Attendees at Open Dialogue IX began the process of crafting future arts policy for people of color in the arts.

Corporate-derived financial or other aids to the whole range of cultural affairs have become notable in diversity, scope, and dollar-flow totals, even if still far short of maximum ability to give, and of need.

In summary, the black person, when he came here imbued with the riches of his African heritage, was not able to manifest it because this was a luxury denied a slave. Those who did get a chance to work in the visual arts negated their African experience for the most part by painting in the fashionable style of the time. In a sense, the loss was America's, since the force and dynamics that black people brought to music and dance and the subsequent evolution of these forms have not had equal opportunities in the visual arts. (from abstract)

MISSION: The South Dakota Arts Council is a state agency serving South Dakotans and their communities through the arts.

Terri Lynn Cornwell's Democracy and the Arts: The Role of Participation provides a broad brush approach to the topic of democracy and the arts and examines the relationship between political participation and arts participation. It begins with the premise that the arts are beneficial to society and that maximum participation can strengthen both the arts and democracy. Cornwell makes a case that political participation and arts participation permeate the general population in much the same way and, therefore, can be analyzed in a similar manner.

The argument in this article is that debates about culture - which go beyond cultural policies to include, for example, the criticism of mass culture in defense of intellectual culture - may be grouped and structured around the conflict between two paradigms: the democratization of culture versus cultural democracy. This conflict comes to a large extent from the cultural field itself. (from abstract)

The authors use the examples of the National Council on the Arts (NCA) and the California Arts Council to show the magnitude of official opposition to reforming cultural policy in the . Cultural policy, they argue, has been left entirely to vested interests, and it has been virtually ignored by the press. They use both state and national policy examples to show the extent of opposite and degree of red-baiting.

The diversity of arts participation is examined in this brief, which reports on findings from a national survey of cultural participation commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and conducted by the Urban Institute.

The research conducted by the Urban Institute in five communities mixed with diverse immigrants in the U.S.A. suggests that the arts and cultural participation may be a path of engagement to other forms of civic participation.

The research presented in this report provides new information about how and why people participate in arts and culture that has important implications for how arts and culture providers and supporters, and people engaged in community building attempt to reach and involve their publics.