minded people”) are scattered: There are CCD practitioners throughout the ranks of artists, art students and arts administrators. There are also CCD practitioners throughout the ranks of planners, municipal officials, lenders, developers, philosophers, teachers, social critics, doctors, farmers and more. At this point, the “membership” of the CCD field can be identified primarily in networks.[19] In addition, there are networks that grow around the issues of community where the arts are a subset, and networks that grow around the issues of art where community is a subset.

Yet the very urgency that threatens our society is forcing cultural workers to realize that they must address the condition that Adams and Goldbard described as “atomized and dispersed” if they are to make significant social impact. Participants discussed a wide array of strategies and personally committed to courses of action toward addressing their concerns.

Funding / Marginalization / Language

Participants at the Gathering would agree that in terms of financial support and marginalization by arts funders, relatively little has changed since 1991, when public arts funding dropped precipitously after the launch of the so-called "cultures war" between political liberals and conservatives. Indeed, the situation has worsened, for economic crisis has caused a drastic drop in arts funding across the boards. The crisis in state arts agencies has had the widest impact. The CCD practitioners at the Gathering showed an acute awareness that much foundation funding is reducing as well. Some foundations are withdrawing from the arts to a great degree. Some foundations that have shown interest in supporting CCD have withdrawn that support.[20] Funding for some prominent initiatives is either coming to an end or changing.[21]

The National Endowment for the Arts is slowly regaining the financial footing it had in the 1990s, and many of its programs are earmarked for forms of community cultural development, but the grant amounts are miniscule compared to the past, and the agency is a political football. Standards and policies change with government administrations. Recent history suggests that newly funded federal programs are more likely to tour Shakespeare plays than support living artists and organizations that have been doing innovative creative work in and with their communities for decades.

The impact of a shrinking funding pool goes far beyond the budgetary bottom line. Some participants described allocating so much time to fundraising that their creative work is being diluted. Some described the precarious existence of individual artist-practitioners, living with minimal or no insurance, retirement plans or other safety nets. Times are especially precarious for CCD practitioners supporting nonprofit organizations with salaries and operating expenses to meet — including several of the “elder” institutions in the field. Some described shrinking company size and shrinking administrative staff, leading to the increasing overextension of artists and administrators. Some described the curtailing of program offerings.

Cultural organizations are aware of the need to be entrepreneurial, recognizing that grant-dependency is dangerous. While some organizations, such as Roadside Theater, have earned as much as 60% of their revenue from touring, others are working hard to replace grant funds with earned income by creating accredited education programs or investigating profits from intellectual property sales. Many are creating partnerships or working for hire with local institutions, such as schools, universities, hospitals and prisons. Some are looking for financial support through Empowerment Zone development in their neighborhoods.

But whatever money they seek, they must compete with others in their own and related fields for both earned and unearned income. Turning to their own communities for support is always an option. But even though their communities support them as much as they can, it is still not enough to keep the field healthy. This is not because the work has not been beneficial, but because these artists choose to work in communities that need help the most, communities that are small and poor. Community support most often comes as volunteer labor.

The funding situation is interwoven with the issues of marginalization and language identified by Adams and Goldbard. Participants agreed that “framing their work in the language of social-service or arts funders” is still a major challenge: that social-service funders often fail to see the importance of the arts in addressing social change. The arts community itself may be marginalizing the field; a common complaint among community-based artists is that their work is not seen as art, but as social work. The artists at the Gathering maintained that this is still an issue.

Perhaps because the work is so values-based; because it simultaneously includes art making, cultural exploration and issue addressing; and because it uses the lenses of many cultures, CCD practitioners often turn to story as meta-language. Yet our society, while informally moved by stories, does not formally acknowledge story as a valid means of discourse, as an evaluation tool. While CCD practitioners are fairly skilled at translation — learning the language of other fields, and using it to talk about what they do to people in those fields — they are not yet skilled at the reverse — how to engage other fields in the terms of community cultural development. Practitioners claimed to be desperate for a common language in which to describe their work that values it both as art and as social benefit.

Much has been written in the last decade that could be useful to the practitioners at the CAN Gathering in addressing their call for language and theory, but it became clear at the Gathering that many of them are not aware of or do not use the resources that do exist. While the Rockefeller Foundation has broken important ground by publishing two important books about the field by Adams and Goldbard, their terminology and methodology have not percolated up through the field. While CAN has published hundreds of defining documents since 1999, many of them go unread by these field leaders. Compare the resources listed above with the "burning questions" evinced in 2004 by these practitioners, and the gap becomes visible. Perhaps an answer is a large investment in marketing the tools that have already been produced.

This group's relative ignorance of the wealth of resources recently developed in the field points to a larger issue: As has been mentioned, although the 27 CCD practitioners at the Gathering have all been doing significant and award-winning work in local community cultural development for years, many of them had never met or even learned of each other's existence. In fact, some did not have any sense of the breadth and depth of the field as it revealed itself in this Gathering. In this sense, if we are to consider all the people we know about who are engaged in CCD work across the country and the globe, the field is brand new.

The challenge is not only to make these practitioners aware of the resources available to them; the challenge is to chart the field itself, find out "who 'we' are," as Lonnie Graham wondered. Once that is determined, an organized effort must be made to reach this broad national/international field of practitioners, make them aware of each other, and apprise them of what has already been done in each of the areas of concern that came to light at this Gathering.

In the meantime, it might be urgent to ask whether or not those resources and opportunities will remain available long enough for the field to discover them before they are withdrawn for lack of interest. Thus, field development, the archiving of information and a broadly supported system of communication are among the tasks before us. This seems to point the need for a centralized service organization. Yet experienced CCD practitioners are reluctant to undertake the foundation of yet another organization, and their expressed need for centralization of the field has not produced the energy to take up this initiative.

2004: What Burning Questions Remain?

Participants’ “burning questions,” informed by these changes, can be clustered, and listed according to the frequency that they were mentioned.

• What is good practice? Are the values of community cultural development clear? What are its definitions? What are its biases, and are they overt? Has the field a means to offer criticism? Does it have clear goals and aspirations that can ground evaluation questions? Is there appropriate methodology for evaluation as well as for “pure research”?
• Are there accessible resources for this work? What funds are still available, and could be made available if lead organizations, such as Rockefeller, aggressively championed cultural work? What should be the role of the public sector in funding community cultural development? Is it true that funds are being shifted to “mainstream” organizations for work better done by smaller, neighborhood-based groups; how do cultural workers respond?
• How can cultural work promote a genuinely democratic and just society? Are the preconditions for democracy indeed a safe space — literally and metaphorically — in which to speak: a belief that everyone has a right to speak, a belief in the importance that diversity brings to society, a belief that participation in one’s culture is a right? How effectively are cultural workers creating these conditions?
• What is the role of community arts practitioners as leaders in the struggle to change the nature of society? Why have we quelled our voice, to some extent at least, over the last decade? What will it take to “break our silence” and speak out — and encourage others to speak out — against the forces that threaten democracy? Do artists have a particular role to play, and what is it? Do they have a responsibility to mobilize themselves and other artists?
• How can CCD practitioners make this work sustainable? They’ve created a lot of short-term successes and stories, but can they build something into the process to ensure that the work, the changes, continue, and what is that “something”? What collaborations are necessary to at least predict a good chance of success for long-term change?
• What is the continuum of this work, connecting with those who have come before, and leaving something of significance for use by the next generation? Who are the heroes and heroines of previous generations, not only in community cultural development but also in other fields that intersect it, and how can practitioners claim them? Who will come after? How are the visions of young people different from those of today’s practitioners, and how can young people and veteran practitioners learn from one another?
• What is the role of “aesthetics” in this work? Is the social change that practitioners envision dependent on the arts, or can non-arts-based work accomplish the same changes? Participants acknowledged that community cultural development is a field in which “participatory process” and “artistic product” are inextricably intertwined, but how?
• To what extent is “sense of place” essential to this work?
• How do practitioners personally survive? Burnout, dwindling resources, increasing hours, smaller staffs and companies, are taking their toll; conviction has demanded the work, but the reality is, there are few to no retirement plans or adequate health insurance for cultural workers.
• How can practitioners be both “community-based” and members of a global society?

We should note that “observers” of the field (such as the staff of API) and “practitioners” in the field (such as artists) differed in some respects, not surprisingly. The “observers” tended to be more philosophical, and questions of democracy and social justice were raised most frequently; where the most frequently mentioned concern of the practitioners was about their leadership role in making change happen.

Participants did not pretend to answer these questions definitively, although they surfaced many ideas, concerns and issues for each. These will surely dominate their practice and reflection over the next several years. Yet at the Gathering, there was the persistent feeling that these practitioners have hit something of a ceiling, and are asking the same questions year after year, with some relief from "field development," but not enough.

[Next: Emergence of a New Energy]  [Table of Contents]

[3] Adams and Goldbard, paraphrased from p. 3-4

[4] Examples of "elder" CCD organizations (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• Appalshop grew out of the War on Poverty in Appalachia in 1969 and spawned Roadside Theater, the American Festival Project, a film/video company, a television station and a radio station.
• Junebug Productions of New Orleans (1980), born as the Free Southern Theater (1965) during the Civil Rights Movement (and earlier still as the Tugabo Drama Workshop in 1963), continues to perform and to facilitate, nationwide, the creation of material drawn from stories of struggles with issues of cultural dignity and equity.
• Carpetbag Theatre was founded in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1969, and continues to serve the city's African-American community, creating new work revealing its hidden stories.
• Alternate ROOTS, a southeastern regional organization of artists creating original, community-based work, was founded in 1976.
• SPARC — the Social and Public Art Resource Center — founded 1976 in Venice, Calif., is a primary resource to the Chicano/a community and mural art movement.
• Pregones Theater in the Bronx in 1979, creates ensemble works rooted primarily in Puerto Rican culture.
• Elders Share the Arts, creating music, dance, visual art, poetry based on the experience of elders and on intergenerational exchange, formed in New York in 1979.

[5] Examples of new CCD initiatives and organizations (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• The National Center for Creative Aging, a networking, resource, and advocacy center for “arts and aging” programs across the country — the first of its kind, currently spearheading the “Art of Aging: Creativity Matters” — a five-year, national public awareness campaign
• Artists Without Borders, a new nonprofit organization supporting artists working in communities across the globe (Ex.: Kenya, Colombia, Taiwan)

[6] Examples of established organizations experimenting with cultural development:

• Art organizations: The National Performance Network, a nationwide network of large and small performing arts spaces. NPN provides a Community Fund to support community-based projects connected to the performance residencies it funds across the U.S., and has developed and published models for documentation and evaluation of these projects.
• Non-arts organizations: Among social-service organizations that are incorporating the principles and processes of community cultural development into their activities is the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Detroit, which has a Cultural Arts Department that is spearheading the development of the first Arab American National Museum.
• Collaborations: Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) is a network of public schools, arts organizations, and community organizations committed to integrating the arts into education in Chicago.
• University programs: Jan Cohen-Cruz directs NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Office of Community Connections, where she guides young artists in community-based art internships. Similar offices exist at Columbia College Chicago, Cal Arts and other universities.

[7] Examples of CCD leaders receiving national attention and accolades outside the arts (among the CAN Gathering participants)

• The Ford Foundation's Leadership for a Changing World program (recognizing leadership for social justice) awarded $100,000 fellowships to John O'Neal, Arnold Aprill, Lily Yeh and (nominated 2004) Ron Chew.
• Judy Baca is a Guggenheim Fellow (furthers the development of scholars and artists).
• Susan Perlstein has been asked by the National Council on Aging and the Federal Administration on Aging to chair a policy conference on the creative needs of older Americans.
• Kathie deNobriga is a Fellow in Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership program (supports respected national leaders in program enhancing democracy).
• Liz Lerman (invited but unable to attend) is a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award winner (unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals).

[8] Examples of CCD practitioners in policy-making for their communities (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• Barbara Schaffer Bacon is president of her local school board in Massachusetts.
• Kathie de Nobriga is a member of her town council in Georgia.

[9] Examples of available documentation (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• API's online Community Arts Network archives hundreds of articles on CCD on its Community Arts Network Web site. This online information source provides news, documentation, critical and historical writing, resource listings, forums, networking and special projects.
• Books such as Roadside Theater’s "Journeys Home" tell the story of cultural development projects.
• Judy Baca's SPARC is currently building a DVD on the processes and methodology employed to paint the Great Wall of Los Angeles, a half-mile-long mural on the history of ethnic peoples of California, including processes of community engagement in production.
• Animating Democracy profiles online all its own projects and other CCD projects.

[10] Examples of analysis and codification:

• The Animating Democracy Initiative commissioned interdisciplinary teams of three writers to examine three of its projects from different perspectives (ex.: one team comprised a Native American journalist, a playwright and a national magazine editor), and case studies of all funded projects have been produced to extend learning and reflection throughout the field.
• Academics/practitioners like Jan Cohen-Cruz and Sonya Kuftinec have produced critical models in scholarly examinations of the field, and graduate students are writing theses and dissertations focused on this work.
• The Wallace Foundation has commissioned studies of values and participation in the arts that add to the body of critical thinking and analysis of the field.
• Caron Atlas and Tom Borrup are working with 651 Arts to document the key issues and practices related to equitable community development, building on local cultural assets.
• NPN is developing "Building the Code," a publication with an unusual graphic (comic-book) style that codifies the community arts field for young people.
• CAN produced "Performing Communities," a detailed research study of ensemble theaters deeply rooted in eight American communities, with critical writing and 60 interviews posted on the Web.

[11] Examples of evaluation (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• Roadside Theater, for example, contracted with the AMS Planning & Research Corporation over six years and can demonstrate that 70% of its national audience live in rural communities; 33% are people of color; and 30% earn less than $25,000 a year — all contrasting sharply with the “typical” audience for performing arts in the United States, and all providing evidence that Roadside is meeting its democratic mission.
• NPN and the Urban Institute have devised systems of cultural indicators for measuring the work.
• Bill Cleveland provides professional evaluations of community arts programs on a regular basis. With Patricia Shifferd of the American Composers Forum (ACF), Cleveland devised a method for studying the effects of Continental Harmony, a large ACF community music initiative.

[12] Examples of books published since 1990 (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• Adams, Don and Arlene Goldbard, "Community, Culture and Globalization" (Rockefeller Foundation, 2002)
• Adams, Don and Arlene Goldbard, "Creative Community" (Rockefeller Foundation, 2001)
• Adams, Don and Arlene Goldbard, "Crossroads: Reflections on the Politics of Culture" (DNA Press, 1990)
• Aprill, Arnold, Gail Burnaford and Cynthia Weiss, eds., "Renaissance in the Classroom: Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning" (Lawrence Erlbaum & Assoc. 2001)
• Atlas, Caron, and Loren Renz "Arts Funding 2000: Funder Perspectives on Current and Future Trends" (Foundation Center, 1999)
• Bowles, Norma, Mark E. Rosenthal, eds., "Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents and Teachers" (TCG Books, 2001)
• Burnham, Linda, and Steve Durland, eds., "The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena" (Critical Press, 1998)
• Chew, Ron, "Reflections of Seattle's Chinese Americans: the First 100 Years" (Univ. of Washington Press, 1995)
• Cleveland, William, "Art in Other Places" (Praeger, new edition, 2000)
• Cocke, Dudley, Donna Porterfield and Edward Wemytewa eds., "Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachian Collaboration" (Zuni A:shiwi Publishing, 2002)
• Cocke, Dudley, Harry Newman and Janet Salmons-Rue, eds., "From the Ground Up: Grassroots Theater in Historical and Contemporary Perspective" (Roadside Theater and Cornell University, 1993)
• Cohen-Cruz, Jan, and Mady Schutzman, "Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism" (Routledge, 1994)
• Cohen-Cruz, Jan, "Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology" (Routledge, 1998)
• Cohen-Cruz, Jan, "Local Acts: U.S. Community-based Performance" (Rutgers Univ. Press, forthcoming in 2004)
• de Nobriga, Kathie and Valetta Anderson, "Alternate ROOTS: Plays from the Southern Theater" (Heinemann, 1994)
• Perlstein, Susan, and Jeff Bliss, "Generating Community: Intergenerational Partnerships Through the Expressive Arts" (Elders Share the Arts, 1994)
• Schaffer Bacon, Barbara, and Cheryl Yuen, Pam Korza, "Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue" (Americans for the Arts, 1999)

[13] Examples of archives (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• A mural archive of 60,000 images at the SPARC/UCLA Digital Mural Lab, soon to be online.
• Americans for the Arts has a significant archive of information online in its Public Art Network.
• The Community Arts Network is becoming the virtual archive for the field.
• Susan Perlstein has the records of the Alliance for Cultural Democracy in her offfice.
• Virginia Tech has been given the records of the Los Angeles Poverty Department and the videos of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Expansion Arts program, but they are not catalogued or specially protected.

[14] Examples of training and mentorship programs:

• CAN's "Places To Study" database offers a glimpse into the breadth of training that is available in 2004. From an Arts and Community Practice Certificate at Florida State University, to an MA in Arts Management in Arts in Youth and Community Development at Columbia College in Chicago, to a BA in Performing Arts and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, opportunities to earn a degree are growing. The CAN site lists 30 degree programs in the United States and the United Kingdom as of June 2004; and 25 additional courses, concentrations and internships; and intensive training workshop-seminars such as those hosted by Urban Bush Women, Cornerstone Theater and the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange.
• The National Performance Network recently conducted a National Arts Administration Mentorship Program (NAAMP) intended to mentor the next generation of arts administrators in small and mid-sized artist-centered organizations and address concerns across the field about continuity, legacy and the cultivation of "values-centered" leadership.
• Academic programs with strong mentoring components are offered or are being planned at Columbia College in Chicago, at New York University, at Virginia Tech, UCLA/Cesar Chavez Center; practice-oriented mentorships for new immigrants are available via the Tamejavi Gathering in central California.

[15] Examples of gatherings:

• Some regularly go to state and local arts-council gatherings; some go to the annual meetings of Grantmakers in the Arts, Americans for the Arts, Alternate ROOTS, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture or the College Arts Association; some go to media or dance gatherings; some go to gatherings on issues pertinent to a particular population; some go to city planning or other non-field gatherings.
• On the CAN site are conversation groups and they can be as numerous as participants take responsibility for. The CAN Gathering group met in cyberspace both before and after the Gathering — on a private Web site and through a "Cangathering" Yahoo e-mailing list.

[16] Linda Burnham, from transcript

[17] Lonnie Graham, from transcript

[18] Steve Durland, e-mail, July 2004

[19] Examples of networks (among the CAN Gathering participants):

• Formal networks exist in the CCD field (NET — Network of Ensemble Theaters, Alternate ROOTS, the Global Network for Cultural Rights, the American Festival network, the National Performance Network, the Public Art Network, Animating Democracy) and informal (such as the community and regional networks developed by CCD artists and organizations).

[20] Examples of funding cuts:

• California Arts Council funds were cut by 94% in 2003, placing it dead last in the U.S. in state arts funding. "The loss of funding for arts and culture programs will affect every Californian from the inner cities to rural areas," said Arts Council Director Barry Hesenius at the time. "Fewer schoolchildren, seniors, at-risk youth, people with disabilities and multicultural groups will have opportunities to access arts, learn with artists in residence or develop creative skills enabling them to compete in the 21st century marketplace." (CAC Web site)
• The David and Lucile Packard Foundation in California eliminated its national arts funding programs.
• The James Irvine Foundation and the Open Society Institute showed interest in CCD but have withdrawn.
• The Albert A. List Foundation, which supported art connected to democracy and media reform, is in the process of spending out.
• NEA Expansion Arts and the Ruth Mott Fund no longer exist

[21] Funding for existing CCD initiatives coming to an end or changing:

• Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts initially funded by the Ford Foundation is at the end of its four-year Ford grant.
• The Arts Partners program, administered by Association of Performing Arts Presenters, is at the end of its funding from the Wallace and Doris Duke foundations.
• The Rockefeller Foundation is in the process of assessing the priorities of its PACT program, which has provided important financial support to many in the CAN Gathering group