Traditional / Folk arts

As grantmakers, we have choices. Finding the right tool for the job and experimenting with tools to learn the range of their usefulness is what grantmakers do.

Immigrant and refugee communities historically have played key roles in the Bay Area's growth and rich diversity. As California enters the twenty-first century, demographic figures reflect significant increases in immigrant pop-ulations. Amongst these communities are myriad performance ensembles, in-dividual artists, teachers, and participatory arts events that strengthen comm-unity ties, reinforce a vibrant cultural heritage, and enrich the lives of Bay Area residents.

"We have a term in our language called gW3dZadad— it is a form of wealth. It's the wealth of knowledge of culture of our peoples, our laws, our ceremonies, our songs, of the names of our ancestors...Our ancestors live today as long as we pass it down to our children.”
Bruce subiyay Miller, Community Spirit Award recipient

The full text of this article is not yet available on this site. Below is a brief excerpt.

Lawrence Lessig sees Big Media waging war against culture in America. And he, for one, is fighting the battle. A professor at Stanford Law School, Lessig achieved notoriety when he represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Eric Eldred was a man who wanted to build a library of derivative versions of public domain books (e.g., Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter) and make them available for free on the Internet.

2005, 136 pages, ISBN 0-9514763-6-X. Centre for Creative Communities, 118 Commercial Street, London, E1 6NF, UK, 44-(0)-20-7247-5385, www.creativecommunities.org.uk

2005, 256 pages, ISBN 0-252-07208-1. University of Illinois Press, 1325 Oak Street, Champaign, IL, 68120-6903, 217-244-4689, www.press.uillinois.edu

In the author's own words, "This book is a report card on American Culture. Not the culture of Wal-Mart and the cineplex, but culture as it is lived closer to the ground, local culture, neighborhood culture... It is about dancing, not about watching somebody else dance on television. There is a big difference."

November 2004, 12 pages. Americans for the Arts, 1000 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20005, 202-371-2830, www.AmericansForTheArts.org

These results of a national survey by The Society for the Arts in Healthcare (SAH) provide a snapshot of the current level and characteristics of arts programs in hospitals The data is supplemented by brief portraits of exemplary programs and moving reflections from participating patients and care providers.

2005, 17 pages. University of Chicago Cultural Policy Center, 1155 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, 773-702-0926, culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu (Also published in New Left Review, No.17, September-October 2002)

Download pdf: http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/pdfs/sassoon_paper.pdf

2004, 58 pages. Free Expression Policy Project, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law, 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor, New York, NY, 10013, 212-998-6730, http://www.fepproject.org

Download pdf: http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/InformationCommons.pdf