New Genres / New Media

In the Reader last issue I reported on the Cleveland Foundation's decade-long effort (in partnership with other area funders, cultural institutions, and the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture) to make the case for local public support for the arts here. At the GIA conference last November, anyone within shouting distance of those of us from Cleveland must have heard that we were suc-cessful. The grins on our faces lit up the host celebration that first night.

Background

New Year's Day, 1980, found Arlene Goldbard living in Washington, D.C. monitoring and reporting on our nation's de facto cultural policy. The fact that Arlene was doing this says a lot about the leadership role that many of us were counting on the federal government to play in leveling the field so that our many U.S. cultures would have an equal chance to express themselves, to develop, and, inevitably, to cross-pollinate. It was a substantial and beautiful vision then, and remains so today.

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.

Over the past forty years, several hundred legal frameworks have been established for cooperative action by governments on ecological issues — treaties such as the Biodiversity Convention, the Climate Change Convention, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. How do these relate to art?

Outreach

Collaborative Circles: A Review

Frances Phillips

National Arts Stabilization , 30 South Charles Street, Suite 1515, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, 410-332-1900, natarts[at[flash.net

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.

Wolf, Keens, and Company, 8 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138