Patience is a word that has been showing up for me lately—at least three reminders this month to consider a slower mode of living. In this why-didn’t-we-fix-it-yesterday world, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer potential of what we can do, what we feel we should do, and what we feel we must do, not mention what we wish we had done. Finding reminders about patience, I am nudged to give myself permission to ease into the space of just appreciating what is, take off the yanking bridle that pulls me ever forward, and really feel the luscious grass on my bare feet. (more…)

I am wearing orange today in solidarity with Plain Human, a group of artists and designers in San Francisco and Northampton Massachusetts who are making March 11th Prisoner Awareness Day.

This week and last, prison issues have been prominent in the mainstream press, as more Americans are starting to see the physical and fiscal realities of rocketing incarceration rates, even if they have yet to feel the profound suffering it causes individuals, families, and communities. A Pew Center on the States report, which came out February 28th, offered the startling statistic that one in 99.1 adults in the United States is behind bars. Overwhelmingly, those incarcerated come from the least educated, most impoverished neighborhoods. If the distress of low-income communities and communities of color hadn’t got anyone’s attention, the price tag for putting and keeping people in jail or prison finally has. States, alone, are paying nearly $50 billion annually, on a par now with their spending for higher education. (more…)

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…)

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…)

Author Louise Dunlap is on tour presenting her new book, Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing, and offering writing workshops throughout February in Grass Valley, Nevada City, Berkeley, Oakland, Washington DC, New York, and Cambridge. Check the New Village Event Calendar for details.

Evidence of Humanity has posted a beautifully crafted review of Undoing the Silence on their webblog. What a work of grace that Evidence of Humanity! Thank you, Don Baker, for your clarity of vision and execution in creating a simple, handsome website to highlight good work in the world.

The University of California Berkeley’s Center for Community Innovation hosted an interdisciplinary symposium on the arts and community development on Friday, January 25th. The one-day conference came from a collaboration of Karen Chapple, Director of the Center and Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Shannon Jackson, Chair of UCB’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. A dozen presenters and nearly one hundred attendees explored the role of the arts in urban revitalization and civic engagement on the neighborhood level. (more…)