Arts and Community Development

Emily Dickinson couldn't have found a more perfect way to describe how so many artists and artist advocates approach the world.¹  It is tempting to give ourselves over to the rare work that fires our inspiration, and shut the door on everything else. It is often only in nurturing isolation and fringe communities that new ideas find their full flower. But there is a danger in the isolation.

August 2004, 14 pages. The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street NW, Washington, DC, 20037, 202-833-7200, www.urban.org

Download pdf: www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/311043_Arts_Nonarts.pdf

March 2003, 126 pages. The Richard Driehaus Foundation, 203 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 1800, Chicago, IL 60601, and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 140 S. Dearborn Street, Suite 1100, Chicago, IL, 60603

Download pdf: http://www.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7BB0386CE3-8B29-4162-8098-E466FB856794%7D/SMALL_BUDGET_ARTS_ACTIVITIES.PDF

2004, 20 pages, with accompanying DVD. La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94750, 510-849-2568, www.lapena.org

As Tia Oros Peters so eloquently states in her essay that follows, there is no particular word for art in the thousands of Indigenous languages of the world. While there are hundreds of Native American languages, the same holds true; Native Americans do not and cannot separate the importance of art and culture from everyday life. It is one goal of GIA's Indigenous People's Network to bring this important way of life to the fore of grantmakers' thinking.

2004, 167 pages. IBSN 0-931201-89-6. Published by the American Association of Museums, 1575 Eye Street NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC, 20005, www.aam-us.org

The final product of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Program for Art Museums and Communities, this book describes the transformation and partnerships developed by the eleven museums participating in the program over seven years.

Recent decades have seen rapid immigration into traditional gateway cities as well as rural and suburban communities throughout the United States. Craig McGarvey's thoughtful Pursuing Democracy's Promise speaks to the importance of new United States residents' fully participating in civic life alongside the native born.

To California's great Central Valley they have come from the highlands of Oaxaca, the cities of eastern Pakistan, the relocation camps of Thailand—political refugees and new immigrants from around the world aspiring to build a future for their children, grands, and greats.

For three days in October these new U.S. Americans gathered in Fresno's Tower District for their second Tamejavi Festival. Everyone was welcome; the historic Tower Theatre's marquis proclaimed, “Tamejavi: It's Still Free.”

Early in 2004, the Graduate Center of the City of New York convened ten small to mid-sized arts organizations to talk about what had happened to them in an experimental, internet-based project funded by the Ford Foundation. The ten, from across the country, are community-based cultural organizations; they share a commitment to emerging and experimental artists and art forms, and a commitment—equally firm—to their local or nearby communities. Despite their similarities of mission, the ten were not familiar with each other's work.

The following remarks were presented at a symposium that was part of the 2004 Ars Electronica Festival: TIMESHIFT—The World in Twenty-Five Years. This festival for art, technology, and society was founded in 1979 and is held annually in Linz, Austria. Joan Shigekawa, associate director of Creativity and Culture at the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke on the final panel of the symposium, “TOPIA,” which was designed to “present scenarios around a wide variety of topics relating to art, technology, and society.