Thousand Kites is a national multi-media arts project created to spark a dialog about incarceration in the United States. The project uses film, theater, radio, and the Internet to explore the criminal justice system and bridge racial, cultural, and geographic divides between stakeholder communities. (more…)

"Along the Way" image courtesy the Cause Collective

I recently discovered an uplifting body of work by a group of public-realm artists called the Cause Collective. Their projects aim to “explore and enliven public spaces by creating a dynamic conversation between issues, sites and the public audience.” (more…)

Dear Friends of New Village Press,

What a joy it is to feel our nation waking up to the stirrings of its heart. Hope renewed for a brighter, more compassionate future. A dream being shared that we can create a peaceful and democratic society.

The theme of our newest issue of New Village Online is “A Festival of Democracy,” the idea behind it being that social change is not so much a task for wise leaders as it is a task for creative citizens. Every person has not only the right to contribute to the vision of the world they want, every citizen has creative abilities to tap in describing that vision. (more…)

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, the parent organization for New Village Press, is deeply concerned about the escalation of incarceration in response to violence. Rather than build more prisons, ADPSR believes in investing in the health of our communities. ADPSR’s national Prison Design Boycott has recently evolved into a Prison Alternatives Initiative and will be making an effort to learn about and promote programs that strengthen communities rather than break them apart.

Today’s New York Times featured “A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders,” a report by Leslie Kaufman about an alternative sentencing program started a year ago this month in New York City called the Juvenile Justice Initiative. The program allows medium-risk youth offenders to stay with their families and provides intensive home therapy instead of jail, prison, or other correctional facilities. (more…)

If you read our January newsletter, you know that I am much enamored of Toronto’s Poet Laureate Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, that lyric champion of Creative Cities. One of my favorite of his public addresses is “Civic Valentines,” which starts,

When one falls in love, one becomes credible; and so it is with a city when it falls in love with itself. It becomes credible, believable to itself. And it attracts. When a civic leader is in love with a city, he/she is listened to. He/she is credible. People know this: that the quality of life is initially and inevitably predicated by love. (more…)

Works of Heart: Building Village Through the Arts was featured in two blogs this week, in both cases being read for the first time and surprising the readers enough they decided to write about it. Margaret, a social worker and educator from Eastern Washington, comments in her blog Margaret’s Wanderings, “How joyful it is to see people using their creative gifts in and for their communities. It helped reiterate something I have always known: Art can change the world.” The second blogger is a young pastor of a suburban Presbyterian church in a Mid-Atlantic state, whose blog, Reverendmother, notes “One of my favorite sections of the book was about an artist who got a grant to rent out a stall at the local public market as a place for storytelling, music and performance art. How wonderful.” She found the book in the Tools for Change catalog from Syracuse Cultural Workers.

Works of Heart is being adopted by more and more college courses as a textbook. One early adopter is Professor Amara Geffen, a notable community artist and chair of the art department at Allegheny College in Western Pennsylvania. Amara has stepped outside conventional boundaries of academia by directing two initiatives in an ambitious program that involves faculty and students in college-community partnerships that address local and regional sustainability issues—The Center for Economic and Environmental Development, called simply CEED. (more…)

The work of cartoonist author Keith Knight is featured at the Euphrat Museum at DeAnza College in the show Graphic Storytelling as Activism, which runs February 11 – April 17, 2008.

Graphic Storytelling as Activism presents a variety of art forms, including cartoons, political posters, digital art, book art, and more to explore a range of imagery with an activist bent. It began with graphic storyteller Keith Knight, who sees comics and cartooning as a powerful tool for social change. (more…)