What can we do with unemployed artists and art-starved children?

In all the buzz of the recent election, the references to a second New Deal are abundant. So, in the spirit of FDR, let’s solve opposing needs by uniting them. Artist and promoter Michael David Nolan proposes we start a National Campaign to Hire Artists to Work in Schools.  The idea is as simple as it sounds: use federal job stimulus money to employ artists in schools for educational advancement and cultural enrichment.

Check out their website and show your support by voting for this idea on change.org by clicking on the blue “vote!” button to the left and registering.

Thanks for your vote!

photo credit: Kala Art Institute

New Village Press authors Bill Cleveland and Maryo Gard join four other creative community builders in this new rotational blog launched by the Center for the Study of Art and Community. Wild Caught Stories seeks to serve as a forum for diverse perspectives on culture, community and current affairs, focusing on a new topic every six weeks. One author will respond per week until each has contributed his or her own thoughts and the cycle starts again. The first question: ‘What Next? Now that the page has turned, what stories will we need to change our world?’

The Wild Caught authors are: William Cleveland, Maryo Gard, Puanani Burgess, Milenko Matanovic, Martin Tull and Alice Lovelace.

The dialogue is open for reader comments, so check it out and join the conversation!

Shifting through fliers and business cards of organizations, with mission statements and exhibition notices falling from my lap to the floor, I try to organize dates, addresses and names. In the process I come across a Washington Post article that summed up one of the best success stories I’ve heard from an organization. The Workhouse Arts Center of Lorton Virginia has opened the doors of a former prison as a newly-created artist residency and center. Few times do two causes so happily meet.

These days we hear more and more of prison construction and overcrowding. Art programs being cut in schools and the money used to build penitentiaries to house the same students who could have benefited from such a program.

But in Lorton, a former prison has been given over to the purpose of housing artists, community groups, presentations, classes and performances. The space has been reconstructed, repaired and reused to provide a unique setting for artists and for those aspiring.

New Village author and syndicated cartoonist Keith Knight has picked up the best bailout idea of the week. Other treasures in his K Chronicles strip, too, like Toyota’s laudable practice of starting paid community service for employees on downtime. And, yes indeedy, I’ll be ready for the rails (Keef’s 20-year national public transport plan). Read it in today’s Salon Comics.

When Obama appoints his court jester — we know who he’ll call!

From the man with the pink box bringing doughnuts for everyone lined at the polls this morning to John McCain shushing boos during his beautifully unifying concession speech tonight, I have been moved today by the warmth of people. Here in Oakland I could hear the election results before finding them on my news screen by the crescendo of horns in the street. Three hours later, 11:00 pm in California, the excitement has not waned. I walked out earlier to experience the celebration on Telegraph Avenue and was joined by an African American couple clearly as jubilant as I. We introduce ourselves on the way back — turns out they live in the apartments next door! An American moment. Another neighbor comes by. We put stars in our hair, run back to the same corner and light sparklers. Great waves of honking rises at every stop light. Dancers on the sidewalks hoop, skateboarders flash peace signs, bicylists ring their bells, even buses beep. Obama 08 glistens wet on the favorite neighborhood tagging wall. I’m grateful to be witnessing this fearless wave of joy for a better day, for working together, for building that beloved community that Martin Luther King (Sr. and Jr.) and Howard Thurman before them held so dearly. Yes we can!!

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Yoko Ono is inviting people around the world to join together in wishes for peace as she lights the Imagine Peace Tower today in Reykjavik Iceland honoring John Lennon. The tower is a beam of light powered by local geothermal energy.

Dear Friends,

Please join me not only in remembering John on October 9th but also in spreading the message of peace. This is something that was so important to John - the fact that we could all work together for the positive good of our planet. He would have loved how we are all mobilizing ourselves in thought and in action. It’s time for action and the action is peace!
with love, yoko

Yoko Ono
9 Oct 2008

As a young artist, Yoko imagined the tower, and in 1967 John invited her to create it, however, at that time she did not know how. In the same spirit, let us envision peace, even if we don’t yet know the way to build it — through love and clear intention, we will find a way.

Steven Dahlberg, contributor to the latest issue of New Village Online will be teaching a new course at the University of Connecticut, “Creativity and Social Change”, which is the first offering in a new interdisciplinary Creative Community Building Program that includes partners outside the university. The program is offered through the Center for Continuing Studies for a Bachelor of General Studies degree, as well as non-credit workshops and seminars for professional development. Learn more about the course and program on Steve’s Applied Imagination blog.

Dear Friends of New Village Press,

A short newsletter to announce the newest issue of New Village Online and two upcoming book events:

Issue #4 of New Village Online—Unboxing Democracy’s Magic— offers an inspiring exploration of community building forged from democratic partnerships between off-campus communities and universities. Guest editor Len Krimerman, director of a new degree program in Creative Community Building at the University of Connecticut, infuses the work reported here with his valuable understanding of how cooperatives work. In this issue we not only encounter new ideas, we learn new vocabulary, gaining understanding of a kind of cooperative economy that uses a “Participatory Budget” process, and we discover the “Communiversity.” (more…)

Craig Zelizer, Ph.D., visiting professor in Conflict Resolution studies at Georgetown University and co-founder of the Alliance for Conflict Transformation has written a sensitive and enlightening review of Bill Cleveland’s new book — Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World Frontlines. In his review for the Community Arts Network, Zelizer offers lessons he learned from the book. Here is his opening.

Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World Frontlines by William Cleveland (Oakland, CA: New Village Press, 2008, 352 pp.)

What are the roles that artists can play in the midst of severe violence? How can artists create meaning and empower communities during conflict and war? What are the motivations that lead individuals and groups to undertake arts-based processes at great personal risk? Why do authoritarian regimes feel threatened by creative acts?

These are some of the powerful questions that William Cleveland explores in his timely and compelling new book, “Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines.” The book is a product of an eight-year journey, in which Cleveland, a leading community-arts practitioner in the United States, journeyed around the world to document and learn from artists working on the “frontlines.”

. . . link to full review

Dear Friends of New Village Press,

Happy Summer! We are thrilled to announce the release of our tenth new title—Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines by William Cleveland. This is a rare and moving account of local artists rebuilding the social infrastructure of communities in six parts of the world that have suffered the trauma of civil war or political repression. (more…)