Arlene Goldbard
Community-arts expert offers writings on culture, politics, spirituality, plus a Web log.

Art & Spirituality Network
U.K. interfaith organization using visual arts to "open up the connections between religions." Transcending Images gatherings in conjunction with United Religions Initiative. Exhibitions, lectures, festivals, conferences, newsletter, local networks.

Art Culture Nature
Membership organization dedicated to exploration of connections between environmental and artistic practice. Bi-annual conferences, occasional retreats, local watershed meeting groups. Newsletter, listserv.

Arts & Spirituality Center
Nonsectarian organization in Philadelphia, Pa., founded by a group of artists and spiritual leaders to focus on social and personal healing through interplay of artistic and spiritual expression. Arts After School program, MasterPeace program, Interfaith Youth Poetry Project, Drums for Peace music program and Teens United Performing Arts Project. Has worked with private, charter and public schools, after-school programs, serving primarily low-income, “at-risk” youth. Founded 2000.

Arts and Culture: Community Connections - Contributions from New Survey Research
Brief focuses on strong connection between cultural and civic participation. Exidence on how commonplace community connections (social, family, religious) create new opportunities for cultural organizations to build participation. One of several Urban Institute policy briefs that spotlight themes in "Reggae to Rachmaninoff: How and Why People Participate in Arts and Culture" (a study that draws on evidence from the Urban Institute's evaluation of the Wallace Foundation's Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation initiative). By Chris Walker (Urban Institute and Wallace Foundation, 2002).

Arts and Healing Network
International resource about healing potential of art. Profiles and links to community, educational, environmental and hospital projects.

Arts for Life
"Restoration and Renewal for People in Crisis Through Creativity, Culture, Community." Consortium of artists approaching healing through art and spirituality. Global antiviolence Communitas Project; The Field Narrative Project supporting humanitarian aid workers; creative aging, mentoring and rites of passage. Based in New York City, founded by Juliet Burger (formerly Institution for Transformation through the Arts).

Beaded Prayers Project
Three-part worldwide community art project: traveling exhibition (Beaded Blessings, over 4,000 beaded prayers inspired by African amulet traditions; each contributed piece is a sealed beaded packet containing written wishes, hopes, dreams and prayers of international participants), slide lectures (on accumulative community art projects and cultural traditions, amulets, beadwork), hands-on workshops (on making beaded proyaers). Video available. Directed by Sonya Clark.

BuildaBridge International
Nonprofit arts education organization based in Germantown, Pa. Provides "direct arts-integrated intervention (social, spiritual, educational, and therapeutic) and cross-cultural service." Community Arts Program: in transitional homes, after-school and Saturday arts programs. Institute for the Church and Community Arts: training, education and research institute for those who want to integrate the arts in their community service and ministry. Educational Safaris: Overseas arts education and service program. BuildaBridge Consulting: Professional consulting for cross-cultural service, organizational development, community arts, curriculum writing and development, learning assessment and evaluation, arts management for conferences and overseas travel.

Cathedral Choir School of Delaware
Music education program for economically disadvantaged youth 7-18 at the The Cathedral Church of Saint John Episcopal Cathedral in Wilmington, Del. Performed in some of the world’s most renowned cathedrals, serves as a prototype for church choral-education programs.

Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
Nonprofit organization providing "a sanctuary in New York City for contemplation and a center for events encouraging the creative spirit." Provides a public exhibition of the Sacred Mirrors and other works of contemporary sacred art by Alex Grey. The Sacred Mirrors are 21 images, consisting of 19 life-size paintings and two etched mirrors, examining the anatomy of body, mind and spirit in detail. Full Moon and New Moon gatherings, workshops, EntheoCentric Salons, MicroCosm Gallery openings.

Choir Works
Free sacred choral music for church choirs. Anthems, hymn arrangements and hymns in .pdfs for download and print. Free MP3 practice accompaniment for most titles.

Coming Home
Canadian artist Devora Neumark's projects about interrelationships between creative energy and activism, human rights, environmental wellbeing and conflict resolution.

Cultural Arts Coalition
Networking group based in Phoenix, Ariz., with the mission of "identifying, supporting, promoting, celebrating, and documenting those community arts practices that stimulate social awareness and honor diverse cultural values, and develop the critical thinking skills necessary to be creative and solve problems." Provides space and opportunities, regular meetings, forums, connections, documentation, publications and Guiding Arts Practices developed in a public participation process involving artists, educators and community activists during 2005-2006 in Arizona.

Gateless Gate Zen Center
Gainesville, Florida, organization with volunteer programs in 11 state and federal prisons throughout North Central Florida, ranging from local jails to Death Row, where they share their Zen practice. Programs: retreats, book distribution, Spanish/English translations, inmate writings posted on Web (including writing by an executed prisoner), Mind Body Stress Reduction, links to prison activism and the Prison Dharma Network. A Cross-Sector Resource.

Hardwired To Connect: The New Scientific Case for Authoritative Communities
New scientific findings, based in brain research, suggesting "authoritative" communities" -- not punitive or authoritarian -- combine nurture and structure to help children and young people form important attachments and find a safe place to explore big questions about morality, spirituality, human existence. Written, published by The Commission on Children at Risk, 2003.

INNER VOICES: Social Issues Theatre
Addresses social/health issues pertinent to college experience through performances on and off campus, with facilitated discussions. Sponsored by McKinley Health Center, Counseling Center and Theatre Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign.

Institute for Transformation Through the Arts
Washington, D.C., based organization supporting health and wellbeing. Partner in ArtistCares, formed in wake of 9/11.

Keepers of the Waters
Eco-artist Betsy Damon's international communications network for people actively engaged in projects that transform human relationship to water.

Mandala Center for Change
Multidisciplinary education organization dedicated to community dialogue, social justice and personal transformation and for training and grassroots practice of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Based in Port Townsend, Wash.

PeaceVox
The artist as a voice for peace: "Global meeting place for peacebuilders of all kinds to express themselves through the arts, outside of the boundaries and restrictions of their work." Based in Canada.

Public Art as Social Intervention
"Public Art as Social Intervention - But Now I Have to Speak - Testimonies of Trauma, Change and Transformation," ongoing collective/collaborative project concerned with violence against women.

Public Dreams Society
Canadian organization creating celebrations with community participation, including Illuminares, the Circus of Dreams and the Parade of Lost Souls.

Restorative Arts U.K.
U.K. arts company using drama, music and visual arts to encourage long- and short-term offenders and young people at risk of offending to engage with concepts of responsibility, empathy and tolerance.

Shanti ko Samjhana - Remembering Peace
Public art installation dedicated to peace and the environment, 2002, in Kathmandu and Pharping, Nepal by Jyoti Duwadi.

Temples of Humankind
Nine ornate hand-built temples, on five levels, 100 ft. underground in the Italian Piedmont. Conceived by Oberto Airaudi in 1960s, built piecemeal in secret built by 150 people beginning 1978, discovered by police in 1992. Now part of the Federation of Damanhur, "the largest eco-society on the planet," with the motto: Community Spirituality Research & Action.

To All Relations: Sacred Moon Songs
Multiethnic arts residency project 2003-4 linking Japanese American, Mexican American and American Muslim communities through shared experiences relocation, deportation and expatriation. By Los Angeles, California, groups Great Leap, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Senshin Buddhist Temple.

Transformative Learning Centre
Based at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Supports open, supportive collaboration in transformative learning with all OISE/UT departments and centers. Includes arts/cultural strategies. Five main programs of research, teaching and action: Peace and Human Rights Education, Environmental Education, Popular Education and Community Development, Spirituality and Education, Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy. Conferences, newsletter, summer institute, online photo galleries. A Cross-Sector Resource.

We, The World
Global network of collaboration among those working for peace, sustainability and transformation. Programs: Public International Events, Interdependence Day, Art for Children's Sake, The International Truth and Reconciliation Hearings, World Communities Interchange, Ethical Impact Reports. A Cross-Sector Resource.