ANIMATING DEMOCRACY E-NEWS

 Animating Democracy News and Updates

Animating Democracy plans arts and civic engagement track at the Americans for the Arts 2007 Annual Convention

www.AmericansForTheArts.org/events/2007/convention/default.asp
Americans for the Arts has opened registration for its 2007 convention, Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community. This year, the Americans for the Arts convention is offering a selection of more than 75 sessions across seven program tracks—including a track exploring the arts and civic engagement. Coordinated by Animating Democracy, this track will use case studies, peer networking, and experiential arts-based civic engagement sessions to explore how the arts can offer fresh sparks, welcoming invitations, needed spaces, and new forms for civic participation. Innovator Chris Gates, founder of Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement and former director of the National Civic League, will provide a context for and insights into current arts-based civic engagement endeavors through his experiences working within and with national philanthropy and civic organizations.

Stay tuned to the Americans for the Arts convention website and the Animating Democracy E-News for more information about the program and sessions!

Americans for the Arts launches new planning initiative

www.AmericansForTheArts.org/about_us/strategic_plan.asp
Americans for the Arts is embarking on a new strategic planning initiative. In the coming months, the organization will be conducting a comprehensive scan of the arts environment in order to establish a five-year plan for advancing the arts in America. Constituents of Americans for the Arts will be asked to participate in web-based surveys, online forums, focus groups, or one-on-one interviews to provide invaluable input. Animating Democracy constituents are encouraged to share their perspectives throughout the process.

 News from the Field

Florida Stage collaboration engages community on race in Palm Beach

www.studycircles.org/en/Article.492.aspx
Florida Stage has launched a collaboration with Toward a More Perfect Union, a West Palm Beach-based organization that seeks to improve race and ethnic relations in multicultural communities. The organizations will host a countywide series of study circles for discussing race and ethnic relations in Palm Beach County. Study circles will begin with the premier of A House with No Walls, a new play by Thomas Gibbons about a battle that erupts when a new museum enshrining American liberty is about to be built on a site where George Washington's slave quarters once stood. Community members will then participate in a study circle to devise an action plan for each group involved in the conflict—something as small as having a multicultural meal together or as big as banding together to affect legislation.

Children’s Theatre Company announces partnership opportunity

www.neighborhoodbridges.org
The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis is inviting partners to participate in an innovative program called Neighborhood Bridges. A comprehensive program of storytelling and creative drama, Bridges is designed to help children develop their critical literacy skills and transform them into storytellers of their own lives. Through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Neighborhood Bridges will be disseminated to 12 communities nationwide by fall 2008.

Requests for proposals are currently being accepted. For more information, contact Kiyoko Motoyama Sims at ksims@childrenstheatre.org.

 Articles and Publications

Study Circles Resource Center training curriculum available online

www.studycircles.org/en/Article.496.aspx
The Study Circles Resource Center, a national organization that helps local communities develop their skills organizing dialogue structured to support and strengthen measurable community change, has issued a second edition of A Guide for Training Study Circle Facilitators. Designed to prepare leaders for facilitating study circle discussions and other community conversations, the training curriculum offers new skill-building lessons, comprehensive support materials for training, evaluation tools, and advice on establishing an ongoing training program. It also includes a youth facilitator training agenda and advice on facilitating cross-cultural communication.

International Journal of Arts and Society features paper on arts-based civic dialogue

http://ija.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.85/prod.58
The International Journal of Arts and Society is a publication committed to describing innovative practice in the arts, conducting interdisciplinary discussions of the connections between the arts and society, and developing theories of the aesthetic. The journal has published “Aesthetic Imagination, Civic Imagination, and the Role of the Arts in Community Change and Development,” by Max Stephenson, Jr. and Katherine Fox Lanham at Virginia Tech. "Aesthetic Imagination" is a new case study exploring an arts-based civic dialogue initiative in the Dan River region of Virginia. The case examines the evolution of a coalition for community engaged in a quest for a shared understanding of identity, using arts-based civic dialogue to generate a regional, grassroots-based discussion concerning how to reposition the area.

 Events on the Horizon

Sojourn Theatre Summer Institutes
Devising Civic Theatre: Performance & Dialogue
Dates: July 2–7, 2007 (Portland, OR)
July 30–August 4, 2007 (Catskills, NY)

www.sojourntheatre.org
The Sojourn Theatre Summer Institutes offer participants an opportunity to explore the techniques and strategies that Sojourn Theatre Artistic Director Michael Rohd uses in collaborative work to devise performance material, build community, examine the potential of site-specific activity, and investigate social and political issues through arts-based dialogue. This year, Rohd will explore ‘civic theatre’—a term he uses to describe his own work—which aims to bring an adventurous theatricality to a focused interrogation of contemporary issues by offering spaces for civic engagement throughout the process of developing new performance.

For information on pricing, location, and content or to register for an institute; e-mail sojourntheatre@aol.com.

VITAL SIGNS: Creative and Healthy Communities
National Association of Artists’ Organizations
Dates: April 26–29, 2007
Los Angeles

www.naao.net
The 2007 National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO) conference will convene individual artists and professionals from arts and social change organizations to explore issues of health and healthcare. With sessions on the nuts and bolts for artist survival, the conference will include preset panels on healthcare for individuals, sustainability and succession for arts organizations, and the health of communities across the United States. VITAL SIGNS: Creative and Healthy Communities will address the internal and external challenges that artists and artist organizations face and will forge and mobilize collective responses to these challenges.

 About Animating Democracy

Animating Democracy is a four-year initiative of Americans for the Arts and is made possible with support from the Ford Foundation.

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