Community Artists on the Job

The Long, Hot Summer of Service: Community Artists on The Job

By Arlene Goldbard

And the word for this summer is … service! New national service initiatives are making headlines, generating new hopes for community arts jobs. Read on to learn what’s happening right now and to explore what could happen in the lead-up to 2010, the 75th anniversary of “Federal One,” the constellation of federal arts programs that employed an estimated 40,000 writers, performers, visual artists and others from 1935-39. read on

this is from the CAN website

also take a look at
Social Imagination: Documenting Engagement in Canada: nine mid-career artists from across Canada to examine the practice of community-based arts and the potential of digital video as a means to document the aesthetics of engagement inherent in their work.

End the University as We Know It

End the University As we Know It
Interesting Op-Ed in the Monday, April 27 NY Times
by Mark C. Taylor, Professor at Columbia

Letters to the Editor in the Sunday, May 3 Times
great discussion and critique

Misc

Alice Proujansky

reading for next week's screening on Strangers with a Camera

summer course info for you students at MOMA and ICP posted on student blog

Interesting Article

Here's an article written by a first time teacher that I enjoyed reading. It centers around his time spent in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. It's not photography based, but it's about his bond with his students based on Lil Wayne's music. I like his perspective on student teacher relations and how he found a common ground through music.

I Will Forever Remain Faithful by David Ramsey

Hope everyone had a great break

Projects to Look At / Things to Read

3 Projects in New Orleans
Remedee Foundation teaches and encourages youth to use media to tell their own stories, and to open and engage in dialogue that promotes activism and change.
Remedee YouTube Channel

The Neighborhood Storytelling Project follows their mission, “Our stories told by us,” by working with writers in neighborhoods around New Orleans to create books about their communities.

The Porch a community grassroots neighborhood cultural organization. "We are a cultural organization commited to the Seventh Ward area, in New Orleans. We seek to promote and sustain the cultures of the neighborhood, city, and region and to foster exchange between cultural groups. The Porch is a place where all can come to do and to share their culture, and to take care of each other and our communities." read more

and one in NYC
Urban Arts Partnership
Urban Arts Blogs
--check out their high school blogs on blog roll on right of blogs home page
great resource blog


READ for next week
Listening for the Lexicon of Cultural Shift by Linda Frye Burnham

and also read any other assigned readings you haven't read. We will discuss next week.

If only everyone could understand the importance of the arts....

http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine-that/200902/a-missing-piece-in-the-economic-stimulus-hobbling-arts-hobbles-innovation
A Missing Piece in the Economic Stimulus: Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation

"As the economy stumbles, the first things to get cut at the national, state, and local levels are the arts. The first thing that goes in our school curricula are the arts. Arts, common wisdom tells us, are luxuries we can do without in times of crisis. Or can we?

Let's see what happens when we start throwing out all the science and technology that the arts have made possible...."

POSTED BY Amia

READINGS

read for next week:

Relationship, Reciprocity, Reclamation: The Arts at Cal State Monterey Bay
By Jan Freya

Urban Ensemble Booklet - chapter on Reflection, pp. 77 -
Revisit "Soup to Nuts," p.79-80. I will post on google docs so we can form our own for our website starting with this as our base - Please add your thoughts, editions, changes.

for your future exploration:

Art in Rebuilding Community: The Transforma Project in New Orleans
By Jan Cohen-Cruz

Creative Economy Practitioner's Toolkit: Taking Advantage of Campus and Community Resources (Part 1) and (Part 2) by Susan Monagan, Susan Christopherson and Suzanne Loker

Listening for the Lexicon of Cultural Shift

Hi everybody,

Here is an article that I found to be really forward thinking in that it's a compilation of theory and thought from outside of traditional academia. It deals mainly with art, the artist, and the role of both in social change in the community and the larger cultural landscape. Please feel free to skip around to different subjects once you get through the introduction.

Here is the article link

Stranger with a Camera

Stranger with a Camera: An Appalshop Film
Directed by: Elizabeth Barret 2000 Running Time: 61 Minutes

Info from Appalshop with link to interview with Director Elizabeth Barrett

POV on PBSwhich broadcast the film
Companion Website

Related Reading:

"Stranger With a Camera," NEW YORKER article by Calvin Trillin [download]

Whose Agenda Is It, Anyway? Documentary Burdens, Community Benefits
By Lynn McKnight

Jessica Ingram links

Jessica Ingram's website

The article from the New Yorker on landmine victims from Sierra Leone in Staten Island: "The Children of Freetown" by George Packer, The New Yorker, January 13, 2003 > dowload

Sudden Flower Productions

Rural Studio

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman

Story Circles

Learn how to facilitate story circles as developed by Roadside Theater

A Story Circle is 5-20 people sitting in a circle, telling stories or remembrances, led by a Story Circle facilitator. While the themes of Story Circles vary according to purpose, the methodology is the same for each Circle. All Story Circles have as a common objective the development of listening and verbal expression skills, plus a greater appreciation for the cultural gifts and talents of everyday people. All Story Circles should be as much about listening as they are about telling.

Next week, I will facilitate a story circle with you all. Please download handout and read before next week.

***Check out the Neighborhood Story Project a documentary book making project in New Orleans.

Performing Communities

This is a great resource and the entire book is online. Although it focuses on theater, there are many ideas that can relate to our work.

Post #1

READINGS

For next week:
An Introduction to Community Art and Activism by Jan Cohen-Cruz, Director of Imagining America

Telling and Listening in Public: The Sustainability of Storytelling by Linda Frye Burnham, Co-Director of CAN

Community-Based Workshops from Soup to Nuts by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Lorie Novak Download file

Knowing Our History, Knowing Our Culture, by Willie Birch (handout)


Reference Materials:
Urban Ensemble: University/Community Collaborations in the Arts by Jan Cohen-Cruz and Lorie Novak download

A Participatory Photography Toolkit download