FUTURE IMAGEMAKERSQuestion Bridge: Black Males is a transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange, diverse members of this “demographic” bridge economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions.
questionbridge.com
Question Bridge: Black Males – Project Trailer from Question Bridge on Vimeo.
A great article with photos about the Fotokids program in Guatamala on the NYT lens blog.
Nancy McGirr has spent two decades in Guatemala finding value amid castoffs. The symbolism did not escape her when she started teaching photography to a handful of children whose families eked out a living scavenging through the festering, grimy heaps of the capital’s municipal dump.
FUZE is devoted to supporting artists, thinkers, and activists. We believe art has the power to inspire and challenge us, foster productive dialogue and reflection, and suggest innovative methods for social and political transformation. FUZE serves as a catalyst for socially conscious and creative people in pursuit of informed and innovative dialogue. More
This is the video exchange in which children from the Amazon make video letters to children in other parts of the world to introduce and show their culture. The videos are made by the children for the children, and the documentary about the project was directed by Kumare Txicao, with video work by Nas Aldeias.
Part of a video letter from the Ikpeng children, introducing their community.
Click here to learn more about/purchase the documentary.
This is part of the larger Video in the Villages project.
Thanks to Laura Buhler of my Art Practice Course for this post.
The Laundromat Project – THE LP RECEIVES $125,000 TO SUPPORT ARTISTS INVESTED IN SOCIAL PRACTICE
OurGoods is a community of artists, designers, and cultural producers who want to barter skills, spaces, and objects. OurGoods helps independent projects get done.
**New Programs I have learned about while at the Imagining America conference, Convergence Zones: Public Cultures and Translocal Practices, in Seattle, WA
The Public Square (Chicago) By building bridges between theory and practice, The Public Square encourages the use of ideas as tools to improve people’s lives. These programs promote participatory democracy and create space for public conversations. Knowledge is power, yet much crucial knowledge still circulates only in small, isolated communities.
RW121 Emerson Medellín – a bi-lingual, bi-national project among 100 students working across 5 First-Year Research Writing classes at Emerson College and MIT in Boston and 5 library parks (Parques Bibliotecas) and the Universidad Nacional in Medellín, Colombia.
Make Art / Stop AIDS
part of Art and Global HealthCenter at UCLA
(nod to Douglas Crimp- In 1987 edited a special AIDS-issue of October, entitled AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism. In his introduction to the edition Crimp argued for “cultural practices actively participating in the struggle against AIDS and its cultural consequences.”)
Through Positive Eyes throughpositiveeyes.org
Through Positive Eyes tells the story of HIV/AIDS at the end of the third decade of the epidemic, when potent antiretroviral medication has been devised, but when treatment access is far from universal. (Los Angeles, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro)t
The Art of Regional Change (UC DAVIS) brings together scholars, students, artists, and community groups to collaborate on media arts projects that strengthen communities, generate engaged scholarship and inform regional decision-making
Marga, Inc – A Firm, Founded by David Maurrasse, Committed to Developing Communication between Communities and Institutes
— Anchor Institutions Task Force – network to promote the role of anchor institutions in community engagement
Children’s Urban Geographies (Univ. of Buffalo)
Fragments of NOTES/THOUGHTS from the Imagining America conference, Convergence Zones: Public Cultures and Translocal Practices, Seattle, WA, 9.23-9.25.10
You can be global while being local.
Nancy Cantor, Chancellor – Scholarship in Action @ Syracuse U
institutional responsibility and engagement
promoting scholarship and community simultaneously
Say YES to education program providing tuition to Syracuse city high school students
Caryn McTighe Musil – American Association of Colleges and Universities
Our {universities and colleges) welfare tied to community’s welfare
Civic learning spiral – braided elements with public action
only 1% of community-based work is political according to the AAC studies.
“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”
Lila Watson, part of an Australian Aboriginal Group, is given credit for this quote, but when interviewed she “was quite clear… that she was not comfortable being credited for something that had been born of a collective process” northlandposter.com
(reference came from this blog)
