Arts and Community Development

Artist Rene Yung's presentation of this paper generated lively discussion at a forum of the Arts Loan Fund of Northern California Grantmakers, in October 2006. It was written just as Arlene Goldbard's new book, New Creative Community, was published. Although Yung refers to an earlier publication (Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development, by Don Adams and Gold-bard, 2001), she touches on many of the same themes discussed by the authors of "The Art of Social Imagination" (page 27 in this Reader) and reveals how the ideas have been adopted by an artist in practice.

1998, 82 pages, SPUR, 312 Sutter Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, California 94108-4305, 415-781-8726, fax: 415-781-7291, spur[at]well.com.

Produced by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, this report provides details and insights from a three-day community workshop that addressed the following concerns:

• the ability of cultural institutions to meet their full audience potential, to educate needy individuals, to attract new donations, and to secure major traveling exhibits

I am a fan of peer panels and have always enjoyed serving on them. Coming from a dance/theater background I view them as a performance event rich with actors and drama, text and subtext. I particularly appreciate the transformation of a group of individuals into a temporary community of purpose. Panelists are introduced, size each other up, conduct negotiations, build consensus, argue and disagree, acknowledge their differences, struggle to find a common language, reach certain compromises, and finally come to a set of conclusions.

Why is it that the Twentieth Century has witnessed an abundance of large-scale utopian plans for social and economic development that have accomplished, contrary to their lofty objectives, immense human suffering and massive environmental degradation? In his book, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C.

The following article is based on excerpts from a program examination by Arts Action Research.

Bimbo Rivas: Artist Profile

1997, 175 pages, Columbia College, 1001 Rogers Road, Columbia, Missouri 65216, Review by Gita Gulati, The Cleveland Foundation.

Rebuilding the Front Porch of America is a collection of previously presented essays by Patrick Overton, an arts administrator and community organizer in Missouri. In this short but substantive book, Overton defines community arts as “the new front porch of America,” a place where family, friends, and neighbors gather to share their stories.

Intersections
This report began as a standard travelog, factual, but listless. The GIA conference title, Intersections, seemed appropriate, but irritating as it pricked at some memory I could not grasp.

The following article is adapted from "The World in Pieces: culture and politics at the end of the century," from Focaal no. 32, 1998, pp. 91-117. It is published here with permission from the author.

The highlight of summer in Santa Fe this year was the June 17 (1997) opening of the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, a project of the Burnett Foundation. Anyone needing a caterer, carpenter, or waiter was...well, disappointed. The entire town was consumed by opening festivities. As one grantmaker noted, this was Georgia's version of “Desert Storm.” The number of museum visitors staff predicted for the entire year was roughly 150,000—but in the six weeks following the opening, numbers have already totaled 90,000.