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2005, 17 pages. Heritage Preservation, 1012 14th Street, NW, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20005, 202-233-0800

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2005, 65 pages. McKnight Foundation, 710 Second Street South, Suite 400, Minneapolis, MN 55401, 612-333-4220

Carolyn Bye, executive director of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, writes in the introduction that You Are Here reports on the "small steps" taken by communities in the Twin Cities suburbs since the publication of A New Angle: Arts Development in the Suburbs in 2002. The report features profiles of twelve suburban art projects and a detailed pull-out map showing where to find them and many others.

The annual conference of the International Funders of Indigenous Peoples (IFIP) met for two days at the Ford Foundation and the United Nations in May of 2006. In her opening remarks, Evelyn Arce-White, IFIP executive director, noted that it was rare to have funders, Indigenous Peoples, and NGOs together in the same room and that the value of such a meeting was not to be measured in financial terms but should be considered spiritual in nature. The spirit of this idea was evident throughout the conference.

The hallmarks of a just and civil society reflect the values of artistic freedom and the rights of free expression. Increasingly these rights are threatened by the "clearance culture" that is found in most creative industries and assumes that almost no quotation can be used without permission from the owner. Fair Use is an important yet often misunderstood legal right.

These thoughts were sparked by attending the Council on Foundations 57th Annual Conference, "Philanthropy: Investing in the Vision of Progress." I was especially engaged by the plenary remarks of George Soros and Newt Gingrich.

A growing number of scholars and writers have been tracing the multiple connections between the arts and economic vitality during the past decade. A recent book by anthropologist Maribel Alvarez, There's Nothing Informal about It: Participatory Arts within the Cultural Ecology of Silicon Valley (2005) has drawn a new set of connections for me and raised the possibility that informal, or participatory, cultural practices may have greater meaning in an economic context than I previously recognized.

America is on the threshold of a significant transformation in cultural life. There have been many cultural shifts in recorded history: Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and the rise of the reading public; the growth of a mercantile class and the birth of private art markets independent of the church and the king; the invention of gas streetlights and the beginning of urban nighttime entertainment. The most recent cultural transformation, still with us today, was set in motion on the threshold of the twentieth century.

Steve Gunderson is the new president and CEO of the Council on Foundations. After serving three terms in the Wisconsin State Legislature, Gunderson served sixteen years in the U.S. Congress, where he focused on agriculture, education, employment policy, health care, and human rights. After not seeking re-election in 1996, he served as senior consultant and managing director for the Washington office of the Greystone Group, a Michigan-based strategic management and communications consulting firm.

For classical music lovers in East Texas and Western Louisiana, KTPB-FM has been the only source of classical music programming for the past fifteen years. From its first broadcasts, KTPB has offered the live presentations of the Metropolitan Opera alongside concerts of the Longview Symphony and the East Texas Symphony Orchestra.

2005, 158 pages. Arts Education Partnership , One Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431, 202-336-7016, aep@ccsso.org

The Arts Education Partnership's new book, Third Space: when learning matters, should be required reading for anyone involved in what promises to be a lively and contentious debate around the 2007 reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.