ANIMATING DEMOCRACY E-NEWS
November 2005
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Animating Democracy News and Updates |
Critical Perspectives available in the Americans for the Arts Bookstorewww.AmericansForTheArts.org/AnimatingDemocracy/reading_room/reading_004.asp
Can critical writing about civically engaged arts be opened up to multiple points of view? An Animating Democracy writing experiment aimed to do just that. The resulting book, Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art and Civic Dialogue, is a collection of essays that explore art, civic dialogue, and reflective critical writing. Twelve essays focus on three compelling and very different projects supported by Animating Democracy that employed the unique capacities of theater, visual art, and historic preservation to stimulate people to talk together in new ways about issues that matter in their communities: Dell’Arte theater’s The Dentalium Project, about the impact of a Native American casino on the small town of Blue Lake, CA; MACLA’s Ties That Bind, about intermarriage between Asian and Latino Americans in Silicon Valley; and the Slave Galleries Restoration Project, a project of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in collaboration with the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, about issues of marginalization in the Lower East Side.
Critical Perspectives deepens understanding of arts-based civic dialogue work through the engagement of multiple writers—arts writers, a journalist, community participants, anthropologists, a sociologist, a storyteller, historians, and project directors—as they approach each project from their unique vantage points. In so doing, the project expands who has voice and authority in critical writing about civically engaged art. The collection is introduced with an essay by noted cultural writer Lucy Lippard. Order through the Americans for the Arts online Bookstore.
Paperback, 176 pages, photographs, Americans for the Arts member price: $21.25 / nonmembers $25.00 Edited by Caron Atlas and Pam Korza, published by Americans for the Arts, 2005
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News from the Field |
New Village Press organizes grassroots community support to rebuild New Orleanswww.newvillagepress.net
The New Village Press, publisher of the Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts by Keith Knight and Mat Schwarzman, is organizing support for arts-based community-building programs for low-income New Orleans youth. As the city prepares to rebuild, a core group of students, teachers, artists, and parents from Frederick Douglass High School—who have been displaced across the country and have continued to stay in communication with one another—want to meet again in person in New Orleans to assess the damage to—and plan their next steps toward saving—their community. Please contribute $25, $50, $1,000, or whatever you can, either by check (c/o New Village Press, PO Box 3049, Oakland, CA 94609) or by PayPal on the New Village Press website. One hundred percent of donations will go directly to airfare, ground transportation, food, and lodging for the three-day gathering. Make checks payable to New Village and designate it for Rebuilding New Orleans Community.
Additionally, a national network of community artists, educators, and activists, including the creators and authors of the Beginner's Guide to Community-Based Arts, have already committed themselves to supporting this effort. New Village Press will also be donating half the sales proceeds from the Beginner's Guide to the rebirth of the Frederick Douglass High School community.
Pew Partnership for Civic Change invites nominations for Civic Change Awardwww.pew-partnership.org
The Pew Partnership for Civic Change is a research organization that provides consulting and program support to communities, governments, foundations, and nonprofit agencies working to make communities stronger. Since 1997, the Pew Partnership has given its Civic Change Award to an individual, organization, or community that has demonstrated extraordinary commitment to improving civic life. The award carries with it a cash prize to a nonprofit organization of the awardee's choice, a crystal memento, and attendance at an award event. For complete program information, application forms, and details on past recipients, visit the Pew Partnership for Civic Change website. The deadline to submit a nomination form is December 31, 2005.
Irvine Foundation announces nominations for Leadership Awardswww.irvine.org
The James Irvine Foundation, a California foundation that aims “to expand opportunity for the people of California to participate in a vibrant, successful, and inclusive society,” has announced a nomination process for a new awards program. The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards recognize individual leaders who are making a demonstrable difference to California’s future by advancing innovative and effective solutions to the social issues facing the state. These leaders may be working in any sector—nonprofit, public, or private—and within any field, such as education, health, the arts, housing, economic development, or the environment.
The Irvine Foundation anticipates that four to six award recipients will each receive $125,000 of flexible support for their work to benefit the people of California. The award also includes strategic communications activities, undertaken together by the award recipients and the foundation, to educate policy-makers and practitioners of the effective solutions implemented by these leaders.
Awards will be announced in mid-2006. For more information or to submit a nomination, visit the Leadership Awards homepage: www.irvine.org/grants_program/cp/leadership/leadership.shtml.
R.U.1.2. organizes The Dialogue Project to explore queer perspectives
www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051106/ADDEMO/51106005/1024
R.U.1.2., Vermont’s Queer Community Center in Burlington—which explores the social, cultural, educational, and health needs of Vermont’s queer and allied communities through community building, social support, and civic engagement—has launched a new touring exhibit featuring interviews with 14 elder gay Vermonters. Working on an intergenerational level, The Dialogue Project invited queer youth to interview and record untold stories of older gay men and women. Artists then made interpretive art pieces from these recorded interviews. The exhibition was at Marlboro College through November 19, 2005; it will visit Burlington later this year and White River Junction, VT, early next year.
For more information about the project, visit the center's website: www.ru12.org.
Partners for Livable Communities announces Shifting Sands Communities initiativewww.cultureshapescommunity.org
Nine arts and cultural organizations from around the country are making themselves heard in the field of asset-based community development. They are forerunners of an initiative, Shifting Sands Communities—Art, Culture & Neighborhood Change, housed under the Ford Foundation’s Asset and Community Development program and managed by Partners for Livable Communities. Shifting Sands Communities is part of a growing movement that recognizes and encourages neighborhood-based arts and cultural organizations as unique stakeholders in neighborhoods experiencing economic and demographic shifts. The nine arts and cultural organizations participating in this initiative include: Arts at Marks Garage; Nuestras Raices; Queens Museum of Art; Walt Whitman Center; Center for Creative Community Development; MACLA; Project Row Houses; ASHE Cultural Arts Center; and HandMade in America. Additional grantmaking announcements will be made on the Partners for Livable Communities website throughout the program.
‘Capers to be produced in 2006An innovative mix of theater, documentary, and activism, ‘Capers is a one-woman play based on two years of interviews and collaboration with families residing at the Arthur Cappers/Carollsburg housing project. In recent years, residents have witnessed the demolition of their neighborhood under a Federal grant program called HOPE VI and have actively organized to fight to return to their neighborhoods. Though the program has since been cut from the Federal budget, it ultimately resulted in the displacement of thousands of low-income families across America and benefited private real estate developers. ‘Capers is a moving portrait of families struggling to fight for their community and their demand for something better. The play will be produced at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC, January 12 through February 5, 2006.
Anu Yadav, project lead and writer for ‘Capers, is seeking interns to assist in the production and community outreach aspects of her project. Small stipends are available. To apply for these positions, contact Patrick Crowley at p.abram@gmail.com, or Anu Yadav at anu100@gmail.com.
For more information about the production and its process, check out streaming video on the Washington Post website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/metro/122204-1v.html.
Educational Communications Board of Wisconsin announces Democracy It Is!www.ecb.org/democracy
What will our country be like in the next generation? Today's young people will determine that, of course. If you are among those working with youth in community involvement projects, helping them to understand and prepare for their roles as a citizens, the Educational Communications Board of Wisconsin would like to hear from you. The producers of Democracy It Is!—a K–12 civics project designed to provide a continuum of instructional multimedia—are interested in your stories involving young people learning about and exercising their rights and responsibilities in a democratic society. They are especially interested in examples using the arts.
If you have a story you'd like to share, please contact Kurt Griesemer at 608.264.9713 or kgriesemer@ecb.state.wi.us, or contact Chad Reuter at 608.264.9640 or creuter@ecb.state.wi.us.
Los Angeles Poverty Department to perform Agents & Assets in the Netherlandswww.lapovertydept.org
In 2001, the Los Angeles Poverty Department produced Agents & Assets—a play developed from the actual transcripts of a 1998 Congressional hearing on crack cocaine—in order to address issues of drug policy and the misuse of U.S. intelligence agencies by the executive branch of the government. Later this month and in December, 14 Los Angeles Poverty Department cast members will travel to the Netherlands for three performances of Agents & Assets, November 30–December 2, 2005. Produced by the Vrede van Utrecht Festival, a multiyear arts and civic affairs celebration of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the performances will be followed by a public discussion and examination of current drug policy issues in the Netherlands. Participants in these conversations will include national and local politicians, public officials, and staff from the Trans-National Institute—a drug policy institute based in Amsterdam.
Agents & Assets has been performed in Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Detroit. In fall 2006, the production will be presented in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange presents Small Dances about Big Ideaswww.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2005/11/04/choreographer_steps_forward_with_responses_to_genocide/
Small Dances about Big Ideas is a new work by Liz Lerman Dance Exchange—commissioned by Harvard Law School’s conference Pursuing Human Dignity: The Legacies of Nuremberg for International Law, Human Rights, and Education—that reflects on the ongoing challenges of human rights and international law. Inspired by text and interviews coordinated by the Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, Small Dances about Big Ideas endeavors to address questions of responsibility and culpability: How could a trial be the right response to mass violence? How can the scale of the Holocaust fit within a courtroom? How could a trial not be the right response?
Throughout the performance, Peter DiMuro, artistic director of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, moves among dancers as he reads passages from texts—including transcripts from the Nuremberg tribunal—that frame and advance the dancers’ movements. Thea Singer, correspondent for The Boston Globe, writes: “Midway through the performance, DiMuro stops the show, and invites the audience, with the dancers onstage, to contemplate ‘what we teach about retribution’…On the spot, DiMuro introduces gestures expressing their words that culminate in a dance phrase. Then, quietly, elegantly, toward the end of the piece the dancers reprise that phrase.”
MACLA opens Intersections: Reflections of Home & Migrationwww.maclaarte.org
Intersections: Reflections of Home & Migration, a newly commissioned project opening at MACLA (Moviemento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana ) in San Francisco, explores issues of home, migration, and cultural citizenship in the neighborhood of the William/Reed Corridor. A stark contrast to the downtown, William/Reed comprises a diverse mix of residents ranging from students and young families to Latino and Vietnamese immigrants and long-time homeowners. Using an ethnographic approach to art making, Hector Dio Mendoza worked with the community to collect stories, sounds, and images representative of the neighborhood. Among the artworks in the gallery, two large kaleidoscopes hang from the ceiling in the center of the gallery, along with three smaller, standing kaleidoscopes. The kaleidoscopes are filled with random objects and knickknacks given to the artist by residents and businesses for inclusion in the project—including toothbrushes, herbs, pens, Tupperware lids, and hair bands—featured alongside cell phone covers, fluorescent brushes, and plastic toys manufactured in Mexico and Vietnam. The display reflects issues of globalization and address the concept of ‘illusion’ as in the ‘illusions immigrants have about coming to the United States.’
Intersections: Reflections of Home & Migration runs through December 31, 2005, in San Francisco. The exhibition is a part of the pilot initiative Shifting Sands Communities—Art, Culture, & Neighborhood Change, sponsored by the Asset Development program of the Ford Foundation and managed by Partners for Livable communities.
Horizons Theatre launched The Body Projectwww.horizonstheatre.org/bodyproject.htm
Horizons Theatre, the oldest women’s theater in the country, has launched The Body Project, an endeavor that explores America’s toxic obsession with women’s bodies and the quest for perfection. Inspired in part by Women Studies Professor (Cornell University) Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s book of the same name, The Body Project examines the disconnect between the myriad opportunities modern women have gained and the dissatisfaction they feel with their bodies. The text of The Body Project was constructed from a series of intensive workshops involving improvisation, writing exercises, and interviews with women of all ages from the metropolitan Washington, DC, area. Following each performance, a facilitated dialogue is hosted featuring cast members and experts in the field of medicine, advertising, and social work to explore the issues raised in the play. The production ran in Washington, DC, October 20–November 13, 2005.
Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC, launches Songs of My Family projectwww.gmcw.org
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC—in collaboration with the Family Pride Coalition, Metro DC PFLAG, and Sunshine Services of Fort Lauderdale—is engaged in creating a new piece of choral music that will chronicle stories and contributions that different types of families make to society and culture. Through an online questionnaire, participants will share stories about how they define and find family and the importance of family in their life. In 2006, composer Robert Seeley and lyricist Robert Espindola will use the stories to write the 45-minute composition. The premiere of Songs of My Family will be performed at The Kennedy Center Concert Hall in March 2007.
For more information, or to submit your story as part of the project, visit the Songs of My Family website: www.gmcw.org/songsofmyfamily.
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Articles and Publications |
Art in the Public Interest releases Making Exact Changewww.makingexactchange.org
Making Exact Change: How U.S. Arts-Based Programs Have Made A Significant and Sustained Impact on Their Communities, a new study by William Cleveland and published by Art in the Public Interest explores how 10 successful arts-based community programs define and measure their own success. Through case studies and analysis, the study explores the challenges, opportunities, and triumphs of each group and makes recommendations to service organizations and arts funders on how best to support and advance the field of community arts in the immediate future. Making Exact Change is now available to read online, as a free download, or for sale in print at the Community Arts Network: www.lulu.com/can.
Invitation to the Party, Building Bridges to the Arts available in the Americans for the Arts Bookstorewww.AmericansForTheArts.org/bookstore
Donna Walker-Kuhne, acknowledged by the Arts and Business Council of Americans for the Arts as the nation’s foremost expert on audience development involving America’s growing multicultural population, has released her book revealing her strategies and methods to engage diverse communities as participants in arts and culture: Invitation to the Party, Building Bridges to the Arts. By offering descriptions of strategic collaborations and efforts to develop and sustain nontraditional audiences, this book—a practical and inspiration guide on ways to invite, engage, and partner with culturally diverse communities—will directly impact the stability and future of America’s cultural and artistic landscape.
Highlights from Telling the Story of Democracy available onlinewww.studycircles.org/en/Article.335.aspx
Couldn't make it to Telling the Story of Democracy, The Study Circles Resource Center Conference in October? Don't worry—all of the workshop handouts and notes from the sessions that were presented are available on their website. You can review Martha McCoy's opening remarks and Ray Suarez's keynote speech, or look over session notes and handouts from interesting sessions, including “Moving from Talk to Action: What Does it Take to Bring About Sustainable Community Change?” “Quality Facilitation: Getting It and Keeping It,” and “Facing the Challenge of Racism and Race Relations in a New Century.”
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Events on the Horizon |
Southwest Arts Conference 2006
Date: January 27, 2006, 8:00 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Phoenixwww.azarts.gov/swac
The Southwest Arts Conference is the annual statewide gathering for the Arizona arts community. This year's conference—Passages: the Arts Shaping, Moving and Engaging our Communities—will feature keynote speaker Bill Ivey, director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and former chairman of the NEA (1998–2001). Stay tuned to the conference website for more information on sessions, speakers, and registration.
Process, Product, and Preservation in Public Art
The Americans for the Arts Public Art Preconference
Dates: June 1–2, 2006
Milwaukeewww.americansforthearts.org/networks/public_art_network/
Public art professionals, community leaders, and public artists will explore themes including new and uncommon materials used in public art commissions, advocacy, public participation, and decision-making in the commissioning process, and the challenges and opportunities regarding the maintenance and preservation of public art. These national themes and issues will be examined through the unique lens of the local public art landscape in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Conference participants will have the opportunity to explore Milwaukee during excursions to the Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava and named the 2001 Design of the Year by Time Magazine, as well as tours of local public art, artist studios, and other architectural highlights. Participants will also visit the John Michael Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan, home to the nationally acclaimed Arts/Industry residency program. Join us June 1–2, 2006, for all of these activities plus the 2006 Year in Review, a survey of the year’s most innovative and exciting public art projects; the presentation of the annual Public Art Network Award; and evening receptions in vibrant Milwaukee neighborhoods.
The Public Art Network (PAN) of Americans for the Arts is planning the 2006 public art preconference and is seeking session proposals from the field. The National Conference Committee seeks session proposals that address the following topic areas: public participation; new materials and technology in public art commissions; shifting demographics and the role of public art, or how civic monuments and public space bring diverse communities together; art in private development, program models, funding strategies, and management; the role of public art in cultural tourism; policies and strategies for public art conservation and maintenance programs; and outsider art environments and place-making through creative expression. The overall balance of sessions will address a blend of experienced practitioners and newcomers to the field, including artists, administrators, and other related professionals and community leaders. For more information on submitting a proposal, contact Greg Esser, public art manager at Americans for the Arts: gesser@artsusa.org. The deadline for proposals is December 2, 2005.
The Pacific Edge
Dates: September 14–17, 2006
Mackay, Queenslandwww.qac.org.au/htm/2006RAAConference.asp
Regional Arts Australia, together with Queensland Arts Council and the Mackay City Council, will present The Pacific Edge, September 14–17, 2006, in Mackay, Queensland. Combining the very best in regional arts performance and practice, The Pacific Edge will focus on the artistic and cultural connections of Australia and the Pacific region to Mackay, Queensland—home to Australia’s largest South Sea Islander community. The Pacific Edge—part conference, part festival, and all art—will give performers, actors, musicians, artists, writers, volunteers, arts workers, government staff, professionals, students, arts researchers, and the wider community the chance to discuss, be immersed in, and celebrate Australia’s regional arts.
Beyond the Crossroads: Transformations in Community-Based Research
Dates: June 7–9, 2007
Hartford, CTwww.incommunityresearch.org
The Institute for Community Research announces Beyond the Crossroads: Transformations in Community-Based Research, a 2007 conference for those committed to using research for social change. Transformations will build on the themes from our 2004 Crossroads conference, addressing critical issues in community-based research partnerships, theory, methodology, methods of dissemination, and ethics. The conference will also cover new trends, including the democratization of research and the growth of community-based research organizations, new movements linking art and research, and the politics surrounding choice of "best practices" in research design and intervention evaluation. Interactive presentations and workshops will cross-cut fields, including health and mental health, education, environment, community development, racial/ethnic and cultural relations, and cultural development.
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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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Share With Us! |
Do you have news you would like to share with Animating Democracy and the broader world of art and civic engagement? Send an e-mail to adi@artsusa.org with "Animating Democracy E-News" in the subject line. Please be sure to include full contact information.
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