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reating and establishing partnerships is an essential part of the California Arts Council (CAC) Strategic Plan for 2008. One of our partnerships this year has been with the Alameda County Office of Education’s Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership (ACOE), who created a three day training institute for teaching artists. Organized by artists who are part of a new effort to professionalize the field of teaching artists, Teaching Artists Organize (TAO) serves the San Francisco Bay Area, and is playing a key role in a growing statewide network of organizations that support and train teaching artists.

Community artists and arts organizations have been a part of arts education for as long as schools and the arts have been around. The CAC has always believed there was a role for artists in education and continues this commitment today, in spite of the severe cuts to our budget. Arts Education is so important to the CAC that the Council voted to allocate at least 50% of its grants funding to arts education.

Whether for a performance, a workshop, a lecture demonstration or a residency, the nonprofit arts community has stood steadfast with education and provided service in times of need. When Proposition 13 cut the arts out of education in California schools, artists and the nonprofit arts community stepped up to provide services to schools, believing that the arts are important for children.

Many changes have occurred over the years in California’s arts education. The state has adopted content standards in the arts; the governor committed $105 million in 2007-08 and $109 million in 2008-09 for arts in education; and the CAC is smaller in size, but motivated and energized through partnerships with the community to get things done.

Artists have always been a part of the landscape for the CAC, and Teaching Artists – a relatively new identification in California for artists working in schools – have always been an important part of the arts educational landscape at the Alameda County Office of Education. A perfect fit! In working with the CAC to present the Teaching Artist Institute, ACOE also turned to its partners: the Alameda County Arts Commission and the California College of the Arts, as well as an array of artists and arts service providers.

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The fantastic result was a successful three day institute in Alameda, using seed funding from the CAC. We also funded a gathering of statewide organizations to look at this training and the possibility of TAO expanding beyond the Bay Area to other areas of the state. Enjoy the latest newsletter from TAO. Read, ask questions, get involved! You can obtain more information from tao@teachingartistsorganize.org, or call Wayne D. Cook at the California Arts Council .

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ll of us are storytellers by nature, conveying our thoughts and experiences moment to moment. And whether we are communicating to our families or a complete stranger, the meaning and sentiment behind our words come to life when we speak rather than take pen to paper. The oral art form of poetry is a perfect example of this. “Hearing a poem spoken aloud, we discover that a poem is, before anything else, an event of the ear. The meaning of the poem lies as much in the sound of its words as in their sense,” explains John Barr, poet and President of the Poetry Foundation.

Barr and Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) have worked together with countless other partners throughout the nation to build a movement to make poetry a mainstream activity again, and this movement is the National Recitation Contest—Poetry Out Loud.

Poetry Out Loud encourages high school students to develop the ability to clearly and with confidence convey the meaning of a poem to an audience. Through the study, memorization, and performance of poems, students learn the importance of words and how these words can connect them to a different time and place that they may have more in common with than they had thought. “What we really want to do is to open up the whole world of poetry to these kids and show them that almost anything that's part of human experience, there is a great poem about,” said Chairman Gioia in an interview on National Public Radio.

In California, Poetry Out Loud has skyrocketed, involving more schools than any other state, according to an NEA survey. Twenty counties participated in 2007-08: Alameda, Contra Costa, Fresno, Humboldt, Lake, Los Angeles, Madera, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Siskiyou, Sonoma, Tuolumne, and Ventura.

This year, the California Arts Council has been inundated with emails from teachers and students statewide who want to find out how to get involved in the program. Teachers have described the camaraderie and enthusiasm their students display when participating in Poetry Out Loud.

These teachers understand the central objective of Poetry Out Loud:  to familiarize students with the best of their literary heritage, while teaching them important public speaking skills. This program is not intended to replace classroom activities like creative writing; in fact, the two naturally complement each other. Teachers appreciate the funded professional poet classroom visits, and the free hard copy and online materials. Moreover, they understand that their students are participating in something beyond the classroom and are truly gaining a love of poetry. Shawntay Henry, winner of the 2008 Poetry Out Loud National Competition in Washington D.C. said, "I thought poetry was boring, but when you really listen to the words and recite it on stage, it comes alive and you can feel that, and you have to make sure the audience feels that too. I hope this is an opportunity for me to open doors for younger children ... to let them know that poetry is not what it seems."

Poetry Out Loud will not only significantly increase students’ confidence in themselves and their own abilities, but it will also strengthen skills they will use in the future as they become part of the workforce and communities they live in. Year four of California Poetry Out Loud, beginning this fall, hopes to make memorizing and reciting poetry a typical activity again in every California high school. Poetry Out Loud is being administered by the California Arts Council and the materials are available now. If you want your school or county to participate this year, please contact and check out the online materials for Poetry Out Loud.

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he legacy of an organization is often tied to the legacy of an individual. Purple Silk Music Education Foundation (PSMEF) has been synonymous with Sherlyn Chew, its founder and artistic director since 1995.

Sherlyn was born in Oakland into a family steeped in traditional Chinese music. After graduating from UC Berkeley and studying and performing abroad, she returned to Oakland to teach music in both Lincoln Elementary School, her alma mater, and in nearby Laney College.

It was a 1995 event, while attending her former music teacher’s funeral in Southern California, that destined her to establish PSMEF. While helping the widow sort her late husband’s belongings, Chew discovered a closet full of traditional Chinese instruments purchased 25 years ago by the teacher for the unrealized purpose of creating a Chinese orchestra in California. That fateful event mandated that she fulfill the hope of her late teacher as well as rise to the artistic needs of her community and state. In response to the loss of arts education and music programs in public school as a result of Proposition 13 and other economic factors, Sherlyn battled the odds and founded PSMEF.

It is worthwhile to explore the organization’s mission statement: “PSMEF is an Oakland-based nonprofit that supports music education for inner-city youth. Our mission is to instill in young people an appreciation of music from all cultures through instruction in traditional Chinese instruments. We promote opportunities for children and youth of low-income families to receive music education from professional musicians, perform in public venues and become proficient musicians themselves.”

PSMEF uniquely reflects the ethnic makeup of the Bay Area in California. While solidly based in the Chinese American community and neighborhood of Oakland, its reach has expanded in a healthy and harmonious manner to include significant partnerships with the African American and Latino communities.

Starting from humble beginnings at Lincoln Elementary School in the heart of Oakland’s under-served Chinatown, PSMEF inaugurated the Purple Bamboo Orchestra and Chorus, which is still going strong and receives grant support from the Artists in Schools program of the California Arts Council.

PSMEF also established the Great Wall Youth Orchestra and Chorus, consisting primarily of advanced and older members of the younger group, as well as new students who attend the Saturday Laney College classes. Great Wall Youth Orchestra and Chorus has, among many venues, performed with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, played at half-time during Golden State Warriors basketball games, and recently toured the Pacific Northwest with performances in Portland, Spokane and Vancouver.

The multicultural makeup of the Bay Area is intriguingly reflected through examples of PSMEF past and present offerings. The ever-expanding repertoire of the group currently includes 25 Chinese folk tunes and 11 selections from other parts of the world –18 of these are featured in their recent CD entitled Joyful Journey. Tyler Thompson, the African American youth who premiered with PSMEF at the age of 9, continues to shine as an example of a cross-cultural phenomenon. The International Community School in East Oakland, whose population is 76% Latino, has also become a significant recruiting source of young musicians for PSMEF.

Although Sherlyn Chew has retired from teaching at both Lincoln Elementary and the International Community School since the summer of 2006, she continues to teach at Laney College nearby, where elementary students may earn college credit in, naturally, Chinese music. Today, Sherlyn remains dedicated to Purple Silk and Great Wall as artistic director while ceding managerial directorship and leadership over Purple Bamboo Orchestra and Chorus at Lincoln to Victor Siu, her longtime protégé.

It is appropriate to say that Ms. Sherlyn Chew’s life has thus far been a joyful journey in arts and music education, and in the promotion of cross-cultural understanding. Her work has enriched the lives of thousands of youth in the Bay Area as well as brought national and international recognition of PSMEF. The California Arts Council salutes her contributions to the arts of our state, and is honored to be among supporters of her life-long work.

Purple Silk has received support from several grant programs of the California Arts Council. It is currently funded in the Artists in Schools (AIS) program, which promotes arts learning in public and nonprofit schools from kindergarten to twelfth grade. The next deadline for the AIS program is March 6, 2009. An online application will be available by December 19, 2008. For detailed information, please contact Wayne Cook at (916) 322-6344 or , or John Seto at (916) 322-6395 or , or visit our website, www.cac.ca.gov.  

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*Much more may be learned about Purple Silk Music Education Foundation from its extensive website www.purplesilk.org.

Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore was created to fill an important need in the Northeast San Fernando Valley—where 450,000 people (about the same population as Oakland), mostly Mexicans and Central Americans, did not have access to bookstores, art galleries or decent cultural spaces until Tía Chucha’s opened its doors.

The Centro was named after Luis’ favorite aunt, who played guitar, wrote poetry and songs, sang, and even concocted her own perfumes and colognes (although they smelled pretty bad). Luis wanted to honor Tía Chucha’s spirit of being a self-engendered and self-realized person, of taking risks to meet her passions, gifts, and destiny. Over time, we discovered many Tías Chucha: The lady who sold tamales on weekends turned out to be a great singer; the older gentleman who walked in seemingly out of nowhere was a wonderful Mexican muralist, poet, and singer; and a mechanic, who never read a book in his life, in one year read thirty. The impact of Tía Chucha’s work in a community devoid of arts opportunities to enrich one’s soul and mind was constant. The most moving story involved a 14-year-old girl who wanted to commit suicide until she heard the drums of our resident Azteca Danza group—she joined, and a year later said she didn’t want to kill herself anymore.

Chicano author/poet Luis J. Rodríguez, community activist Trini Rodríguez, and community leader Enrique Sánchez, founded the Centro as Tía Chucha’s Café Cultural in 2001. Located in the working-class community of Sylmar, Tía Chucha’s consisted of a full coffee bar, bookstore, art gallery, performance space, and arts workshop center (art, music, theater, dance, and writing). Programming included theater and music presentations, poetry readings, Noches Bohemias (open mic for Spanish-language participants), Film Nights, Young Womyn’s Circle, Jóvenes Nobles (a young men’s rites of passage group) and Community Dialogues. In 2003, the importance of accessing a larger space in order to meet a growing need, motivated Luis, Angélica Loa and Víctor Mendoza to form Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural as a nonprofit arts center—next door to the café/bookstore. Our board of directors represents all communities served: Chicanos, African Americans, European Americans, and Asians.

We brought all the arts and healing workshops into the new Centro, along with Tía Chucha Press, which recently celebrated twenty years of publishing quality cross-cultural poetry from around the country; Dos Manos Records, a CD production project; and Xispas, a Chicano online magazine. Tía Chucha’s incorporated new programs including Young Warriors—an arts-based youth empowerment project, Mexicayotl indigenous cosmology, mural painting, and Capoeira (Brazilian Martial Arts/Dance). In the spring of 2006, we began an annual literary & arts festival, “Celebrating Words: Written, Performed, and Sung;” and in 2007 we held our first annual benefit event at the 1,200-seat Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood called, “Tía Chucha’s Celebration of Community & Culture: Sí Se Puede!/Yes We Can!”

Tía Chucha’s presenting record includes such notables as Lalo Guerrero, the Godfather of Chicano Music; bands such as Quetzal, Very Be Careful, Los Cojolites, and Mezkla; original theater with Teatro Tres Chingazos, Teatro Chusma, and the EARTH Theater Company; and readings by Sandra Cisneros, Víctor Villaseñor, John Trudell, Yxta Maya Murray, Martín Espada, and Adrienne Rich, among others. Workshops include music (guitar, piano, Hip Hop DJing, African Drumming, Son Jarocho); art (painting, sculpture), and writing.

Over the years, Tía Chucha’s work has been acknowledged through grants from funding institutions including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, LA County Arts Commission, LA City Department of Cultural Affairs, Liberty Hill Foundation, Center for Cultural Innovation, and The Annenberg Foundation. Individuals who support Tía Chucha’s work through donations include Bruce Springsteen, John Densmore of the Doors, Lou Adler, Richard Foos of Rhino Records, Tom Hayden, Jack Kornfield, and the Luis & Trini Rodríguez family.

In 2007, Tía Chucha’s was forced out of its space when the landlords tripled our rent to make way for a high-end Laundromat—temporarily moving to nearby Lake View Terrace to continue our programming until a larger space could be located. Answering the call to return to Sylmar, Tía Chucha’s just celebrated its relocation to Sylmar Plaza with a grand opening on March 28. Upcoming annual events are the Celebrating Words festival, slated for June 27 at Mission Community College; and Celebrating Community & Culture: Sí Se Puede/Yes We Can!, a benefit event on August 2 at Hollywood’s Ford Amphitheater.

Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore will continue to make art, dance, music, writing, theater, indigenous cosmology, and literacy the centerpiece of an ongoing economic/cultural revival in the largely neglected Northeast Valley communities. Tía Chucha’s artistic and educational resources are a much-needed creative stimulus in the midst of these hard economic times. “In fact, it’s precisely in hard times that the arts become the engine for community renewal and regeneration—the only way through today’s chaos and uncertainties is with creativity,” asserts Luis Rodríguez, author of the best-selling memoir, Always Running: la Vida Loca, Gang Days in LA.

Cultural spaces and independent bookstores such as Tía Chucha’s are dying across the country. We have proven that they are badly needed and must be safeguarded from the vagaries of the marketplace, political shifts, and development. Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural is a model of what self-sustaining and organically tied community cultural spaces can be. As our tagline says: Where Art and Minds Meet—For a Change!”

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Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore receives funding from the California Arts
Council’s Creating Public Value Program, contributing to the organization’s work in
strengthening its community’s imaginative and creative capacity through arts and literacy programs—making books “cool” and relevant.

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he dream had been cherished in the minds of parents, young musicians and Bay Area music professionals for some time when, in 1975, a performance opportunity and an invitation set into motion the events that would lead to the founding of San Francisco Girls Chorus.

The San Francisco Boys Chorus had served for many years as children's chorus for San Francisco Opera productions, singing parts intended for both boys' and girls' voices interchangeably. All that changed when Opera General Director Kurt Herbert Adler and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich insisted that enough talented young women could be found and trained to sing the female parts in Tchaikovsky's Pikovaya Dama (The Queen of Spades) starring Regina Resnik. Mr. Adler turned to choral conductor and new San Francisco Conservatory of Music faculty member Elizabeth Appling. Appling had also been a teacher and conductor of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, and her credentials and vision were perfect for the task.

"When Mr. Adler asked me, I had only been working at the Conservatory for a few days, and the invitation was both daunting and impossible to resist," says Appling. "I was still teaching a few groups at the Boys Chorus and knew that some of the boys' sisters and parents had long wondered when it would be their turn to participate in something so extraordinary. Now we had our chance."

Although it would be three more years until San Francisco Girls Chorus was formally established in 1978, after the success of Pikovaya Dama, Appling and the nascent girls' chorus continued rehearsing and did several more productions with the Opera. 1978 was to be a watershed year; Appling and the girls were asked to do an unprecedented three productions with the Opera: Otello with Plácido Domingo, Werther with José Carerras and Kathleen Battle, and La Bohème with Ileana Contrubas and Samuel Ramey. In addition, the San Francisco Girls Chorus was formally established as a nonprofit organization with a ready-made pedigree of illustrious performances and productions and a fan base including some of the musical world's top names. Opera stars, conductors and directors from around the world were astonished and impressed with the high level of professionalism and vocal quality Appling and the girls achieved, equaling European children's choruses decades and centuries their seniors. San Francisco Girls Chorus was off and running as the first ensemble for young women in the United States.

Training and consistency were key, and Appling, a natural with her background as an educator and musician, envisioned a Chorus School from the start. "We had 79 girls from the start with 35 in the concert level and a growing enrollment," remembers Appling. "It was a hungry time for women and girls in the late 1970s. We were ready for things made especially for us, and the world had changed enough to be ready to open some opportunities." The school grew so well and so rapidly that in 1983, Appling hired instructor Elizabeth Avakian, who soon became the first Chorus School Director, a position she still holds, having trained hundreds of young women.

Aside from the prestigious Opera engagements, in the early years, San Francisco Girls Chorus buttered its bread with Christmas concerts. "Like the Ballet and Nutcracker, we made money doing lots of holiday performances," says Appling. "I remember one year being exhausted after doing 39 shows, including weekly performances at bustling Ghirardelli Square. We got a lot of exposure-to people and the weather-and became better known in the Bay Area."

The holiday successes led to a continuing tradition and catapulted the Girls Chorus into a full season. By 1982, Appling noticed that nobody in the Bay Area was doing holiday sing-alongs on a large scale. "I had picked up a recording of a sing-along that had been done annually in London at Royal Albert Hall," she recalls. "Several generations of families made it a holiday tradition, with grandparents bringing grandchildren for the first time to an event they had been brought to as children by their elders. What a wonderful idea, I thought. I floated the idea, and our ambitious Executive Director, Carol Zimmerman, said, 'let's call Davies Hall!", which had just recently opened. We were amazed to get a concert date, within two weeks of the performance we were sold out, and the Girls Chorus has performed there every year since." Emboldened by success and support, the next year saw the Girls Chorus launching a multiple-concert San Francisco season, a milestone in the organization's growth.

Never resting on laurels, San Francisco Girls Chorus prepared for its first tour and made as big a splash as its launch with San Francisco Opera by traveling to Washington D.C. at the invitation of President Reagan to perform at the White House. "The City of San Francisco so believed in the Girls Chorus that Mayor Dianne Feinstein herself went public to raise funds for the Washington tour," recalls Appling. "To her and many others, the Girls Chorus represented the face and the future of San Francisco." In a fitting tribute to all that it has accomplished in its 30 seasons, San Francisco Girls Chorus returned to Washington D.C. in January 2009 to sing at the inaugural ceremony of President Barack Obama. No longer just an offshoot from the San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Girls Chorus is a national treasure in its own right.

The San Francisco Girls Chorus continues to represent the face and the future of San Francisco in performances, tours and recordings in both the US and abroad. In addition to four self-produced concerts in its 30th season and its performance at the presidential inauguration, the Girls Chorus made its debut at the renovated Alice Tully Hall at New York's Lincoln Center in April 2009. Internationally, San Francisco Girls Chorus has been honored to sing at many important venues, including the World Choral Symposium in Kyoto, Japan, in 2005; as the delegate for North America in the prestigious World Vision Children's Choir Festival in Seoul, Korea; and in the Gateway to Music Festival at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing.

In recognition of its excellence, the Girls Chorus has won many accolades such as three Grammy® awards for its performances on several San Francisco Symphony recordings. Additional awards have included Chorus America's "Margaret Hillis Award" and two ASCAP awards for Adventurous Programming in 1999 and 2004. San Francisco Girls Chorus' discography includes Voices of Hope and Peace, Crossroads, and Music from the Venetian Ospedali, a disc of Italian Baroque music which inspired The New Yorker to proclaim the Girls Chorus "tremendously accomplished." A new release is scheduled for Fall 2009.

With such a stellar reputation, the Girls Chorus School has expanded to offer training to choristers ranging from ages 5-18 in both San Francisco and the East Bay. Today, more than 300 singers from 160 schools in 44 Bay Area cities participate in this internationally recognized program, deemed "a model in the country for training girls' voices" by the California Arts Council. To learn more about this dynamic group of artists and the training behind its success, please visit the Girls Chorus' website at www.sfgirlschorus.org.

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The Sierra Nevada Arts Alliance is a collaborative alliance of the county arts councils of the Sierra Nevada region. Their mission is to attract visitors to the area and sustain the lively arts communities of the Sierra Nevada, while raising awareness of the economic, educational, and social value of the arts. Members of the alliance take an active role, collaborating with tourism and cultural organizations, historical societies, museums, and agricultural interests.

The counties in the Sierra Nevada Arts Alliance are divided into six groups. From North to South they are:

• North Sierra
  Lassen, Modoc, Shasta, Siskiyou
• North Central Sierra
  Butte, Plumas, Sierra
• Central Sierra
  El Dorado, Placer, Yuba/Sutter
• South Central Sierra
  Amador, Calaveras, Mariposa, Tuolumne
• East Sierra
  Inyo, Mono
• South Sierra
  Fresno, Kern, Madera, Tuolumne

The territorial make-up of the Alliance is based upon the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which was created in 2005. The origins of the Alliance itself date back to 2003.

Over the course of two years, 2001-2003, the California Legislature cut funding to the California Arts Council by 94%. As a result, the Arts Council discontinued the State-Local Partnership Program, which had provided grant funds for general operational support to county arts councils.

At the 2003 Sierra Business Council Conference, an "Arts Team", including the directors of nine county arts councils situated along State Highway 49, met to discuss strategies for sustaining the arts in the Sierra Nevada. From that meeting a business plan was created for the establishment of the Sierra Nevada Arts Alliance.

The Alliance's first project was the creation of the Sierra Nevada Arts and Culture Map. It was initially known as the "Nine on 49" for the original nine counties that comprised the Alliance. The map promoted nine "must see" sites in each county (from Mariposa to Sierra) for visitors and residents alike as they travel along Highway 49.

When the Sierra Nevada Conservancy was created in 2005, both the Alliance and the map were expanded to include all 22 counties embraced by the conservancy. In 2006, the Sierra Business Council and the Arts Council of Placer County received a grant from the Compton Foundation to create a communication plan and a website for the Alliance.

The arts and culture map now available on the Sierra Nevada Arts Alliance website is linked to a calendar that is searchable in a variety of ways: by region, county, city, category, date and more. Tourists and residents can easily get listings of arts and cultural events of an area they plan to visit. Listings include open studio tours, performances, exhibits, festivals, and locations of cultural interest.

The calendar is also accessible on the website of Sierra Heritage Magazine. This partnership of the Sierra Nevada Arts Alliance with Sierra Heritage Magazine includes the annual publication of the Arts and Culture Magazine. This hard copy guide to arts and culture in the Sierra Nevada is inserted into each March issue of Sierra Heritage Magazine as a separate piece. It can be removed and used for planning trips, and can be distributed to locations and businesses where it may be best utilized.

The California Arts Council reestablished the State-Local Partnership Program in 2007. Although funding support for the county arts councils has resumed, it is not at the level of pre-2003 and may not be again for some time. Collaborative marketing by organizations of a region is one of the new models for sustaining organizations and serving the arts. The Sierra Nevada is rich in cultural heritage and attractions and this is an effective way to promote the area.

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Housed in one of the world’s most prestigious performance centers, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., one hundred activists, artists, and policy makers gathered this past July for the second National Summit on Careers in the Arts for people with disabilities. Eleven years after the first Forum, participants were charged to evaluate the progress and develop new strategies to advance educational and career opportunities in the arts for people with disabilities.

Lending their voices to the national dialogue were notable California artists Victoria Ann Lewis Founding Director of the Other Voices Project at the Mark Taper Forum (1982-2002), and Judith Smith, Artistic Director of Axis Dance, a physically integrated dance company. They gave educational and moving presentations of how they have been affected as artists since the initial Forum.

Closer to home, the Summit allowed for a moment of reflection on behalf of the California Arts Council (CAC) in its role as a state agency in addressing issues of inclusion, access and artistic excellence.

In Ghana there is a mythical bird called the Sankofa that flies forward with its head turned backwards. For the CAC, the Sankofa embodies the significance of mining the lessons of past years in order to best guide, inspire, and motivate the next generation of arts leaders with disabilities.

Breaking Ground

The 1998 National Forum on Careers in the Arts for People with Disabilities was a landmark gathering that provided the motivation and the tools to review and advance the national dialogue. Since then, the National Endowment of the Arts’ (NEA) Office of AccessAbility, led by Paula Terry, has sponsored 26 state arts agencies to convene statewide Forums. The 2003 CAC statewide forum, Hire Value, was a collaboration among VSA arts, arts employers, arts organizations, disability service providers and most importantly artists with disabilities, to identify strategies and implement activities to support arts careers.

California Takes Action

In a state as large as California, the need to collaborate with others to address all of the issues is essential. One of the CAC’s most long-standing and important partners is the National Arts and Disability Center (NADC), out of UCLA. The CAC consults and collaborates with Dr. Olivia Raynor, the Director of the NADC, regarding access issues for artists and audiences with disabilities.

As a result of Hire Value came the Arts and Accessibility Technical Assistance Program and the Arts and Disability Network. The CAC and NADC make grants available of up to $500 for artists with disabilities and arts organizations to enhance participation in the arts by people with disabilities. Since 2003, 138 arts organizations have received grants to provide access services, such as sign language interpreters or audio description. Thirty-seven artists with disabilities received grants towards their professional development (e.g. training, materials, performances and exhibits). The CAC has continuously supported the mini-grant program even as its budget was decreased.

The California Arts and Disability Network (ADN)

The Hire Value conference was the impetus to establish the Arts and Disability Network (ADN), one of the CAC’s Statewide Networks Program grantees. ADN created new opportunities for communication, networking, performances and exhibits organized by artists with disabilities in partnership with Arts and Services for the Disabled and the De Young Museum.

So what is next?

Across all disciplines participating in the National Summit, there was one essential message: a call to engage and empower young artists with disabilities. In California we are beginning the process of identifying and engaging the next generation of youth leaders. You can join the dialogue by connecting with each other through a youth-focused page on Facebook: Rising Artists with Disabilities.

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Wayne Cook is the CAC’s ADA/504 Coordinator.  In this role he continues to work on behalf of disability issues on a national, statewide, and local basis.

Photo credits in order of appearance:
Axis Dance Company (cover image); Sankofa, mystical bird from Ghana; Color Field by Kurt Weston, a legally blind photographer; and Blue Moon by Neville Buchan, The Berkeley Creative Living Center.

Iinstigate dance projects that advance female empowerment in the public realm. At its core, my work explores the female body – its tumultuous expressions of strength and fragility. Physically, the work experiments with height, speed and gravity. My work is part of a feminist discourse on the body and the transformation of women’s images in the public domain, as a means to affect women’s self-esteem in their public and private lives. My work is revealed through performance, training and community building programs.

Ten years ago I made a dance on the last hand-operated crane on the San Francisco Waterfront called “Copra Dock Dances.” We had to canoe to rehearsal because the crane sat in the middle of Islais Creek where it pours into the bay. I got to climb a 90 foot tower of steel, swing from its support beams and dance on its highest I-beams, balancing against the sway of the water below me. Now, ten years later, I have just completed a sequel to that dance called “The Ballad of Polly Ann.” Deepening my focus on California labor history, I connected up with Tradeswomen Inc., hired a historian, and collected the oral histories of six women bridge builders who have worked on Bay Area bridges. The title came from the legend of John Henry. In many versions of the folksong, including the one by Bruce  Springsteen on the Seeger Sessions, when John Henry dies, his wife Polly Ann picks up his hammer and ‘drives that steel just like a man.’

During the past year, Flyaway and I have created a movement language that reflects the physical and emotional risks embedded in bridge builders’ relentless physical labor. In particular, we have mined women’s experience with physical work, tools, heights, and machinery as well as their cultural experience working in a male dominated labor force, and how that affected their sense of self, femininity, family, and self worth. It takes a particular kind of woman to work in the trades. Feisty. Independent. Mechanically intelligent. It also takes a particular kind of woman to be a dancer. I have been interested in what the two have in common, and how we differ. We share a devotion to physical process and physical challenges. Both groups of women are a cultural minority; both are small in number in the world, but large in our own power and certainty. Our rates of pay could not differ more. However, women in the trades face horrific and at times life threatening sexism, often on a daily basis. Contemporary dancers working inside a female dominated culture simply do not.

One of the trades I have found fascinating is pile driving. Pile drivers have to work in exquisite cooperation to drive the support structures of a bridge into the ground with a mechanical hammer. It takes hoisting, precision and spilt-second communication. In "The Ballad of Polly Ann," we replicated a section of bridge that tilts vertically and horizontally, shifting its meaning as it changes position. On it we created a dance that explores pile driving. The dancers work with the swing of the bridge section to replicate the rhythm of the mechanical hammer. They, too, are working with split-second timings. We have crashed and burned several times in rehearsal. This particular choreography is probably the hardest thing I have ever asked dancers to do. But after several months we are on the other side of the risks now and have managed to make an exquisite dance that captures both the heartbeat and rigorous mechanics of driving pile.

Most challenging for me about this project is the knowledge that I am creating a dance about the lives of real women who are alive and well. More than half of the women we interviewed are still working in their fields. It is an awesome responsibility to try to honor someone’s work, especially knowing they are going to come to the show to check it out. It brings many questions to the process. How true to their stories should I be? What movement invention serves their experience? Will I honor or offend? I love the responsibility inherent in these questions, just as I love the innovation and generosity that Flyaway’s dancers bring to my process.

Many of the tradeswomen’s stories offered me immediate choreographic direction. For example, we are embracing the fear a crane operator carries with her every day while she sits high above everyone and is responsible for the safety of the whole job site. We took that fear and made it dynamic, suspended, and quick to fall, catch and release.

We inhabited the sense of service felt by a laborer working under the bridge, within spitting distance of the water. Her work is both crucial to, and invisible to, the public. We chose to explore her feelings of contributing to the public good with a dance where a woman is moving and being moved by a tiny toy car. The dance conjured images of community, mobility, social interaction and the freedom to cross bridges.

I reach constantly for the right balance of art and politics, spectacle and content. I am grateful to be able to archive tradeswomen’s stories through dance, where daily work and kinetic imagination coincide. I am grateful for funders like the California Arts Council, who recognize that art holds a vital place in our complicated lives.

“The Ballad of Polly Ann” spoke well to people in the trades who have never seen contemporary dance before. It also spoke to general audiences who had no idea that women build bridges. This makes me feel like I am a part of the world, and that my work serves.

California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) is celebrating its 45th year as a statewide literary organization serving 25,000 students each year in over 25 counties from Humboldt to San Diego. It is the nation’s largest writers in the schools program, with over 100 professionally trained poets working in approximately 280 schools (K-12) annually.

CPITS has been through many changes since its inception. It started out as part of the Pegasus Project at San Francisco State University, placing poets in Bay Area classrooms to read poetry to children. The poets soon began teaching children to write poetry, and the program evolved to include the students' active participation in the writing process. CPITS became its own nonprofit organization in the mid-1970’s and expanded to other counties throughout the state. Currently, two members of the board, Cathy Barber and Susan Sibbet, are serving as interim Co-Executive Directors overseeing a staff of three in the San Francisco office. Terri Glass serves as Program Director, responsible for recruitment of new poet-teachers and coordinating the statewide program through grant writing and supporting the local area coordinators. With new leadership, this long-running organization has transformed into a stronger and more viable nonprofit that hopes to keep expanding even during the current economic downturn.

CPITS began with funding by the California Arts Council (CAC) and the National Endowment for the Arts. Since that time it has diversified its funding base with support from corporate, community, and private foundations, and a membership and individual donor program. It still receives strong support from the CAC that includes sponsoring Poetry Out Loud, a program that teaches the art of recitation and performing of poems to high school students, and Statewide Networks, a program supporting organizational capacity and community building through advocacy. Some of CPITS’s poet teachers are excellent performance poets, and they are all accomplished writers. They are from diverse cultural and ethnic heritages and from all walks of life. An enormously talented group of individuals, they are dedicated to bringing the possibilities of creative expression through poetry into the classroom.

The primary focus of CPITS is to encourage students to write, using their imagination, life experience, and special perceptions to create poetry. CPITS’s poets serve as living models of commitment to imaginative language and creativity, and are uniquely capable of sharing an artist's insights with students.

Each year CPITS hears from classroom teachers how beneficial it is to have a poetry residency in their school.

“The language arts program was deepened and enriched, but the long-range effects of exposure to this poet may be even more significant.” MC Houts, Neil Cummins School, Corte Madera.

“There is a sensitivity and delight in words and word play that a poet by nature offers, especially the poet-teacher that visited our classroom.” Libby Silvestri, Lu Sutton School, Novato.

“Having a poet come to our class was a special experience for all the students. The creativity, passion and experience a poet brings to teaching poetry is of the highest value.” Jennifer Warner, Tomales Elementary, Tomales.

The best of students’ poetry is collected for local and statewide anthologies. This year a special collection of student, poet teacher and alumni poet teachers’ poems will celebrate the 45th anniversary of CPITS in an anthology called What the World Hears, due out in November of 2009. CPITS also recently launched a blog created and designed by Los Angeles poet Kirsten Ogden. Check it out at http://cpits.wordpress.com/. For more information about CPITS visit www.cpits.org. For specific questions about poet-teacher residencies contact Terry Glass at terri@cpits.org.

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To learn more about Poetry Out Loud contact Kristin Margolis, Literary Arts Specialist, at kmargolis@cac.ca.gov; for Statewide Networks, contact Lucero Arellano, Arts Specialist for Multicultural & Rural Arts, at larellano@cac.ca.gov.

T he Ventura County Arts Council (VCAC) is in its third year of facilitating a broad visual and performing arts residency program at Providence, a year-round court school providing educational services to minors incarcerated in the Detention and Commitment Housing Areas within the Ventura County Juvenile Justice Facility.

The residency program brings in teaching artists to work directly with the student population on projects that contain strong arts components, while at the same time emphasizing important life skills such as cooperation and mutual respect.  

The qualities attributed to the Roman Goddess Minerva—courage, strength, and wisdom—and the images they evoke, provide the foundation for this year’s powerful visual arts project. The young women at Providence created their own interpretations of the image of Minerva which were then fashioned into quilt squares. The California Arts Council displayed a number of the squares at this year’s Women’s Conference, an annual event hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver.

The Minerva Quilt Project was adapted by the VCAC from a project created by artist Marion Coleman for the Alameda County Arts Commission. Ventura County community artist MB Hanrahan led this project for the VCAC. MB has fifteen years of experience working on collaborative public art projects with incarcerated and/or at-risk youth, and was a member of the committee responsible for establishing the VCAC Artist Residency Program at Providence.

The majority of the students at Providence have exhibited difficulty learning in a traditional academic setting. Anti-social behaviors, developed over time, have become the norm for their lives and limit their personal growth. Exposure to the arts provides students with new ways of relating to each other, an appreciation for the diversity of their communities, and new ways of approaching core subjects. Graduation from high school is a challenging but important goal for these young women as it is a significant step towards their leading productive and rewarding lives. This project can help these students along that path.

At their first class, students received a ten-page packet of background material on Minerva mythology. The packet includes samples of how Minerva’s powerful image has been used worldwide by institutions of arts and science, the military, and governments including the California State Seal. Minerva is associated with courage, strength, wisdom, poetry, medicine, commerce, crafts, and the invention of music.

Before creating their quilt squares, these young women participated in a class discussion and writing assignment based on a series of questions including:

• How are old, outworn, unhealthy thoughts undermining your life, your energy, your happiness?
• Do you believe the worst of yourself, or the best?
• Which women in your life or celebrities remind you of Minerva? What qualities do they embody?

The participants then drew their own interpretations of the image of Minerva. These drawings were then enlarged and transferred to muslin squares using carbon paper. The canvases were then stretched taut and acrylic paints were used to fill in the designs. As some participants were released during the course of the project, their squares were completed by others in the class. The squares were finished into quilts by an offsite mother-daughter team who are themselves exhibiting community quilters.

The name Minerva comes from the ancient root for “mind.” Traditionally, Minerva appears with her sacred olive tree wearing an aegis, a breastplate, edged with snakes. On her headdress is an owl, which identifies her as goddess of the deepest mysteries. The young women used much of this imagery in their designs.

After completing their panels the young women were asked to reflect upon their experience. Some of the questions were: 

• Do you consider yourself an artist? Do you consider yourself creative?
• Did you know about Minerva before this project? What did you learn?
• What are you taking away from this project . . . is there a quality you are now inspired to develop?

Here are some of their responses:

Ashley: “I believe I’m an artist, someone with a creative mind. I think that having fun and doing what I like to do really let me put some energy in something positive.”

Veronica: “I was inspired in this project. It helped my self-control, just like Minerva was. Now knowing what I learned, I would help in trying to inspire someone else so they can be exposed to how it helps focus.”

Cheryl: “I did not know about Minerva before this project— that she had wisdom and that she was strong. I also learned that snakes stand for a warrior, and an owl stands for wisdom. Art is a way to calm myself  . . . “

Merissa: “This project has helped me with my creative development by showing me good art can also be something you could learn from. . . I think that by doing this I have learned to take something simple and make it brilliant.”

Minerva Project Conducted from September 19 – October 3, 2009
Minerva Project Instructor: MB Hanrahan, Artist
VCAC coordinator: Margaret Travers, Executive Director, VCAC
Providence School Probation Agency Coordinators: Gabriel Tobias, Gail Papp
Photography of Artwork: Brian Stethem
Quilting: Cheryl Collart and Lauren Collart

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The Ventura County Arts Council received funding for this residency project from the California Arts Council’s Artists in Schools Program and receives additional funding through the State-Local Partnership Program which supports county arts councils. For additional information on these programs check the CAC website or contact the respective Program Specialists directly: 

Rob Lautz, State-Local Partnership Program

Wayne Cook, Artists in Schools

It is not often that an arts organization becomes a symbol of a successful struggle in gender identity and cultural equity. The history of the Queer Cultural Center (QCC) embodies the movement of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) population of the San Francisco Bay Area for recognition, fellowship, solidarity and self-expression. In fifteen years, QCC has grown into a vital organization with networks and services that impact constituents around the world.

In order to appreciate its achievements, it is important to examine the mission of QCC:

QCC's website was launched in 1998 to expand its audience world-wide and to promote the work of significant LGBT artists.

Through its programs and activities, QCC has empowered LGBT communities by giving voice and support to a significant population in the Bay Area, and to explore the myriad factors that determine LGBT artistic expressions and its cultural implications and impact. An important factor in this effort is the multicultural and multiracial makeup of QCC’s board of directors, whose bylaws mandate that a majority of its members must be people of color.

From the beginning, QCC has been persistent in addressing the equitable distribution of funds from city government. In 1993 friends in the arts and politics of the lesbian and gay movement based in San Francisco joined forces to create the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Center for Art and Culture (SFLGCAC).* The group shared a dream of establishing a repository for actual works of art and a place to incubate ideas relating to gay culture. In the next few years, SFLGCAC allied with existing cultural centers** to form the Consortium of San Francisco Community Cultural Centers, which later morphed into the San Francisco Arts Democratic Club in order to advocate for charter reform, a cultural facility bond and to gain access to the Hotel Tax Fund. These efforts were aimed to secure a more equitable share of public funding that had favored the major arts institutions showcasing European traditions. Proponents of cultural equity strongly felt that the changing demographics and multicultural makeup of San Francisco mandated a different paradigm. In 1997, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a line item from the city’s Hotel Tax Fund to be used by the ethnic cultural centers. QCC has since been able to successfully partner with many cultural centers and organizations to expand economic opportunities while providing visibility to the city’s art and culture.

Programs that QCC provides include staging an annual month-long multidisciplinary National Queer Arts Festival, first launched in 1998. The 2008 Festival attracted more than 65,000 people.

To date, these Festivals have presented more than 400 different events featuring over 2000 Queer artists including Francis Bacon, Bill T. Jones, Alice Walker, Robert Rauschenberg, Ester Hernandez, Adrienne Rich, Marga Gomez, Justin Chin, Cherrie Moraga and Dorothy Allison. Many of these artists are featured in the six galleries found in QCC’s website. Each LGBT artist affiliated with San Francisco is introduced through biographies, artist’s statements, links, and samples of work. This online repository fulfilled an important goal QCC set out to accomplish.

QCC conducts “Creating Queer Community,” a program that assists in the creation of art work. QCC began operating this program in 2000 by awarding five small commissions ranging from $500 to $1500.   Since then, QCC has commissioned approximately 60 LGBT artists to create new works that authentically express the community’s diverse experiences. Over the past seven years, the vast majority of these commissions have been awarded to culturally-specific and gender-specific individual artists whose work expresses the experiences of Queers of color, Lesbians and Transgenders. The commissioned work has broadened the Queer community’s understanding of the fluid nature of racial and gender identities and has provided many insights into what people of different races, gender identities and ages actually think. QCC has received major grants from the Haas Foundations’ Creative Work Fund, the Gerbode Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation to expand its commissioning activities.

QCC’s programs and services also include Queer Multicultural Arts Development (QMAD) that started in 1999. QMAD provides fundraising and other technical assistance to emerging culturally-specific and gender-specific Queer arts groups. Today, this service enabled Transgender and Queer arts organizations of color to secure government and foundation grants exceeding $1 million.

The California Arts Council (CAC) is proud of QCC’s achievements in addressing the difficult topics of gender identity and cultural equity, and supported QCC’s early works through CAC’s former Multicultural Entry Program.

* Political activist and photographer, Carol Stuart; grant writer and arts consultant, Jeff Jones; artist Rudy Lemcke, and set designer and assistant artistic director for the gay performance group Theater Rhinoceros, Pam Peniston, had all served on Mayor Agnos’ Cultural Affairs Task Force in the late 1980s. They were joined by photographer Greg Day; painter Lenore Chinn; curator Adrienne Fuzee; filmmaker Osa Hidalgo-de la Riva; photographer Freddie Niem and performance artist Blackberri, to form the first board of directors of the San Francisco Center for Lesbian Gay Bi and Transgender Art and Culture.

 ** This included the Center for African and African American Art and Culture, the Bayview Opera House, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the Indian Center for All Nations, South of Market Cultural Center and the Chinese Culture Center.

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The Queer Cultural Center is currently a recipient of the CAC’s Creating Cultural Value Program (CPV), which supports projects making a positive contribution in rural and underserved communities. For more information on CPV, contact Arts Specialist Lucero Arellano at . QCC is also funded by the CAC's ARRA Arts Recovery Grant managed by John Seto, reachable through .

Leap, a nonprofit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area, was established in response to severe cuts in California’s arts education funding following the passage of Proposition 13 in 1979.

Over the past 30 years, Leap has worked to fill the dramatic gap in access to arts learning in local schools. In the face of increasing cuts to school budgets, the need for Leap’s programs is greater than ever. Most schools continue to lack the resources to provide their students with high quality programs in the arts.

Today, Leap annually serves over 25 schools and 6,500 students across the Bay Area with residencies in architecture, visual art, dance, theatre, creative writing and music. Every fall, Leap...imagination in learning orchestrates the spectacular Sandcastle Contest as its major fundraising event. Leap’s 26th Annual Sandcastle Contest came to life at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on October 3rd, 2009. This year’s theme, “Stories in the Sand: Classic Children’s Books,” produced an array of one-of-a-kind sand sculptures inspired by The Giving Tree, Charlotte’s Web, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where the Wild Things Are, Alice in Wonderland and many more.

A stellar lineup of judges participated in this year’s event, including Linda Fairchild, Linda Fairchild Contemporary Art, Julie Downing, children’s book author, http; Daniel Handler (a/k/a Lemony Snicket), children’s book author, and Patti Mitchell, longtime Leap supporter and author of Sandcastles: Great Projects: From Mermaids to Monuments.

The contest is open to the public, free of charge, and supported by the local construction industry, including architects, engineers, and contractors who come together to support arts education in Bay Area schools. This year, 22 teams of professionals joined students from local elementary schools in a collaborative attempt to reshape Mother Nature and to push the limits of creativity. Before the event, architects and builders met with schoolchildren in the classroom to develop ideas based on a set theme. Plans were finalized, clay models were shaped, team structure and schedules were defined, and tasks were assigned, all in preparation for the big day.

The 2009 Sandcastle Contest raised over $200,000 to support Leap. Funds were raised by the teams and sponsors who participated in the event, often with creative and grassroots fundraising efforts such as benefit concerts and bake sales. The top two fundraising teams were Butler Armsden Architects/Dijeau Poage Construction/GFDS Engineers, who raised $38,000 and SmithGroup, Inc/HerreroBoldt/Degenkolb Engineers, who raised $30,250.

The Sandcastle Contest and other long-time partners such as the California Arts Council have made it possible for Leap to bring programs in art and architecture to Bay Area schools for the past 30 years. The support of the California Arts Council’s Artists in Schools program has helped Leap to not only grow its programs to serve more students, but also to be more effective. Current funding from the Artists in Schools program is being used to support two of Leap’s residencies in underserved elementary schools in San Francisco. These visual arts projects will enable students to experience creative connections interwoven with curricular topics through creative thinking, collaborative efforts and hands-on activities. A culminating event will present their work to parents, fellow students and teachers.

In addition to funding, the California Arts Council has also provided a high level of dedicated support from its staff. For example, Wayne Cook, Arts Program Specialist for the Artists in Schools program, served on the Judges’ Panel of the 2008 Sandcastle Contest. Wayne commented, “I was blown away by the commitment of students and the architects. They frantically tried to complete their sandcastles before high tide. The participants knew the ocean was about to retake the beach and their temporary public art pieces.” When the event celebrated its 25th anniversary, the judges’ panel included key players who have been instrumental in Leap’s success, including Trudy Zimmerman, Leap’s Founding Director, and representatives from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

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Photos by Cris Benton. A complete awards list and photos from the Sandcastle Contest, as well as more information on Leap’s residency programs in the arts and architecture, can be found online at www.leap4kids.org.

Watts Village Theater Company (WVTC) is the only arts organization that regularly produces live theater in the community of Watts. It has established itself in the Los Angeles theater scene through identification of its name and work with the community of Watts, as well as through the artistic excellence and production values of its shows. On the cutting edge of cultural depictions of race relations, socio-political tensions and historical adaptations, WVTC is currently focusing on multiple projects that highlight its core mission: To bring powerful stories to the stage in a new and iconoclastic way. WVTC conceives of itself neither as an “ethnic” nor a “neighborhood” company, but as a professional theater company that speaks to the greater Los Angeles and United States community through themes shaped by the Watts experience. WVTC is first and foremost an arts organization, although it takes pride in its history of addressing social needs within the community. In keeping with WVTC’s mission to produce work that speaks to the experience of all our community residents, past and present, and coming off of a three year cycle of exploring Afro/Latino relations, we are now focusing on projects that will help redefine theater in Los Angeles as something that moves people to action not something they go to; in short we want theater to be a verb, not a noun.

Currently WVTC is in the beginning stages of development of our most ambitious project to date: Meet Me @ the Metro (M3), an interactive, trans-disciplinary theatrical journey for both incidental and traditional audiences taking place aboard and around the Los Angeles Metro Rail Transit System. M3 will bring people from geographically distant and diverse communities together to share art in new and unexpected locations as well as build relationships between artists and audiences through the innovation of new work. It is WVTC’s two-pronged attempt to explore isolationism in Los Angeles (communal, artistic and demographic). Unfortunately this isolation is not exclusive to Watts, or other Los Angeles communities; it affects artistic communities as well. Interdisciplinary collaborations between dancers, actors and musicians are rare and often limited to musicals and cabarets. M3 is an effort to break down walls of isolation, both geographic and cultural, and deepen connections between performers of all disciplines. Furthermore, this is our unique attempt to bring live performance to people who would otherwise not be able to see it, and to coax traditional theater-goers out of the theater to places they may not go otherwise. The site-specific nature of this project provides the added benefit of reaching

incidental audience members who will stumble upon the performances during their commute. The first part of M3 will set the tone for the top of the rail journey beginning at Union Station, and the second part will unite the series of performances in the Watts Towers Amphitheater. At present the route of the performance will take an audience from Union Station in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles through South Los Angeles and into one of the most storied communities in all of America—Watts.

Our 2010-2011 main stage project, currently in the beginning stages of development, is called Clover & Cactus. It will be a bilingual (Eng./ Span.) story highlighting a compelling but little known event in U.S. history during which a group of disenfranchised Americans and European immigrants fought for Mexico during the Mexican-American War. This project will offer audiences a fresh historical lens with which to view cross-cultural interactions, taking the Irish/Latino dynamic of the late 1800’s and juxtaposing it with interactions in present day America.

Similarly to the way all of WVTC’s projects are developed, Clover & Cactus will enjoy a long-term development process. A playwright, dramaturge and music director will work in consultation with WVTC’s Artistic Director over the course of 15 months. Unlike the development process of a traditional musical, the playwright will write in tandem with the musical director, and the artistic team will meet once a month to share ideas and content. Each team will then work in consultation with the artistic director to refine their respective creative content and shape the collection of scenes and musical numbers that will eventually comprise the completed full-length play. WVTC is excited to be collaborating with Scott Rodarte (of the East Los Angeles-based band Ollin) who will be Clover & Cactus’ composer and musical director.

Clover & Cactus will use the historical events surrounding St. Patrick’s battalion (or the battalion of San Patricio) during the Mexican-American War as a point of departure for a full-length play with music. The project will use themes relating to the historic events that took place during the war and the time period—disenfranchisement, cultural relativity and religious ties, among other things—to discuss issues relevant to present-day Californians, especially residents of Watts, an underserved and disenfranchised community that has undergone seismic cultural shifts within the last several decades, and has historically been plagued by issues of civil unrest, crime and drugs. This project will go a long way toward deconstructing the view of Anglophones as a monolithic group and will highlight the strength of religious and cultural ties across the lines of skin color and national boundaries.

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All photos by Watts Village Theater Company: WVTC Takes On Jesús Malverde (cover image); Metro logo- A Moving Theater; Undercover No Longer: Watts Village Becomes Front Page News; 365 Days/Plays Staged Shadow of the Watts Towers.

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Watts Village Theater Company receives funding from the California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program (CPV) for Meet Me @ the Metro. The CPV Program supports arts organizations in rural or underserved communities through projects making a positive contribution to the individual and collective lives of all Californians. For more information on CPV contact Lucero Arellano.

An Arts and Education Hub
Peralta Hacienda Historical Park is a six-acre City of Oakland park containing the 1870 Antonio Peralta House, indoor and outdoor historical exhibits, community garden, native plant garden, recreational and activity areas and a nature area where Peralta Creek meanders through alders and redwoods. The park is an arts and education hub and a regional center for arts-based historical inquiry and discovery for the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. Peralta Hacienda once served as the headquarters of Rancho San Antonio, covering 45,000-acres where seven modern cities now stand, including all of Oakland and Berkeley. Today the park stands at the geographical center of Oakland, in the diverse low-income community of Fruitvale. Public programs at the park reach out to both the community base and the wider public, breaking new ground for a museum’s role in the community.

Giving Voices to many Cultures
The mission of Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park (Friends) is to promote understanding, historical healing, and community amid change and diversity. We present and interpret the untold history of the Peralta rancho and the stories of Fruitvale community today, giving voice to the many cultures that have created – and are still transforming – California. Friends of Peralta Hacienda Historical Park operates the site, offering tours, events and community programs, and developing exhibits and publications. We fulfill our mission by providing a variety of core arts programs, including community events, guided tours, community after school programs, and exhibits showcasing local artists work to the public. Our free monthly arts and performance series features neighborhood cultures and artists through performances communal banquets, hands-on history activities, art activities, and guided tours of museum exhibits. Our host program professionally trains youth interns and community volunteers to lead tours that integrate their personal stories into the tour narrative. In our education programs youth and elders create art based on their own stories and cross cultural encounters, fostering inter-generational appreciation for the arts. They practice culinary arts, crafts, gardening, and filmmaking.

Current Exhibit
Ongoing collaboration with Laotian Mien immigrants has led to our current exhibit.
Embroidering Our Lives: Mien Women at Peralta Hacienda, features the beautiful

embroidery, photos, films, and stories of the Laotian Mien traditional artists who are a vibrant part of the Fruitvale community. Mien women participate at Peralta Hacienda through mentoring diverse neighborhood youth in Mien gardening and embroidery techniques. Another result of this cross-cultural collaboration, Grow, Cook & Celebrate: A Community Recipe Bookwas produced through the collaborative effort of Mien elders and African American youth. The book features the family recipes of community members. Mien elders and neighborhood African American youth formed relationships over time in which they embroidered, gardened, and harvested and prepared food together for monthly community banquets at Peralta Hacienda. Sharing traditional arts has also helped resolve neighborhood conflicts once endemic at the site between African American youth and Mien elders, replacing it with friendships and artistic exchange. Youth learn about the Mien, and about themselves.

Filmmaking Programs
Funding from the California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program (CPV) allowed us to complete two exciting collaborative filmmaking programs with the community this year, Project S.O.S.: Sharing Oakland’s Stories, and the Mien Digital Stories Project.
           
In the Mien Digital Stories Project, youth and female Laotian Mien Elders created five short films showing how the practice of their traditional art forms, including the culinary arts, highly developed and ritualized organic gardening techniques and embroidery physically, emotionally, and spiritually nourishes the elders. The films explore how traditional arts help these women to find reconciliation after the tragedies they experienced in their war-torn lives.

Project S.O.S.: Sharing Oakland’s Stories gave Oakland middle and high school youth the opportunity to become filmmakers of their own digital stories. The program culminated in the creation of 17 short autobiographical films. Students communicated important personal experiences through creation of their digital films while gaining leadership, teamwork, filmmaking, and editing skills. Class sessions resembled professional film sets with students assigned to distinct roles such as cameraperson, director, actor, soundperson, and crew. In August 2009, the completed films were screened for a 200-person audience at a Peralta House event. The screening was followed by a discussion facilitated by community leader Jose Arredondo in which students reflected on their experiences growing up in Oakland.

CPV funding strengthened Friends’ ability to deliver excellent filmmaking programs for youth and community elders. We will use this new capacity in our collaboration with California College of the Arts’ Center for Art and Public Life this spring, when we will offer free after school art classes to Oakland youth, partnering them with mentors from California College of the Arts. Students will meet once a week at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park to participate in video arts, drawing, painting, and animation projects with their mentors.

The Fruitvale community has been Oakland’s receiving ground for immigrants since the earliest times. With its high percentage of children and youth, this diversity and age mix creates not only cultural richness, but also social tensions. Our programs address them by providing activities for youth and settings for intergenerational cross-cultural communication. Friends develops programs with community input to meet the needs of the neighborhood. Through youth video programs, university art student mentoring, and intergenerational cross-cultural gardening and culinary programs, Peralta Hacienda Historical Park strives to promote understanding, historical healing and community amid changes and diversity.

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All photos by Nina Egert

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Peralta Hacienda Historical Park receives funding from the California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program (CPV). Lucero Arellano manages the CPV Program, which supports arts organizations in rural or underserved communities through projects making a positive contribution to the individual and collective lives of all Californians.

The Arts Council of Kern, based in the county seat of Bakersfield, has only a few full-time staff members-but their reach and impact are broad and deep because of partnerships, collaborations, and contracts for arts services. They provide access, advocacy and education in the arts to just under one million residents and the visitors of Kern County.

Artists in Carrot Fields,
Hospitals and Trailer Parks
The Arts Council of Kern takes seriously the charge to provide access and arts education for those unable to participate due to illness, disability, poverty, and time or distance constraints. They have been known to place artists in carrot fields, migrant camps, hockey games, shopping areas, streets fairs, farmers’ markets and trailer parks. How is all of this possible? They collaborate, partner, and contract to bring the arts to locations and people around Kern. They even take the arts bedside to patients at San Joaquin Community Hospital and to at-risk youth in after-school programs including: Stop the Violence and Police Activities League (PAL) and others.

The Arts Council of Kern has brought arts to the homeless and theater to foster care children. Additionally, they have a long-running program for arts education in many schools, including using arts to teach literacy with the newest partner: Young Audiences Arts for Learning (A4L). This partnership kicked off with teaching an A4L unit with one of the Arts Council’s longest running partners, KCSOS Migrant Education.

Migrant Education
The Migrant Ed programs often combine arts and other core curriculum subject matters. In this program, the Arts Council has documented increased scores in math and reading, but more importantly they see kids mixing paints - kids that didn’t know that mixing blue and yellow make green, and that trees don’t have to look like lollipops! They created ZooARTs at the local zoo in partnership with the Superintendent of Schools, CALM (the zoo) and Migrant Ed. This project combined storytelling, music and visual arts with science. Another program created for Migrant Education is the CSUB Summer Arts Jam, a dynamic partnership with CSU Bakersfield to provide a two-week on-campus arts intensive program of arts with math and science. Established in 2008, Summer Arts Jam is, in effect, a boot camp for the arts for middle school students from under-served Title I schools in Kern County. The program is delivered by a combination of Arts Council professional artists and CSUB arts faculty in the areas of visual art, music and theatre. This combination proved to be far more powerful than they imagined. The culminating event is an arts festival with a showing of the students’ work in the Todd Madigan Gallery and a theater and music performance in the adjacent 500-seat Dore Theater on the CSUB campus. Students and their parents, along with faculty and Arts Council and CSUB staff, thoroughly enjoy this event. After attending the event, the Dean of Humanities at the university proclaimed her amazement at the growth of the students and her ongoing support for the continued partnership.

Artists with Developmental Disabilities
The beginning of one of most successful collaborations for the Arts Council of Kern began with a two week Migrant education film project with filmmaker Joey Travolta that has grown into three workshops, three times a year for artists with developmental disabilities. This partnership with Kern Regional Center, the ABLE program of the Kern High School District and Kern River Valley Art Association has produced a model film arts vocational program with international acclaim. Students and teachers from Korea are now attending the summer film camp to be able to replicate the program there. Students with disabilities find their voices and express their talents to create documentaries and films. Through this process lives have changed, and families cry with pride at a film premiere. A surprising offshoot of the program is the Outside In program for visual artists with autism, Asperger’s syndrome and other developmental disabilities. The artists attend visual arts workshops twice each week and show and sell their work in one of the ACK galleries.

Best of Kern Concert Tour
The Arts Council is proud of the musicians of Kern and is assisting them as they seek to broaden and deepen audience participation through the Best of Kern Concert Tour with funding from the California Arts Council Department of Justice Music Presenting Grant and The James Irvine Foundation. The tour couldn’t happen without these partnerships with venues, music producers, recording studios and in-kind media support. The ACK also grants funds and provides technical training, including tech arts in social media (Facebook) and Web site development for local artists and arts organizations.

Synergy
Executive Director, Jeanette Richardson Parks, says, “One of the most rewarding and amazing outcomes of all of our collaborations is the synergy that has been created—the positive reputation within the community that continues to draw non-arts-related business and organizations to us. It is now common for others to contact us requesting us to create programs for them—to partner with them to integrate the arts into their programs. That’s the best feeling of all!”

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All photos by Arts Council of Kern

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The Arts Council of Kern receives funding from the California Arts Council’s State-Local Partnership Program ,which supports county arts councils. For additional information on these programs check www.cac.ca.gov or contact the Program Specialist directly: Rob Lautz, State-Local Partnership Program, rlautz@cac.ca.gov.

Cultural Odyssey is one of the oldest African American performing arts organizations in the State of California. Founded in 1979 by musician Idris Ackamoor, and joined in 1983 by performance artist Rhodessa Jones, Cultural Odyssey’s mission is to support the artistic work and vision of Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor, as well as an ancillary group of emerging, community, and established performing artists.

North Beach Beginnings
On a chilly, brisk 1979 night in San Francisco's North Beach, the Savoy Tivoli Club was the site of an exciting performance art double-bill. The Beginning of the Second Earth was the very first production of Cultural Odyssey, featuring founder Idris Ackamoor in a solo performance utilizing jazz, costumes, slides, and pre-recorded tapes. The other half of the bill featured a wild performance by Rhodessa Jones and musician Harry Mann. This was the first time Rhodessa and Idris met - in the theater!

African Inspiration
At that time in 1979, Rhodessa's house was a gathering place for artists. Idris Ackamoor began showing up and participating in artistic soirees and conversations. Rhodessa was fascinated and impressed by the artistic concept Idris had for Cultural Odyssey.

Idris talked about his senior year in college where he traveled and lived in Africa for a year studying the music and performing arts of the continent. He loved how the African artists he came in contact with were mostly interdisciplinary, combining music, dance and theater. In addition, he was impressed by the commitment these artists had to serving their community.

He returned to America fired up with passion, energy, and creativity to form a nonprofit performing arts organization that was artists-centered and reflected the precepts of interdisciplinary performance and community involvement. In 1983 Rhodessa joined the company. Jones & Ackamoor began a professional and personal relationship. Idris advised Rhodessa to “quit her day job!” Soon after, the couple departed for the first of many European sojourns where they refined their unique performance duet combining music, dance and theater. Returning to America, their reputation grew and the ground was laid for the organizational development of the company they now ran together, Cultural Odyssey.

Circling the Globe
Thirty years later Cultural Odyssey continues to circle the globe refining and defining the concepts of an artist run and centered organization. Although no longer a couple, Jones and Ackamoor continue to honor those early years of commitment with longstanding trust, reliability, personal friendship and partnership.

This year marked Cultural Odyssey’s 30th Anniversary and the activities leading up to this milestone has been quite extraordinary. In celebration of Black History Month and National Women’s Month Cultural Odyssey presented a 30th Anniversary Celebration of New Works February 4 – March 14, 2010. All performances were at the Buriel Clay Theater at the African American Art & Culture Complex located at 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco. The Celebration opened with the San Francisco premiere of The Love Project in February. Part house party, part TV talk show, and part cabaret, The Love Project is an interactive experience that testifies to the network of human relations that define our times.

Cultural Odyssey’s world premiere production of The Breach featured dancer/ choreographer/aerialist Joanna Haigood, actress/singer Rhodessa Jones, and actor/musician/ composer Idris Ackamoor. The Breach utilizes theater, dance, music, and video to explore through the artists’ eyes reparations for African Americans.

Collaboration with the Medea Project
Cultural Odyssey’s world premiere production of Dancing with the Clown of Love ran March 4 – 14, 2010. The production is a collaboration between Rhodessa Jones & the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women and the Women’s HIV Program at UCSF Medical Center (WHP), supported by the CAC’s Creating Public Value Program. Ms. Jones, in collaboration with WHP, explored the reasons that lie behind the AIDS epidemic in the lives of African American women - with HIV positive women telling their own stories onstage! Eight participants who are HIV positive performed in the show as well as ex-inmates and community actresses and youth. After each show, there was an audience talkback, where questions regarding HIV were addressed by the audience members and the performers. The women were incredibly forthcoming with their stories, bringing laughter, cries, joy, and inspiration to those who attended the show. Several amazing moments included audience members confessing their HIV status during the talkback! This was unforeseen and incredibly moving.

Artistic Being
Immediately following the Anniversary productions, Idris received a California Arts Council / Department of Justice Music Presenting Grant to tour California with his musical group, Artistic Being. Idris performed in duet format with his musical collaborator, pianist/drummer Frederick Harris. There were also several engagements when other musical guests joined the duet. Renting a cargo van, Ackamoor and Harris hit the road to perform at a variety of rural venues and arts councils including the Lassen County Arts Council in Susanville, Sierra County Arts Council (performing in Sierraville at a school auditorium and in Downieville at the Yuba Theatre), El Dorado Arts Council in Placerville, Healdsburg Jazz Festival, Mammoth Lakes Arts Council (performing at Rafters Club & Restaurant and the Mammoth Elementary School), Miners Foundry Cultural Center in Nevada City, and for the Antioch Music Foundation (performing at the Delta Performing Arts Academy in Antioch).

This three-week tour to rural and underserved communities was incredibly moving and inspirational. Audience members came from around the county to see the show. All performances were wonderfully successful, with many receiving standing ovations and an abundance of positive recognition. To kick off the tour, Artistic Being also performed in San Francisco at the DeYoung Museum and the African American Art & Culture Complex.

Despite the financial crisis that seized America during 2009, Cultural Odyssey’s artistic programming was spectacular due partly to a strategy that increased touring, providing valuable income. In October 2009 they returned to South Africa to continue working with incarcerated women sponsored by Urban Voices Festival and South African Correction Services. Another first in the history of Cultural Odyssey was the U.S. State Department Speakers Tour of Russia during September 2009, where Co-Artistic Directors Rhodessa Jones and Idris Ackamoor conducted workshops, lectures, and performances in Russia.

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Photo credits: Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones in the Love Project, by Hubert Williams; Joanna Haigood, Idris Ackamoor and Rhodessa Jones in The Breach, by Pat Mazzera; Joanna Haigood and Idris Ackamoor in The Breach, by William H. Jones, Jr.; Performance of Artistic Being, featuring Idris Ackamoor and Fredrick Harris at Mammoth Lakes Elementary School, by Gaye Mueller.

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Cultural Odyssey is a recipient of the California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program (CPV). Lucero Arellano () manages the CPV Program, which supports arts organizations in rural and underserved communities through projects making a positive contribution to the individual and collective lives of all Californians. Cultural Odyssey is also a recipient of a California Arts Council/Department of Justice Music Presenting Grant managed by John Seto().

USC Lecture

In March 2010 Jackie Planeix and Tom Crocker lectured to 105 undergrad students in the USC Department of Neuroscience on “Movement and Learning.” They chronicled their artistic journey, shared hands-on examples of kinesthetic learning, and collected data to measure its relevance to students. Students closed their laptops, rose from their seats, and filled the amphitheater aisles. Initial skepticism evaporated as the group transformed itself into an active learning community—bending, shaping, and shaking their bodies, fielding inquiries with movement-based responses, and sharing their reflections: 100% of participants found value in a multi-sensory learning environment.
 
USC Neuroscience Professor Larry Swanson had this to say: “Having seen your presentation, I am convinced that a true interaction between the methods used to learn the arts and those used to learn the humanities and sciences is the most effective way to teach in general.” Professor Michel Baudry said: “You showed brilliantly how learning and creativity can benefit from an integrated approach where physical movements, emotions, art, and imagination are combined to transmit information and communication.”

What led two former Béjart dancers to lecture to a USC Neurobiology class entitled “Brain, Mind and Machines?” Jackie and Tom are co-founder/directors of Bluepalm, which has eschewed institutionalization to, instead, fluidly give form to their evolving artistic and educational concerns. Graduates of Maurice Béjart’s interdisciplinary performing arts school, Mudra, Jackie and Tom toured the world with Mr. Béjart’s powerful 70 member troupe — from South American opera houses to the Persian desert, Florentine gardens to Broadway, 200 performances a year, marking Jackie and Tom with the highest standards of artistic excellence.

Bluepalm is Born

It was in Geneva that Bluepalm was born. In 1985, Jackie and Tom laid the foundation for their life’s work with the creation of the company’s signature piece, ‘DANCE TALKS!’ The work explores what it feels like to be a dancer— pain, bliss, poverty, ecstasy; sinewy bodies putting into words the sensual intelligence unique to dance and dancers. ‘DANCE TALKS!’ played the Pompidou Center in Paris before touring the U.S. In 1995, the creation of ‘Fractured Fairy Tales’ marked the beginning of  Bluepalm’s commitment to arts-based learning in schools.

Bluepalm worked as roster artists with the Orange County Performing Arts Center (2001-2004) and the Music Center (1998-2003): in 2003, they led the Music Center Summer Institute (Advanced Level) professional development. As California Arts Council Touring Directory artists (1999-2004), Bluepalm performed and taught in underserved communities throughout California. At every memorable venue, valiant local Arts Council representatives greeted, fed, and engaged with the artists.

Arts in Schools

In the 90s it became increasingly clear that keeping the arts alive in society meant dramatically expanding their presence in schools. In 1999 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) began its Arts Community Partnership Network (ACPN), to bring community arts organizations into schools as part of a shared-delivery model (classroom teachers, arts specialists, and community arts providers). Honed by performance experiences on stages like the Bolshoi, Jackie and Tom’s techniques were now helping maximize student academic performance in cafetoriums in Watts and throughout the district. Bluepalm grew to a team of ten highly trained artist/educators, delivering standards-based, sequential programming to over 100,000 LAUSD students and professional development for teachers, helping them to ‘think like an artist’ across the curriculum.

In December 2008, LAUSD suspended contracts with all community arts providers. The California Arts Council’s ‘Artists in Schools’ program picked up some of the slack to ensure that students continue to receive the arts. Bluepalm was instrumental in the creation of a consortium to leverage the voice of community providers. Serving on the County Arts Commission’s Roundtable Advisory Board, Bluepalm helps shape discussion on issues facing the arts: 1) defining its role in the Creative Economy, 2) the need to expand arts-based learning as a tool for social change, 3) ensuring that community providers are active participants in the local and state arts plans, 4) including arts training in graduate education programs; if teachers are unprepared, California children will not receive the sequential, in-depth experiences they need to successfully navigate the creative workforce.

Arts Lead the Way

Bluepalm’s contribution has been a sustained reflection upon what learning through the body and emotion can teach the field of education. Jackie and Tom were invited to USC because scientists now recognize that, sometimes, the arts lead the way.

 

Bluepalm: Art Culture Education (ACE) receives funding from the California Arts Council’s Artists in Schools Program, which supports residencies in schools, and is managed by Wayne Cook .

Twenty Seasons

Purple Moon Dance Project, founded in 1992, will celebrate its 20th season of performances, interdisciplinary collaboration and arts and community programs in 2011!

Purple Moon Dance Project explores the continuum of intimacy between women and illuminates less visible and unheard stories from our communities, through the integration of non-western and western dance forms and aesthetics and interdisciplinary collaboration. Our underlying mission is to contribute to transformation, peace and healing in our society, through the medium of dance.

When Dreams are Interrupted

With support from the East Bay Community Foundation’s Fund for Artists the site-specific work, When Dreams Are Interrupted invited audiences to witness the rupture of Japanese American communities during World War II. When Dreams… premiered last October in Berkeley and was performed this spring at San Francisco’s City Hall and Japantown’s Sundance Theatre.

When Dreams… was inspired by a redwood tree, a garden and the story of a family torn away from their home in 1942. I learned about the Nakazawas as my own family was about to move into our home on the same property in Berkeley three summers ago. I began imagining what our new neighborhood must have been like 65 years ago when people of color were redlined here and almost half the families on our block were Japanese. I knew that the Nakazawas, and the African American family who came after them, had somehow made the way for my own multi-racial, two-mom family to be here in 2007.

As my primary collaborator Ellen Bepp and I began talking in early 2008 we spoke of our own parents’ and grandparents’ dreams, and of ecology. Just as ecosystems are impacted by damage to one part of it, trauma to one community has long lasting impact not only on the individuals in that community but on all the other communities they touch in some way.

In the first rehearsals the artists shared stories of their own experience with loss and departures. And as the piece took shape over the next year, we invited the spirits of the ancestors and elders we met

and read about, to come inside our hearts and stay with us as we worked and began to perform the piece.

Reaching Atypical Audiences

The California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program (CPV) provided valuable support to engage audiences and offer free performances to school groups, camp survivors, neighbors and community members who are not typically arts goers. Together with the James Irvine Foundation’s Creative Connections Fund and collaborator Preserving California’s Japantowns, CPV funds will also enable us to tour the work to historic towns where it would not otherwise be seen. In Lodi we performed indoors and in an alley of the old Japantown to celebrate a mural dedication, and in July we will perform in Tule Lake, where we have the honor of joining a pilgrimage to the concentration camp where 18,000 Japanese were incarcerated.

When Dreams…continues to evolve, as we adapt sections to incorporate stories and experiences that are specific to each site and community where it’s offered. This has been tremendously satisfying and emotional work for the collaborators who include visual artists, dancers, musicians, technicians, documentors, staff, and community performers who have joined us in Berkeley and San Francisco - each person finding or bringing some very personal connection to the circle. Redwood trees thrive in community with others.

 “This performance is very important in understanding what happened in the past and to share with younger generations to promote world peace.” ~ Berkeley audience member

*from the text of When Dreams Are Interrupted

 

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View an online excerpt from 'When dreams are interrupted' by Jill Togawa with dancers Michelle Fletcher, Ruth Ichinaga, Arisika Razar, Sharon Sato, and Jill Togawa:  http://purplemoondance.org/gallery-dreams.html

Photo credits: One Thousand Arms, by Bob Hsiang. All others by Theresa C. Thadani: In Your Footsteps, Community Performers, When Dreams Part 1, Reflections.

Purple Moon receives funding from the California Arts Council’s Creating Public Value Program, which supports arts organizations in rural and underserved communities through projects making a positive contribution to the individual and collective lives of all Californians and is managed by Lucero Arellano larellano@cac.ca.gov.