APInews

New in CAN BlogNet: Creativity and Aging

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:05:32 -0500

We're happy to welcome the National Center for Creative Aging to BlogNet, CAN's network of Weblogs from all over our community. NCAC's blog, Creativity and Aging, keeps track of breaking news in that fast-growing field. Recent posts take note of the Time to Move Conference in England, July 9-10, 2009, to celebrate older people dancing, sponsored by, Take Art, is the Arts Development Agency for Somerset; NCAC's own recent intergenerational programs symposium in San Francisco, with the MetLife Foundation; a poetry competition called "Celebrating Poets over 70" (deadline: November 15); and essays on the creative side of the recession, collecting art in older years and what happens when creative success comes later in life. Catch up with Creativity and Aging on CAN's front page or the BlogNet home page.

Launch: In Place of War International Network

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:00:02 -0500

In Place of War will launch a new international network of theater practitioners and academics at a reception at The Martin Harris Centre, University of Manchester, England, July 24, 2009. The In Place of War Network is a collaborative initiative for academic and practice-based research into the role, function and impact of theater and performance in places of armed conflict. Practitioners from Kosovo, Gaza, Sudan, D.R. Congo, Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland and the U.K. will be at the launch, talking about theater in refugee camps, in war-affected villages, in towns under curfew, in cities under occupation, in refugee communities in foreign/host countries -- and about why, in times of disruption, individuals and communities have turned to performance? The project also has an online resources, including a database and a social network. A new book, "Performance in Place of War," is due in September.

Battle of the Bands To Save Music Programs

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:47:50 -0500

Five middle school bands in California's San Fernando Valley squared off in June during the first Battle of the Bands Family Music Festival to raise funds to save their music programs. Proposed state budget cuts threaten to strip schools of much-needed cash, says Esmeralda Bermudez in the L.A. Times (6/7/09). The battle took place at Sutter Middle School in Canoga Park. "The prize was a big one, considering that some schools might receive as little as $200 in spending cash next year," writes Bermudez. Competitors hailed from Sutter, Columbus, Pacoima, Gaspar de Portola and Patrick Henry middle schools. Portola's orchestra and chamber ensemble tied for first prize ($2,500) and its band took second ($750) to buy instruments, sheet music and supplies. Portola's sole music teacher, Susan Treworgy juggles the choir, orchestra, chamber ensemble and band on her own. (Thanks, ArtsEdMail.)

TechSoup Helps Arts Orgs Save $100 Million

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:24:16 -0500

TechSoup.org has won Carnegie Mellon University's ArtsTech Award for enabling arts organizations to save over $100 million in expenses to date. TechSoup makes software donations to nonprofits and libraries from 35 major technology providers, and its Refurbished Computer Initiative gives nonprofits a chance to get low-cost, high-quality computers with a new operating system and up-to-date software. The San Francisco-based organization's Web site has a number of resources for the arts, including a case study on how a New Mexico dance company made use of TechSoup to improve its outreach, management and fundraising and saved $17,000. The site's Learning Center offers tutorials on tools like Google Online Mapping, and there's an archive of Webinars on such topics as the successful use of Facebook, YouTube and Webanalytics. Other online aids include Green Tech tips, a blog and a Tech Beginner's Guide.

LAND/ART Opens in New Mexico

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:51:58 -0500

"LAND/ART," a massive six-month environmental art project involving more than 25 presenting organizations in New Mexico, opened last weekend with a symposium. Coordinated by 516 ARTS, events began June 27 with a guided bus tour by The Center for Land Use Interpretation through dramatic built landscapes. Continuing through December 2009, "LAND/ART" explores relationships of land, art and community through dozens of new exhibitions, community-based projects, site-specific art works, speakers series, performances, tours, excursions and a culminating book. "Historically," says the organizers, "New Mexico has been a place where the intersection of nature and culture is at issue. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the American Southwest was the location of the first generation of Land Art or Earthworks," including The Lightning Field, the Star Axis, Spiral Jetty, the Sun Tunnels and Roden Crater. Details are online.

New Prison Art Doc Opens 7/23, Philadelphia

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:51:37 -0500

"Concrete Steel & Paint," a new documentary featuring the work of the Mural Arts Program at Graterford prison, debuts July 23, 2009, in Philadelphia. Filmmakers Cindy Burstein and Tony Heriza describe the film: "When men in a prison art class agree to collaborate with victims of crime to design a mural about healing, their views on punishment, remorse, and forgiveness collide. At times the divide seems too wide to bridge. But as the participants begin to work together, mistrust gives way to genuine moments of human contact and common purpose. Their struggle and their insights are reflected in the art they produce." "Concrete Steel & Paint" will premiere at International House, followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, project participants and restorative-justice pioneer Howard Zehr.

New on CAN: Art in Real-time Crisis

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:09:33 -0500

Today CAN brings you an essay about an international collaboration that began in Israel when two art students organized an "urgent conference" during the 2009 Gaza war. Artist Moran Been-noon writes about Cannons and Muses, a project aimed at enabling artists around the world to collaborate and create art in the context of real-time crisis. In January 2009, writes Been-noon, two dance-theater students at the Kibbutzim Seminar art school, Premshay Hermon and Danielle Natalie Kind, decided to organize a conference at their school, while the war was still 'live,' to review and examine the role of art in real-time crisis. Been-noon (born in Israel, now studying in Dublin) relates the exchanges at the conference and describes new developments as the project has spread around the globe, with upcoming activities planned by cells in Israel, Ireland, Japan, Germany and Iceland. The story is accompanied by a call for local participation by groups all over the world.

SPARC Celebrates Significant Public Art Works

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:43:00 -0500

The Social and Public Arts Resource Center (SPARC) celebrates several significant public art works with an upcoming event at its Venice, California, headquarters. The celebration, 2-5 p.m., June 28, 2009, closes “Current Public Art Productions of the UCLA/SPARC Cesar Chavez Digital Mural Lab,” an exhibition featuring artwork by Judy Baca including the Cesar E. Chavez Monument: The Arch of Dignity, Equality and Justice at San Jose State University and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial at the RFK Learning Center in Los Angeles. The event includes an open house at the Digital Mural Lab's SPARC facilities. During the reception, there will also be a performance by The Lefteous Sisters who wrote a song for the Save LA Murals campaign initiated by Baca to bring attention to the deteriorating condition of hundreds of L.A. murals.

New Funding for Affordable Artist Space

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:10:15 -0500

August 24, 2009, is the deadline for applications to Space for Change, a new funding program supporting "building community through innovative art spaces." LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity) announces the program, a funding collaboration between the MetLife Foundation and Ford Foundation, beginning with the MetLife Innovative Space Awards. The program recognizes outstanding efforts in the design/development of affordable space for artists and emphasizes benefits artist spaces yield for their communities. Awards, $10,000-$50,000, will provide support for up to five winning projects. Applications may be submitted by nonprofit organizations, artists, community members, public agencies or a combination. To be eligible, a project must provide work or live/work artists' space offering ownership or favorable leases, be multi-use, be in existence for one year and demonstrate a positive contribution (social, economic, cultural) to the community in which it exists.

CAN Staff Aids in Getty's L.A. Arts History Project

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:28:43 -0500

CAN staff will participate in "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," the largest collaborative initiative ever undertaken by arts entites in the Los Angeles region. A joint initiative of the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute, PST aims to document the history of art in Los Angeles in the post-WWW II decades, and to bring it to a wider audience. Twenty-one area museums, institutions and organizations are conducting research and making plans for exhibitions that will open citywide between September 2011 and June 2012. CAN's Linda Frye Burnham has been selected as an adviser to "Collaboration Labs: Southern California Artists and the Artist Space Movement," the 18th Street Arts Center's review of artist-run spaces of the 1970s and '80s as sites of community organizing and political engagement. Burnham was a co-founder of 18th St. in 1988, and the center was the publisher of High Performance magazine, the forerunner of the Community Arts Network, founded by Art in the Public Interest in 1999.

The Encampment: A Moving Experience

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:47:42 -0500

See a marvelous story from the June 2009 Culture Pour Tous newsletter about The Encampment, a traveling public art installation about mental disability. In 2006, writes Michel Lefebvre, Thom Sokoloski and Jenny McCowan (Studio SM) organized a huge outdoor installation on the theme of mental health. The Encampment consisted of an assemblage of tents, each containing a mini-installation created with the participation of the public and presenting poignant testimonies or stories of intellectual disability and the lives of those affected by it. They recruited “creative collaborators” who would research a story, testimony or fact related to mental illness and use found objects to present this story inside a tent. That year, 68 tents were set up in Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods Park; in 2007, The Encampment and its process moved to Roosevelt Island, N.Y.; in 2008, to Major’s Hill Park, Ottawa.

ReGeneration Conference, Australia, September

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:02:24 -0500

"ReGenerating Community: Arts, Community and Governance" is an international conference in Melbourne, Australia, September 2-4, 2009. Presented by RMIT University Globalism Research Centre and the Cultural Development Network, it's about "ways in which global issues are being addressed locally through collaborations between artists, communities and local government," as well as issues of: community identity in an environment of globalised culture, energy production in the context of climate change, indigenous sovereignty on leasehold land, country becoming city and changing identity, aging, schooling, imaging futures and "having a future." Keynoters are Anmol Vellani of the Indian Foundation for the Arts, which supports more than 100 projects in 17 Indian states, and Bob McNulty of Partners for Livable Communities, known primarily for persuading local officials to view public and private partnerships as a resource for revitalizing cities in the Americas.

Baltimore Community Builds Reverse Ark

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:54:39 -0500

Baltimore community members have been donating recycled items and volunteering to help build "The Reverse Ark," an exhibition that illustrates the city's industrial past. The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore, will serve as gallery, laboratory, workplace and studio to explore the social and environmental history of Baltimore's mills and textile industry in the site-based exhibition "The Reverse Ark: In the Wake," on view through August 22, 2009. Using the concept of an "ark" as a place of preservation and exploration, local citizens helped San Francisco-based Futurefarmers art collective create the multidisciplinary exhibition with locally sourced waste and surplus materials including fallen trees, hundreds of floorboards from abandoned row homes, cast-off paper and surplus clothing and textiles. Community engagement continues in The Reverse Ark Schoolhouse with public workshops, readings and discussions in an exploration of the environmental themes of the exhibition.

Green Youth Media Arts & Job Training Center

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:29:55 -0500

The San Francisco Bay Area's Art in Action will open a new Green Youth Media Arts & Job Training Center in Oakland, Calif., August 1, 2009. The Center will offer year-round training in media arts, eco-literacy, soft skills and personal healing for under-resourced youth and young adults, and provide training for youth leaders to grow their business ventures and prepare for jobs in the green economy. For the last six months, Art in Action has participated in Green for All's Business Incubation Program, receiving mentoring through a business development process. Having built a for-profit component into their long-term strategic plan, they anticipate being fully self-sufficient by 2011 with at least 50% of the operating budget coming from diverse earned-income revenue streams. Green For All is a national organization dedicated to "building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

Launch: Canadian School of Peacebuilding

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:05:28 -0500

Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is launching its first annual Canadian School of Peacebuilding this summer. Two five-day sessions, June 29 to July 10, 2009, each with two courses running concurrently, will be offered for academic credit or for training for practitioners. Among the offerings is "Arts Approaches to Spirituality, Peace and Social Justice," taught by Babu Ayindo, an international peacebuilder from Kenya, artistic director of Chelepe Arts and, later, founding artistic director of Amani People’s Theater. He is co-author of the book "When You Are the Peacebuilder" as well as articles on arts, peace and politics. Other courses include "Truthtelling & Peace: An Insider's Perspective on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission" and "Frameworks and Foundations of Conflict Transformation." CMU, an accredited Christian university, offers degrees in the arts, music, music therapy, theology and church ministries.