Arts and Community Development

June 2000, 89 pages, The Arts Marketing Center of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago.

2000, 218 pages; Northeastern University Press, (Boston, Massachusetts).

November 2000. Benton Foundation, 950 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 638-5770.

Cultural Policy Research was the topic of two breakfast roundtables at GIA's 2000 conference in Minneapolis. A combination of scheduled presenters and other participants gave brief summaries of current research underway. The cumulative impact of hearing about so many projects at the same time inspired Reader editors to want to share the reports with our readers. This overview does not pretend to be exhaustive, but rather is a snapshot based on roundtable participation and the ability of the following report contributors to respond quickly to our invitation. We extend many thanks to them.

Sitting around tables at a conference center last May, we each joined five other participants in imagining and illustrating possibilities for artists who work in community arts programs for youth. We were part of a group of around thirty people convened as a working group first in San Jose, California in May 2000 and again in October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our aim was to explore how to build understanding and action toward the sustainable involvement of artists and arts professionals in youth and community development.

October 18-20, 2000, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, co-sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and Heinz Endowments.
November 13-15, 2000, San Francisco, California, co-sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

This issue introduced "From Washington," a new column contributed by Shelley Feist, associate, National Culture Program, The Pew Charitable Trusts. The column provides readers with information on policy and regulatory matters at the federal level affecting nonprofit arts and culture. The aim is to present brief reports on timely but underreported items.

The so-called new economy, driven by an explosion in technological innovation and new communication tools, has especially affected California's San Francisco Bay Area, where web-based start-ups are overabundant and everything seems to be preceded by an "e". Perhaps because of their innovative nature, technology firms often locate offices in marginalized neighborhoods or abandoned industrial zones. At first this trend seemed to revitalize former nadirs of economic activity with new neighborhood restaurants, cafés, and other service-oriented businesses.

Texas is much in the news today. Its environmental record and education reforms are bandied around as political hot potatoes in this year's presidential race. So what has George W. Bush, governor of the state, done for the arts in Texas? Basically, he has kept arts funding stable in the state budget. On a more personal level, the Bushes received the first two state arts affinity license plates (Texas's arts license plates are the most popular affinity plates in the state) and have agreed to serve as co-hosts of the Texas Medal of Arts event in spring 2000.

The remarkable growth of the online sector in recent years can be assessed in many ways — from the rapidly expanding number of wired households (over half are now connected to the Internet) to the sheer explosion of content on the World Wide Web (which now encompasses over a billion pages). Data traffic exceeds voice traffic on the nation's phone lines now, and far more email messages than postal letters are sent every day.