360degrees.org http://www.360degrees.org/about/index.html http://www.picture-projects.com/ An initiative of Picture Projects, 360 degrees offers perspectives on the American criminal justice system. Picture Projects was founded by Alison Cornyn and Sue Johnson. Blurring the boundaries between art and documentary, Picture Projects uses new media technology to create new forms of oral history. The projects combine photography, audio and the interactive dialogue capabilities of the Internet to tell stories and document the world in a way that has never been done before. Over the past five years, the founders have collaborated with other artists, writers and photographers such as Susan Meiselas and Gilles Peress, as well as editors from The New York Times and PBS Online to develop award-winning Web sites and interactive exhibitions. Notable Feature(s): The 360degrees Forum for people to share their ideas about the U.S. criminal justice system, debate related topics, and respond to themes raised by the site. Contact Information: Picture Projects 176 Grand Street, Third Floor New York, NY   10013 USA Telephone: 212.226.3099   Fax: 212.226.4922 Email: info@360degrees.org acorn@picture-projects.com Migrations - Photographs by Sebastião Salgado http://www.terra.com.br/sebastiaosalgado/migrations/e/index.html Concerned by the millions of refugees, migrants, displaced persons and those struggling to hold onto the little that they have, Brazilian Sebastião Salgado photographed in 41 countries over 6 1/2 years. Why? "My hope is that, as individuals, as groups, as societies, we can pause and reflect on the human condition at the turn of the millennium," he writes. "In its rawest form, individualism remains a prescription for catastrophe. We have to create a new regimen of coexistence." Notable Feature(s): Interview with Salgado; contact sheet; ways to help . Contact Information: Email: amazonas@worldnet.fr Music with social overtones - by Roger Hamilton ut José Antonio Abreu, founding director of Venezuela's youth and children's orchestra http://www.iadb.org/idbamerica/Archive/stories/1998/eng/e398k.htm http://firewall.unesco.org/opi/eng/unescopress/98-229e.htm This article examines the social impact of Venezuela's youth orchestra network. Normally thought of as an artistic end in itself, music can also perform a vital service in a society with limited opportunities for social and economic advancement. In Venezuela, the orchestra and choir system functions as a social movement, according to José Antonio Abreu, the system's founder and director. Born in 1939, Mr Abreu is the founder of the Sinfónica Nacional Infantil and Sinfónica Nacional Juvenil, pivotal elements of a nation-wide network of 102 youth orchestras and 55 children's orchestras. The network of close to 110,000 young Venezuelan musicians is part of the Social Action for Music project which uses musical education to protect the young. It provides training, rehabilitation and prevention, with music at the core of a programme destined to awaken young people's artistic sensibilities with orchestral and choir practice contributing to social integration and community development and solidarity. In 1995, Mr Abreu was named special UNESCO delegate for the development of a world-wide network system of youth and children's orchestras and choirs. Notable Feature(s): UNESCO press release about Mr. Abreu; more information about Youth Orchestra of the Americas (YOA) ; New England Conservatory of Music report on YOA's OAS Washington, D.C. launch and plans to work with organizations that use music as the great equalizer for youth across the hemisphere. Contact Information: New England Conservatory of Music 290 Huntington Avenue Attn. Debra McKeon, Managing Director, YOA Boston, MA   02115 USA Telephone: 617.585.1100   National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support http://www.pewtrusts.com/pdf/culture_policy_profiles.pdf This October 2002 study commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts provides the first reliable statistical data on the sources of support for culture in local communities. One of the most important contributions of the Profiles Project is the creation of an expansive definition of "culture" that includes nonprofit and for profit activity, incorporated and unincorporated groups, visual and perfoming arts, museums, arboreta and zoos, as well as service, educational and other support organizations. In other words, arts and culture, broadly defined, can be thought of as an identifiable sector present in every community and understandable in both economic and guality of life terms. Viewed this way, culture, writ large, becomes the domain of both policy makers and cultural advocates. Contact Information: Marian A. Godfrey The Pew Charitable Trusts 2005 Market Street, Suite 1700 Philadelphia, PA   19103-7077 USA Telephone: 215.575.9050   Fax: 215.575.4939 Email: info@pewtrusts.com A Call to Art - by John Villani, Urban Land Magazine, July 1999 http://www.artspaceprojects.org/news/call_to_art.htm http://www.artspaceprojects.org/ This article profiles the work of Minneapolis-based Artspace, Inc., which demonstrates to local and national constituencies the broad range of benefits that communities can derive from supporting the arts, by including the essentially mundane tasks of providing studio space for the creation of art or live/work spaces for artists and their families. Contact Information: L. Kelley Lindquist, President Artspace, Inc. 528 Hennepin Avenue S. Suite 404 Minneapolis, MN   55403 USA Email: kelley@artspaceprojects.org A Far-Off Inuit World, in a Dozen Shades of White - by A.O. Scott http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nyt033002.cfm http://www.atanarjuat.com/ This New York Times article discusses a landmark film from the traditional Inuit world. In standard histories of world cinema, the Inuit people of northern Canada figure mostly in connection with Robert J. Flaherty's "Nanook of the North," an epochal silent documentary made in 1922. Eighty years later, the voices of the Inuit can at last be heard on screen. "The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)" directed by Zacharias Kunuk and based on an ancient folk epic, is the first feature film made in the Inuktitut language by an almost entirely Inuit cast and crew.... It's always interesting when a hitherto unrepresented corner of the world shows up on the screen. Part of the wonder of the movies, even at this late date in their history, lies in their ability to acquaint us with cultures and places far removed from what we already know. Notable Feature(s): A companion article on the community-based filmmaking process and company behind the film, one that maintains traditional cultural storytelling, consensus, and survival values even as it meets the challenges of modern production. Contact Information: Igloolik Isuma Productions, Inc. P.O. Box 223 Igloolik, Nunavut   X0A 0L0 Canada Telephone: 867.934.8809   Fax: 867.934.8700 Email: isuma@isuma.ca A Lens on the World: Musician Peter Gabriel Provides Human Rights Activists With Cameras for a Cause - by Ann Hornaday http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/washpost112102.cfm http://www.witness.org/ This Washington Post article details the compelling story of the nonprofit organization Witness and its success around the world in providing video cameras and training to activists, journalists, educators, environmentalists, young people, and others bent on documenting situations the call for relief and social change. Contact Information: WITNESS 353 Broadway New York, NY   10013 U.S.A. Telephone: 212.274.1664   Fax: 212.274.1262 Email: witness@witness.org A Peek Through Blue Collar Lenses - by Anthony DePalma http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nytimes061803.cfm http://www.bread-and-roses.com/ This June 2003 article profiles a project called Unseen America, which lends cameras to people society often overlooks, coaches them in the art of taking pictures that tell stories and then professionally exhibits their photographs in a gallery. Esther Cohen, executive director of Bread and Roses, the cultural arm of 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, started Unseen America in 2000 to shed light on problems in health care, housing, education and employment. "By making the issues of the lives of the working class visible, we can come close to resolving some of those issues," Ms. Cohen said. Through the lenses of about 100 donated point-and-shoot 35-millimeter cameras, people can fill in the blank spots of their lives. Ms. Cohen said that when cameras were given to a group of homeless people, some of them shot houses and apartment buildings "because that is what they never had." And a Chinese garment worker recently explained that taking photographs of her life made her feel "like a frog that jumped out of a well." Another article quotes Cohen who believes that being seen is the prelude to being heard. "When we did this project with building-maintenance workers and mounted exhibits in the buildings where they worked, the maintenance workers assumed another identity," she says. "They became people because they took photographs." But the project is as much about art as it is about politics. "I think the expectation is that working people don't have much relationship to wonderful culture. That's wrong..." Bread and Roses actively strives to depict artistic, cultural and historical themes and issues affecting people from many backgrounds. The New York Times has recognized us as "the most important cultural project in the labor movement". Bread and Roses established the only permanent union exhibition space in the nation, Gallery 1199, at the union's New York City headquarters. Because of its diverse constituency of working people, many of whom are immigrants, Bread and Roses is the national leader for collaborative work, with a union, to bring the arts to an enormous group of people largely not reached by traditional arts institutions and programs. Notable Feature(s): More on Unseen America: Fast Company magazine article Making Unseen America Visible; Bread and Roses; Seeing Unseen America: A focus on workers' creativity sharpens the picture of their lives. Contact Information: Esther Cohen Bread and Roses 330 West 42nd St. New York, NY   10036 USA Telephone: 212.603.1186   Fax: 212.603.1775 Email: estherc@1199.org A Protected Space, Where Art Comes Calling - by Erica Goode http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nyt073002.cfm In this article from The New York Times, according to Erica Goode, if Dr. Janos Marton ran the world, there would be protected spaces everywhere for people with mental illness to create paintings and sculptures, drawings and lithographs, installations, murals and collages, poetry and novels, songs and symphonies. The piece details the story of the Living Museum he established and the successes Dr. Marton has achieved working with mentally ill patients over 19 years at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York. AFGHANISTAN LOOKS AT ITSELF: A photo essay by Ivan Sigal http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/culture/articles/eav021502.shtml# The Taliban were successful in destroying both access to information and the means to produce it as part of their mechanism of authoritarian rule. As with the destruction of the system of education, as with the banning of many cultural activities, so with media. The Taliban reduced newspapers to a bare minimum of staff and length, junked television, and drastically reduced radio broadcasting. Many broadcasters and journalists fled to neighboring countries, or further abroad, and many will not return. In the wake of the Taliban's departure, Afghanistan has begun once more to look at itself, through lenses of its antiquated TV cameras, through tentative stabs at restarting and rebuilding theatre, through cinema and through photographers wielding homemade portrait cameras on the streets of Kabul. One result, shown here in a dramatic collection of black and white documentary photographs, demonstrates the power of the image to effect social change, to recapture memory, and to protect human culture. Artist colonizing, American-style - by Ray Conlogue http://www.geocities.com/newsgrist/newsgrist1-32.html http://www.artspaceprojects.org/ This report details an innovative practice designed to bring sustainable development to blighted urban areas. A typical scenario: Artists move into a derelict section of town because it's cheap. They fix it up, the area becomes cool and rents skyrocket as those with money move in to soak up the atmosphere. "In a number of U.S. cities, they are actually now implanting artists (much the way greenery is replanted on polluted soil), knowing that a funky demimonde will attract business even to disaster areas. To keep the artists there, they have evolved non-profit holding companies on 15- to 30-year horizons." Toronto Globe and Mail 06/21/00. Notable Feature(s): Projects in progress across the country; news. Contact Information: Artspace Projects, Inc 528 Hennepin Avenue, S. Suite 401 Minneapolis, MN   55403 USA Telephone: 612.333.9012   Fax: 612.333.9089 Email: artspace@artspaceprojects.org Artist Emerges With Works in a 'Private Language' - by Evelyn Nieves http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nyt062501.cfm The NY Times article reports on the artistic success and creative process of a woman with severe developmental disability who was locked up for 36 years in mental institutions and finally released when her twin sister brought her home to live with her at age 43. Conversations with Willard Van Dyke - by Amalie R. Rothschild http://www.newday.com/reviews/conversationswithwvdREV.html Like so many artists of conscience of the 1930s, Van Dyke gravitated to social documentary hoping that it might change the world in the way he saw that still photographs never would. "Because poetry is the distillation of ideas," he says, and because at that time film makers had an interest in all art forms, the best of these landmark documentaries had a poetic spine. Contact Information: New Day Films 22-D Hollywood Avenue Ho-ho-kus, NJ   07423 USA Telephone: 201.652.6590   Fax: :201.652.1973 Email: curator@newday.com Creative Community: The Art Of Cultural Development - by Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard Commissioned by The Rockefeller Foundation, this report (published 2001) traces the history, theoretical underpinnings, values, and methods of community cultural development practice, emphasizing its effectiveness as a response to the social and economic forces that weaken cultural ties, and offers its recommendations to strengthen and support the field. Notable Feature(s): For printed copies of the report, write: Rockefeller Foundation Job #3186 "Creative Community" P.O. Box 545 Mahwah, N.J. 07430 Contact Information: Adams & Goldbard PO Box 30061 Seattle, WA   98103-2061 USA Email: goldbard@oz.net Democracy Onstage - by Christopher Reardon http://www.fordfound.org/publications/ff_report/view_ff_report_detail.cfm?report_index=311 http://www.fordfound.org/ Augusto Boal is a theater director who has brought his dramatic vision to some of Europe's most opulent stages, like the Palais Royal in Paris, where he mounted a samba version of Bizet's "Carmen" last summer. His real passion, though, keeps drawing him back to the favelas, or slums, that blanket the hills of his hometown, Rio de Janeiro. Give and take between actors and audiences is a hallmark of the Theatre of the Oppressed, the name Boal uses to describe a set of dramatic techniques and democratic ideals developed over his long career. Once tortured and exiled for his populist views, he later returned to Rio and won a seat on the city council. He lost a bid for reelection, he says, but not his faith in theater's power to give voice to people on the margins of society. Boal's books, workshops and theatrical productions have spawned a movement that is international in scope and independent in spirit. Today hundreds of community theater groups are practicing Theatre of the Oppressed, or T.O., in such disparate places as New York, Omaha, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Vienna, Johannesburg, Ouagadougou, Calcutta and Adelaide to spur public discourse on issues like poverty, race and sexuality. Notable Feature(s): Descriptions of T.O. programs around the world. Contact Information: The Ford Foundation 320 East 43rd Street New York, NY   10017 USA Email: office-secretary@fordfound.org Final Reflections on Documenta 11 - by Charles Giuliano http://nyartsmagazine.com/69/documenta.htm Even though this week Platform Five, the hundred day long exhibition component of Okwui Enwezer's vast and ambitious Documenta 11, officially closes in Kassel, Germany, on many critical levels, this marks not the end but rather a transitional moment in what is really an ongoing work in progress. The four Platforms leading up to the exhibition itself- Democracy Unrealized, Experiments with Truth: Transitional Justice and the Processes of Truth and Reconciliation, Creolite and Creolization, Under Siege: Four African Cities Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos- combined with the exhibition of more than 150 artists and its accompanying 618 page catalogue, represents such a vast amount of information and written and transcribed text, that it may indeed be many years before we fully absorb and utilize all of this vast resource of information. It is ironic that this essay is datelined 9/11. We are discussing documenta just one year after the Attack on America. But Enwezer's project, some five years in production, proved to be amazingly relevant to an art world that has changed dramatically and with great finality from what it was just a year ago. It contained precisely the social, political, environmental and global issues that one found absent from last Spring's irrelevant and insulting Whitney Biennial which propagated the pathetic myth of art world business as usual. Five years ago, Enwezer was hired precisely for the purpose of destroying the old hegemony, to recognize the singular efforts of established American and European artists addressing the relevant issues of our time, and also embracing the visions of the developing world, outsiders of every stripe, and the disenfranchised. A stunning treasure was the work by Ravi Agarwal that narrated the tensions and daily life on the border between India and Pakistan.... Documentary video projects ranged from the horrors of Rawanda, a rare Iranian snowstorm, to a politically complex reaction and official denial, on multiple monitors, of the catastrophic sinking of a vessel with illegal migrants in the Mediterranean. Another highlight involved one of the first, Palestinian, black and white films. It was a work with primitive production values that narrated a drama of migrants attempting to illegally enter Kuwait in the hold of an empty water truck. Because of the glitch the three migrants suffocate and experience a horrific death while crossing the desert. It proved to be a riveting film. Contact Information: Charles Giuliano 82 Webster Street Boston, MA   02128 U.S.A. Email: Charles.Giuliano@verizon.net Kids, Snapping To Attention - Wendy Ewald Puts Cameras in Their Hands and a Spark in Their Lives - by Jo Ann Lewis http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/washpost020302.cfm This Washington Post article reports on a museum exhibition tracing the work of Wendy Ewald. More about life than art, this retrospective surveys the career of a pioneering documentary photographer who gave cameras to small groups of disadvantaged children in the United States and developing nations to learn what they were thinking and to encourage them to express themselves. She taught them to look at their own lives, their families, their communities, and to write about and photograph them. She also encouraged them to tap into their dreams and fantasies, and in dirt-poor places like Appalachia and Chiapas, Mexico, she struck creative gold. LIFE LESSONS: How soap operas can change the world - by Hanna Rosin http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/newyorkersoapoperas.cfm This New Yorker article details the operations and impact of a radio project pioneered and spread around the world by Miguel Sabido, a Mexican television producer. Never Too Tough to Be Softened Up by a Flower - by Nancy Ramsey http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/nytimes072201.cfm This New York Times account tells the story of the fiction film "Greenfingers," which is based on the actual and successful Leyhill program in the U.K. of rehabilitating hardened criminals through training in gardening with the aim of achieving second chances and real social change. Notable Feature(s): An additional article about an inmate who thanks the Leyhill prison program for his successful gardening business. Contact Information: Jeff Groundhill HMP Leyhill Wotton-under-Edge Glos GL12 8BZ U.K. Telephone: 01454-260681   Fax: 01454-261703 Perfumed Nightmare - A review by Patricia Aufderheide http://www.library.american.edu/subject/media/aufderheide/perfumed.html http://www.library.american.edu/subject/media/aufderheide/aufderhe.html Aufderheide describes here a film from a developing country, the Philippines, the creative intentions and process of realizing it, and the possibilities for using the medium for social comment and change. Here's the plot: Kidlat Tahimik is a young man living in a small Filipino village. As the film opens, we see him in three stages of life (symbolized by toy and then real "jeepneys," the elaborately recrafted and decorated vehicles that have their origins in the Jeeps left by the Allies in World War II) crossing the bridge--"the bridge of life"--to his village. Narrating in voiceover, Tahimik explains the patterns of daily life in the village. He has a fascination with the Voice of America broadcasts, and particularly with the space program. He longs to be part of the developed world, and forms the Werner von Braun fan club. When an American arrives for an aborted international conference, he gets his chance. The American asks him to come to Paris, to run his chewing-gum-ball machine concession on the streets. In Paris, and on a trip to Germany, he makes friends and discovers that progress in the developed world sacrifices important values. Notable Feature(s): Additional valuable resources in the Cross-Cultural Film Guide: Films from Africa, Asia and Latin America at The American University, Washington, D.C., complied by Pat Aufderheide. Secrets of the Sahara - Christopher Reardon http://www.fordfound.org/publications/ff_report/view_ff_report_detail.cfm?report_index=415 This 2003 Ford Foundation article profiles a project to preserve ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu in the Sahara Desert. In recent years, 300 private collections have come to light in Mali, the bulk of them in Timbuktu, a city of 60,000 people on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Together these collections hold as many as one million manuscripts, ranging from one to 500 pages each. Most are written in Arabic, although some use Arabic script to transliterate local tongues that had no written counterpart. Researchers who have taken a preliminary look at some of these texts say they shed light on important facets of social history and religious thought and practice before the colonial era began in the 19th century. Upon closer inspection, they may compel scholars to rewrite the history of Islam and of Africa and to abolish once and for all the persistent Western stereotype of black Africans as primitive and lacking in intellectual traditions. "These manuscripts have been here all along," says Stephanie Diakité, an American scholar who advises the Malian government. "What's revolutionary is that they are finally being recognized as manifestations of everyday culture within a highly literate society. They did not come like a bolt out of the blue. They are vestiges of people living their lives and writing things down, as all civilized cultures do." Many of the ancient texts date back to the Songhaï empire, a prosperous kingdom that peaked in the 15th and 16th centuries. Today, Timbuktu relies on arts and crafts for the tourist industry and on nomadic herding to subsist. But five or six centuries ago, it was a major crossroads for caravans of gold and salt traversing the Sahara. The book trade also flourished, and the city's Sankoré Mosque became a center of learning, attracting thousands of students each year. Even today, a small number of people live off the traditions of scholarship, writing or interpreting texts. Contact Information: Email: news@fordfound.org Stage Might: Brazil's Landless Find Strength in Art - by Malcolm McNee http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200205_Landless_Art/20020501_index.htm http://www.mstbrazil.org/ Five theatrical works performed by Brazil's Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) were featured at the annual World Social Forum in February 2002. The pieces represent a milestone for the group, best known for coordinating occupations of unused farmland by poor people. Showing a global audience a new front in the world's most successful land-reform struggle, the MST is reclaiming the right to creative self-representation. Using theater, music, video and other art forms, the landless are confronting a corporate media industry that has portrayed their reform movement as violent and rendered their diverse cultures invisible. “One of our concerns, obviously, is with the media's portrayal of the movement as disorderly, as violent,” says Mineirinho, who works out of the MST's Teodoro Sampaio office. “So exploring and amplifying the culture and arts of the landless communities can open a different sort of dialogue with Brazilian society, helping it to better understand who we are and where we came from. In addition, it's important for the young people in our communities to learn their local culture, for it to resonate with their sense of identity, pride and dreams. If only urban culture is given value, then young people naturally imagine their future as inevitably involving a move to the city, exacerbating the massive problems of urbanization the country already faces.” To address these concerns, Mineirinho helped found the MST Culture Collective, whose first event was a 1996 gathering of landless musicians in Brasília, the nation's capital, for song-writing and recording workshops. Since then, the collective has supported production and circulation of music and poetry within and between landless communities around the country. Contact Information: Landless Workers Movement (MST) c/o Global Exchange 2017 Mission Street #303 San Francisco, CA   94110 USA Email: semterra@mst.org.br The beauty of the disregarded: an exhibition of documentary photography - by Suzie Mackenzie http://www.changemakers.net/library/temp/guardianmay2003photography.cfm The Americans may not have invented photography; that honour went to the Europeans - to Joseph-Nicéphore Niepce in France, developed there by Louis Daguerre, and to William Henry Fox Talbot in England. But, as a major new exhibition, Cruel And Tender, at Tate Modern makes evident, for the large part of the 20th century, and particularly in the field of "documentary style" or "descriptive" photography, America - busily reinventing itself at the century's start - made the art peculiarly its own. The title for the exhibition comes from the critic Lincoln Kirstein's description of the influential realist photographer Walker Evans's style as "tender cruelty", an attempt to define Evans's apparently paradoxical relation to his subject - analytic yet involved, unemotional but still engaged. All photography is out to catch the identity of its subject, and in the 1930s America became Evans's subject, but an America not photographed, not seen before, with such a dispassionate eye. Theatre Matters: Performance & Culture on the World Stage- Edited by Richard Boon and Jane Plastow This Cambridge University Press publication looks at places and projects where theatre has made a real social or political impact, and questions arising there from. It includes chapters on Nigeria, South Africa, Eritrea, Caribbean, Canada (Native American), Jamaica, India, Brazil and Argentina. Contact Information: Jane Plastow Email: plastow@english.novell.leeds.ac.uk Across Borders Media http://www.acrossborders.com Across Borders Media is an organization of digital production pioneers, with over a quarter century of experience in all facets of electronic media. The company produces television programs, promotional and educational videos aimed at making a difference in the world. Entertainment is a crucial part of the group's unfolding mission. When something is entertaining, it doesn't mean it's a waste of time. On the contrary, it means the viewer is fully engaged. And the more viewers are engaged with a story, the more they open their minds to what it has to offer. Across Borders Media believes that television, when used to its potential, can be a trigger for social, environmental, and corporate change. Notable Feature(s): Excellent collection of links. Contact Information: Bill Weaver, President Across Borders Media 301-2250 Oak Bay Avenue Victoria, British Columbia Canada V8R 1G5 Telephone: 250.386.3182   Fax: 250.386.3183 Email: info@acrossborders.com AIDS Memorial Quilt http://www.aidsquilt.org/ http://www.aidsquilt.org/about_found.htm The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a poignant memorial, a powerful tool for prevention education and the largest ongoing community arts project in the world. Each of the more than 44,000 colorful panels in the Quilt memorializes the life of a person lost to AIDS. Notable Feature(s): Join an email listserv to keep informed about the Quilt and the latest news re the AIDS pandemic; photographic database of Quilt panels searchable by name or number. Contact Information: Julie Rhoad, Executive Director The AIDS Memorial Quilt PO Box 5552 Atlanta, GA   30307 U.S.A. Telephone: 404.688.5500   Fax: 404.688.5552 Email: info@aidsquilt.org Architecture for Humanity (AFH) http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/ Architecture for Humanity is a nonprofit organization founded in 1999 to seek and promote architectural and design solutions to global, social, and humanitarian crises. AFH's first venture was an international competition to design five-year transitional housing for Kosovo's returning refugees. Since then, Architecture for Humanity has developed a network of more than 5,000 architects and designers; offered assistance and advice on projects around the world; and hosted a second competition to design a mobile HIV/AIDS health clinic for Africa. Through its competitions, workshops, educational forums, partnerships with aid organizations and other activities, Architecture for Humanity creates opportunities for architects and designers from around the world to help communities in need following natural or terrorist disasters. Acting as fundraisers and facilitators, AFH helps community groups and relief organizations build sustainable, well-designed housing and other structures they would not otherwise have the resources to implement. Finally, the organization fosters public appreciation for the many ways that architecture and design can improve lives. Notable Feature(s): August 2003 New York Times story on AFH. Contact Information: Architecture for Humanity 165 W. 20th St. Suite 3A New York, NY   10011 USA Telephone: 646.765.0906   Email: info@architectureforhumanity.org Artisanal Products and Cultural Industries http://www.intracen.org/mds/sectors/artisanal/main.htm http://www.intracen.org/mds/welcome.htm The following definition, broad enough so that it may be applied to the wide range of world's crafts, was adopted by 44 countries' representatives participating in the UNESCO/ITC International Symposium on "Crafts and the International Market: Trade & Customs Codification" (Manila, 1997): Artisanal products are those produced by artisans, either completely by hand, or with the help of hand-tools or even mechanical means, as long as the direct manual contribution of the artisan remains the most substantial component of the finished product. These are produced without restriction in terms of quantity and using raw materials from sustainable resources. The special nature of artisanal products derives from their distinctive features, which can be utilitarian, aesthetic, artistic, creative, culturally attached, decorative, functional, traditional, religiously and socially symbolic and significant. Artisans can be basically defined as persons who carry out a manual work on their own account, often helped by family members, friends or apprentices, even workers, with whom they constantly keep personal contacts, which generate a community of intellect and attachment to the craft. Notable Feature(s): International Trade Forum magazine. Contact Information: Market Development Section Division of Product and Market Development International Trade Centre UNCTAD/WTO, Palais des Nations CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland Telephone: +41-22 7300226   Fax: +41-22 7300446 Email: sala@intracen.org ARTPAD: A Resource for Theatre and Participatory Development - Brazil, Peru, UK http://www.art.man.ac.uk/DRAMA/department/research/catr%20projects/artpad/ The Centre for Applied Theatre Research (University of Manchester, UK) has a grant from the Department for International Development for research into theatre and participatory development practice which will finance the production of a training/information resource in theatre based participatory development techniques. Resource will focus on issues of gender and social inclusion, new ways of participation, and access to information and decision making. A partnership of The Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil and NGOs in Brazil and Peru to develop a manual, video and training package which will be piloted and launched in Brazil, Peru and the UK. 'Applied Theatre' refers to the practice of theatre and drama in non-traditional settings and with marginalised communities. It refers to theatre practice that engages with areas of social and cultural policy such as public health, education, criminal justice, heritage site interpretation and development. Notable Feature(s): Newsletter; information on the Centre for Applied Theatre Research. Contact Information: Julie McCarthy, Project Coordinator Rua Dos Navegantes, 447 / 702 Boa Viagem Recife 51021-010 Brazil Telephone: +55 (0)81 3466 7448   Email: julie.mccarthy@man.ac.uk Arts & Minds - Cultural Diplomacy amid Global Tensions http://www.culturalpolicy.org/pdf/ArtsMinds.pdf http://www.culturalpolicy.org/index.cfm The edited and abbreviated transcript linked here in PDF, originated with “Arts & Minds:A Conference on Cultural Diplomacy amid Global Tensions,” presented by the National Arts Journalism Program, Arts International and the Center for Arts and Culture on April 14-15,2003, at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Contact Information: Center for Arts & Culture Suite 505 819 Seventh Street, NW Washington, DC   20001-3772 USA Telephone: 202.783.5277   Fax: 202.783.4498 Email: center@culturalpolicy.org Arts for Social Change: Building Awareness for Action - A Lecture in the Citigroup Series on Asian Women Leaders http://www.asiasociety.org/speeches/generalarts.html This is the fourth lecture (February 2003) in what is called the Citigroup Series on Asian Women Leaders. This new series focuses on the vital role that women are playing in Asia and features leading social activists, policymakers, community leaders from Asia and the U.S. This lecture features Mallika Sarabhai, Indian classical dancer, stage and film actress, choreographer, writer, and social activist. Contact Information: The Asia Society 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street) New York, NY   10021 USA Telephone: 212.288.6400   Fax: 212.517.8315 Email: webmaster@asiasoc.org Bayview Hunters Point Center for the Arts and Technology (BAYCAT) http://www.skollfoundation.org/community/baycat/index.asp http://www.herbiehancock.com/foundations/baycats.html Along with Mayor Willie Brown and jazz legend Herbie Hancock, social entrepreneur Bill Strickland launched the nonprofit Bayview-Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology (BAYCAT) in a southwest neighborhood of San Francisco. BAYCAT is a school that will conduct arts and technology education programs with the aim of inspiring inner-city youth to become productive and business-savvy citizens. Villy Wang, BAYCAT's Director of Education, created a ten-day photography workshop that provided an opportunity for young students in the Hunter's Point Community to explore the art of landscape photography through the use of state-of-art digital cameras and technology donated by HP. Inspired by the photographs of the Ansel Adams at 100 Exhibition in SFMOMA, students were encouraged to invent their own definition of landscapes. The workshop provided a forum for them to record, reflect and discuss their unique perspectives of the world. The Skoll Foundation has made a long-term commitment to partner with BAYCAT. The BAYCAT center will be modeled after Strickland's headquarters in Pittsburgh -- a 62,000-square-foot, honey-colored brick building designed by a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright that houses a staff of more than 110 trainers, teachers, and mentors. BAYCAT's 80,000-square-foot campus will stand on five acres of previously contaminated shipyard land leased by the city, and it will cost about $30 million to build. In short, it is a huge project with one driving goal: to drastically change the economic and social landscape of one of the Bay Area's most underserved neighborhoods. Notable Feature(s): Fast Company article on BAYCAT; Hidden Heroes, the video documentary made by nine middle school youth from the BayView neighborhood in San Fransisco. Contact Information: Villy Wang, Executive Director BAYCAT Telephone: 415.701.8CAT   Bookshare.org http://www.bookshare.org/ Created by Benetech (formerly Arkenstone), Bookshare.org is an online community that enables people with visual and other print disabilities to legally share scanned books. It is designed exclusively for the use of the blind and other individuals with print related disabilities. The primary source for Bookshare.org documents will be print-disabled users of adaptive computer technology. There are many people who routinely use a computer to scan a book or other text into machine-readable form. Converting a book in this way can take up to several hours. Bookshare.org believes that disabled people all across the United States wanting to read the same text needlessly repeat many hours of work. The Bookshare.org initiative will seek to maximize the efficiency of this process by making a work scanned by only one or a few people available to thousands of people instantly. In the first two months of its life, the volunteer portion of the Bookshare.org Web site received over 14,000 scanned books. Contact Information: Bookshare.org The Benetech Initiative 480 California Avenue Suite 201 Palo Alto, CA   94306-1609 USA Telephone: 650.475.5440   Fax: 650.475.1066 Email: info@bookshare.org Cornerstone Theater Project - Ford Foundation: Leadership for a Changing World Award (2001) http://leadershipforchange.org/awardees/awardee.php3?ID=27 http://www.cornerstonetheater.org “The experiment that is the United States of America is full of glorious promise but it is built on a legacy of bigotry and hatred and yes, fear of the other,” says Bill Rauch, who believes that theater is the most collaborative and all-encompassing of art forms, and can be, he believes, “a rehearsal for changing the world.” Through art and theater, Americans can air their differences and “collectively shape a new set of images for how the world does and doesn't function,” he adds. Every community in which his company has worked “has been divided, often along racial lines, but as often because of who does or doesn't have money or political power or because of who worships where. In fact, I have learned again and again how in the U.S. race often masks other differences. I'm dismayed by how quickly lines get drawn, how positions harden and dialogue dissolves into posturing.” In any community, as long as these masks are in place, compassionate social change is unlikely, he says. Notable Feature(s): An archived 2002 Leadership for Change Q&A with Rauch. Contact Information: Bill Rauch Artistic Director/Co-Founder Cornerstone Theater Co. 708 Traction Ave. Los Angeles, CA   90013 USA Telephone: 213.613.1700 ext.10   Fax: 213.613.1714 Email: brauch@cornerstonetheater.org Creativity & Culture: Program Description from the Rockefeller Foundation http://www.rockfound.org/display.asp?context=3&SectionTypeID=16 As it has for some 80 years, the Rockefeller Foundation bases its support for the arts and humanities on the belief that societies benefit from the free expression of creative individuals. Refocusing its strategy to address today's challenges of globalization, the Foundation aims to enhance the creativity of individuals and communities through the preservation and renewal of the cultural heritage of the poor and excluded, the engagement of artists and humanists in the creation of democratic and inclusive societies, and the support of diverse creative expression and experiments with the new digital technologies. Although most of the Foundation's Creativity & Culture work is concentrated in the United States, initiatives in other countries include strengthening a network of African publishers and recovering and publishing literature by African women writers, resident fellowship programs for humanities scholars in Central and South America, explorations with museums in southern Africa and Mexico, reconstruction of traditional Cambodian court and folk dances at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, and support for efforts to commemorate social trauma as democratization and social reconstruction proceed. Examples are humanities research focused on violence, democracy and authoritarianism at the cultural nongovernmental organization SUR in Peru and an international coalition of "historic sites of conscience" that include the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York, the Slave House in Senegal and the Project to Remember in Argentina. Notable Feature(s): List and description of grants awarded; related topics and links, including the grant program PARTNERSHIPS AFFIRMING COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION (PACT): PACT is an annual competitive program that supports community cultural development projects - projects undertaken by artists and other cultural professionals in collaboration with other community members to express identity, concerns, and aspirations through the arts and media, building cultural capacity and contributing to social change; descriptions of previous successful programs; competitive programs in creativity and culture. Contact Information: Scott MacDougall, Senior Program Assistant Telephone: 212.852.8457   Fax: 212.852.8438 Email: creativity@rockfound.org Cross-Cultural Film Guide - Films from Africa, Asia and Latin America at The American University - by Patricia Aufderheide http://www.library.american.edu/subject/media/aufderheide/aufderhe.html This is a guide to films that can permit people who may not have much experience with different cultural perspectives to see the world differently, as a result of experiencing an artwork in a mass medium. The guide provides short background sketches on each film, its director and production history, its production context, and its relevance to teaching. Most of the selections are feature films and they come from Africa, Asia and Latin America, mostly from areas where national cinema production is overshadowed by the powerful international cinema/TV industries of the U.S., India and Egypt. In some cases, films from these international centers, as well as from areas where entertainment movie production also flourishes (such as Brazil and Argentina), are included. These are typically authorial films made as an expression of cultural identity by filmmakers who see their mandate not only to provide entertainment but also to provoke thought. Contact Information: Patricia Aufderheide The American University School of Communications 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC   20016 USA Telephone: 202.885.2060   Fax: 202.885.2019 Email: paufder@american.edu Cultural Development Corporation (CuDC) http://www.culturaldc.org/ The mission of the Cultural Development Corporation is to engage artists and cultural organizations in community development and revitalization efforts throughout the District of Columbia. CuDC creates partnerships between the arts and business communities that will stimulate economic activity and improve quality of life. The group explores the conceptual viability of arts-use alternatives and/or mixed-use combinations for rehabilitation of existing buildings and new construction. Contact Information: CuDC 1250 H Street NW Suite 1000 Washington, DC   20005 USA Telephone: 202.661.7582   Fax: 202.661.7599 Email: CulturalDevCorp@culturaldc.org Cultural Heritage Sites: Teaching About Architecture and Art http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ArtsEdNet/Resources/Maps/Sites/index.html Contact Information: Email: artsednet@getty.edu Dan Eldon http://www.daneldon.org/ http://www.daneldon.org/journals/ Dan Eldon, the youngest photographer ever to work for Reuters, was killed in Somalia in 1993. He created very personal visual journals which combined photos, found objects, and writing. Anyone interested in "personal documentary" work would find this work inspirational. Eldon's work, while including some great photographs, also involves the use of the most subjective expressions... his own handwriting, paint, personal possessions, etc. Emulating work of this type appears so far to be appealing to students because they are able to transcend their inexperience as photographers and include personal expressions unique to their lives. Since his death Dan's family has since kept his spirit alive through a multitude of projects. Soon after he died, his truck Big Blue traveled to Bosnia to deliver presents for children who were suffering from the war there. A show of Dan's work appeared in Nairobi and later shows have traveled the U.S. A tree was planted for Dan at the journalist's church in London, and an elephant in Kenya bares the name "Eldon." Mike Eldon started the DEPOT in Kenya, a place for children, many of them poor and homeless, to learn about leadership. Dan's name has been added to a memorial for journalists killed in the line of duty, and Amy Eldon made a documentary, "Dying to Tell the Story," also about journalists killed in the line of duty. There are plans for a motion picture about Dan's life, and two books, The Journey Is the Destination and Dan Eldon: The Art of Life have been published by Chronicle Books. Notable Feature(s): Links about Dan, his work and his legacy; Creative Visions, an initiative launched by Kathy Eldon, Dan's mother; a comprehensive People magazine article on Dan and his life. Contact Information: Creative Visions 1223 Sunset Plaza Drive Los Angeles, CA   90069 USA Fax: 310-289-5037 Email: kathy@creativevisions.org Directory of organizations that foster collaboration between culture, science and technology http://www.isea.qc.ca/links/centers.html Docs-in-progress http://www.docsinprogress.com The Docs-in-progress.com Web site intends to support documentary filmmakers the world over with technical and networking information. Founded by Elaine Charnov, director of the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Paul Power, Managing Editor of The Independent Film & Video Monthly, and Pegi Vail, documentary filmmaker, and a founding boardmember and curator for Stories at The Moth, the enterprise will feature detailed production resources on a country by country basis, a weekly webzine devoted to documentary production, and a section devoted to a curated catalogue of streamed documentary works-in-progress for international buyers. Contact Information: Email: info@docs-in-progress.com Documenta http://www.documenta.de/data/english/index.html Through what he called "documenta," Arnold Bode, a painter and academy professor from Kassel, who in 1955 made the attempt to reestablish Germany as a partner of discourse to the rest of the world, and to reconnect it with international art by organizing a "Presentation of the Art of the 20th Century". In 1972, "General Secretary" Harald Szeemann fronted a new concept of the exhibition´s organisation. An international jury, authorized by the board of directors of the documenta company, selects a new artistic director for each exhibition. In 1997, Catherine David was the first woman to be chosen for this position. Each documenta bears the very personal imprint of its curator´s ideas and personal concepts, thereby becoming not only a forum for current tendencies in contemporary art, but also an opportunity for the realisation of innovative and standard-setting new exhibition concepts. Each documenta, in its own way, steers the international discourse onto new pathways. During the past 4 decades, the documenta has established itself as an institution that has gone far beyond simply presenting whatever is currently to be seen. Every 5 years, the discussion within the international art community is comprised in Kassel´s "Museum of 100 Days". The examinative discourse and the dynamics of the discussion focussing on the respective concept of the documenta (and its curator) mirrors society´s expectations of art. Contact Information: Documenta Friedrichsplatz 18 D 34117 Kassel Germany Telephone: ++49-0180-5115611   Email: info@documenta.de FiftyCrows International Fund for Documentary Photography http://www.fiftycrows.org/ The International Fund for Documentary Photography (formerly managed by Mother Jones) was founded in 1989 to support socially concerned photographers throughout the world who spend much of their own time and resources, often at great personal risk, to record stories that are being overlooked, particularly by mainstream corporate-run media. The IFDP's annual competitive grants program provides photographers with financial resources and encouragement, helping them to complete their long-term, in-depth essays. By partnering with its grant recipients, the IFDP will help to increase exposure for this important work through exhibition, publication and online press. In its twelve-year history, the IFDP has awarded $397,000 to 62 photographers from 28 countries. FiftyCrows Foundation is a non-profit educational membership-based organization located in San Francisco, California. Its mission is to use photographic narratives of global events to raise awareness about social, political and environmental situations leading to a better understanding of our common humanity. Through the sharing of accurate and timely images, FiftyCrows enables dialogue, collaborative problem-solving, and creative response with the goal of encouraging compassionate understanding and social justice. FiftyCrows pursues its mission through programs including IFDP, FiftyCrows Gallery in San Francisco, FiftyCrows TV, and its comprehensive Web site. Contact Information: FiftyCrows Foundation 1074 Folsom Street San Francisco, CA   94103 USA Telephone: 415.551.0091   Email: photofund@fiftycrows.org info@fiftycrows.org Frederick Wiseman - documentary filmmaker http://www.zipporah.com/genrev.html http://pages.emerson.edu/organizations/fas/latent_image/issues/1994-05/wiseman.htm " . . Wiseman's work is preoccupied with what one could call spirit. With an intensity usually found only in fiction, Wiseman examines the moral and spiritual life of an institution, revealing the way people are mauled, pounded into shape, ignored, or even ennobled by passing through or working in one of these places; that is, the way people react to authority." --David Denby, The New York Review. Notable Feature(s): An indieWire interview with Wiseman; Ford Foundation article on "Domestic Violence"; DoubleTake magazine interview; Yale Law article on Wiseman's work. Contact Information: Zipporah Films One Richdale Avenue Unit #4 Cambridge, MA   02140 USA Telephone: 617.576.3603   Fax: 617.864.8006 Email: info@zipporah.com Funding Heavyweight Throws Itself Behind the Idea of Cultural Policy http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/arts/pew-culture-policy.html http://www.pewtrusts.com/ This New York Times' article describes an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, the $4.7-billion foundation that put its weight behind causes like global warming, civic journalism and campaign finance reform when they were first emerging. Its new crusade is to help shape a national cultural policy. Over the next five years, the Pew plans to devote about 40 percent of its culture budget, some $50 million, to an attempt to get policymakers to focus on issues like arts financing, intellectual property rights, zoning in historic areas and an arts curriculum for public schools. The new effort will involve academic research, opinion polls and more media coverage, among other things. Notable Feature(s): Extensive collection of on-line case studies, publications, "lessons learned" and other information; grant procedures and program areas: culture, education, environment, health and human services, public policy, religion, and the Pew venture fund for independent and interdisciplinary approaches to broad areas of significant concern; archive of grantees' publications and organizational information. Contact Information: The Pew Charitable Trusts 2005 Market Street, Suite 1700 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania   19103-7077 USA Telephone: 215.575.9050   Email: webmaster@pewtrusts.com Gandhi Project http://www.skollfoundation.org/gandhi/index.asp http://www.participantproductions.com/ The Skoll Foundation's Gandhi Project initiative promotes the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, a social entrepreneur who stood against occupation by practicing peaceful resistance and civil disobedience. The project dovetails with the Skoll Foundation’s support of social entrepreneurs who are addressing critical challenges of our time, one of which is peace and security, and its goal of celebrating the work of established social entrepreneurs. Since April 2005, when the Arabic-dubbed version of Gandhi premiered at the Cultural Palace in Ramallah, the film has been shown in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron, and on the wall at the Qalandia checkpoint, which marks the border between the Palestinian Territories and Israel. The Gandhi Project aims to reach the public and, in particular, youths, teachers, peace coordinators, women’s groups and members of citizen sector organizations. In addition to screening the film, the project provides educational and community projects designed to advance peaceful resistance, self-reliance, economic development, and local empowerment. Contact Information: Skoll Foundation 250 University Avenue, Suite 200 Palo Alto, CA   94301 U.S.A. Telephone: 650.331.1031   Fax: 650.331.1033 Email: info@skollfoundation.org Getty Education Institute for the Arts http://www.artsednet.getty.edu/ The Getty provides a rich site full of teaching materials, lesson plans, philosophical inquiry, curriculum ideas, A Browsing Room (with announcements, publications, students' galleries, and featured topics, e.g., Navajo Art: A Way of Life. Notable Feature(s): ArtsEdNet Talk, is an online community of teachers and learners that allows one to take part in a variety of conversations about art education with others from across the United States and even around the world through E-mail. Contact Information: Email: artsednet@getty.edu Gilberto Gil, singer, composer, and instrumentalist of modern Brazilian pop music. http://www.duendebooking.com/artists/gilberto_gil/bio_uk.htm http://www.ondazul.org.br/ Gilberto Gil, is today a distinguished personality on the Brazilian cultural scene. During his 29 year as musician and composer, he has recorded 32 records and had many albums released in sixteen European countries, seven Latin American countries, Israel, Japan, and the U.S. A wide variety of themes ranging from human behavior to social issues such as women's condition, discrimination of Blacks and their religions, nature, spirituality, and love infuses his music. Over the years, Gilberto Gil has become a man of action. His role as policymaker has allowed him to act in various fields of social concern. Today, he is deeply involved in environmental preservation and conservation and remains as President of Fundaçao Onda Azul (Blue Wave Foundation), an institution which supports a nationwide network of environmentalist efforts geared towards the conservation and usage of Brazilian waters and justice for Brazilian indians. Contact Information: Email: ondazul@ondazul.org.br Global Film Initiative http://globalfilm.org/index.html In an ever closer world, it is increasingly clear that Americans want and need more information about the rest of the world and the rest of the world needs to know that America both cares about its issues and respects its concerns. Despite the increasing availability of non-fiction sources of information - journalism, documentary filmmaking, non-fiction writing, etc. - ideas and information still seem best communicated in the form of a story, particularly for younger people. Movies dominated 20th century culture and the cinematic form remains the most globally understood medium for telling a story to the widest audience. As the medium develops in the 21st century, film has also become the most adventurous of media, displaying an ability to find new forms of cross-cultural discourse and challenging approaches to social and political issues. Contact Information: The Global Film Initiative 200 Varick Street Suite 500A New York, NY   10014 USA Telephone: 212.206.7790   Fax: 212.206.6828 Email: info@globalfilm.org H-Net Initiative in Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences http://www.h-net.msu.edu/ H-Net is an interdisciplinary organization of scholars dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The computing heart of H-Net resides at Michigan State University, but H-Net officers, editors and subscribers come from all over the globe. An international consortium of scholars and teachers, H-Net creates and coordinates Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources. Notable Feature(s): Among H-Net's most important activities is its sponsorship of over 100 free electronic, interactive newsletters ("lists") edited by scholars in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. Contact Information: H-Net 310 Auditorium Building Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan   48824 USA Telephone: 517.355.9300   Fax: 517.355.8363 Email: webstaff@mail.h-net.msu.edu Headlines - Theatre for Living http://www.headlinestheatre.com/intro.htm The Headlines Company was founded in 1981 by a group of politically active artists. Since then it has produced many hundreds of projects and has become a world leader in community specific, issue-oriented theatre. Calling their community work THEATRE FOR LIVING, the organizers base their approach on Brazilian Director Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Headlines was launched out of concern about the housing crisis. Initially there was nothing overly innovative about the work: BUY, BUY VANCOUVER was straight agit-prop about social issues, but the material was re-written every day to reflect changes in the news. Over time though the program deepened to reach out in new and useful ways to effect social change. For example, BUY, BUY VANCOUVER played to a community audience, reaching people who do not normally go to the theatre, and was supported extensively by local community organizations with a direct interest in the subject matter. Theatre for Living is about empowerment...about people being the experts in their own lives and being able to use theatre as a means of creating change. The theatre gives a community the opportunity to use the language of the theatre to investigate alternative approaches to hard-to-talk-about issues. This is a first step towards dealing with difficult topics, moving towards open communication and realities that communities want in an active and entertaining way on an individual and community level. In addition, Theatre for Living gives workshop participants the opportunity to experience theatre in a different way: not as something that is outside their lives, mysterious and inaccessible, but as a natural language. Culture, after all, used to involve ordinary people singing, dancing, painting, carving and telling stories. If communities can reclaim cultural expression as part of their everyday vocabulary -- a common language that they use to tell their own stories -- they will be one step closer to satisfying their needs as communities and as individuals. Notable Feature(s): Current projects; related links; monthly newsletter. Contact Information: Headlines Theatre #323-350 East 2nd Ave. Vancouver, British Columbia   V5T 4R8 Canada Telephone: 604.871.0508   Fax: 604.871.0209 Email: info@headlinestheatre.com ICCROM http://www.iccrom.org/ http://www.iccrom.org/eng/index.htm ICCROM is the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. ICCROM, along with ICOMOS and IUCN is one of the principal bodies that advises as to the merits of candidate (cultural or natural or mixed) sites for inclusion in the World Heritage List. ICCROM's rich resources include one of the world's leading conservation libraries, a series of publications, comprehensive databases and a growing corporate archive of records and images. ICCROM's Library is the first of its kind to be computerized, with over 60,000 titles to date in a variety of languages. ICCROM disseminates knowledge to expert and non-expert alike throughout the world. Notable Feature(s): ICCROM publishes definitive works on conservation, circulates an annual Newsletter and has produced a CD-ROM on its pioneering interventions to safeguard the Nile Valley monuments in the 1960s. One of the future highlights will be a rare collection of some 100,000 photographic images taken by ICCROM staff. These records provide unique testimony to the conservation and documentation of cultural heritage over the past 40 years. Profiles of cultural heritage preservation work in Africa, the Euro-Mediterranean region and elsewhere; French version of site materials. Contact Information: ICCROM Via di San Michele 13 Rome   00153 Italy Telephone: +39.06.585.531   Fax: +39.06.5855.3349 Email: iccrom@iccrom.org Independent Television Service (ITVS) http://www.itvs.org/ The Independent Television Service (ITVS) brings to local, national, and international audiences high-quality, content-rich programs created by a diverse body of independent producers. ITVS programs take creative risks, explore complex issues, and express points of view seldom seen on commercial or public television. ITVS programming reflects voices and visions of underrepresented communities and addresses the needs of underserved audiences, particularly minorities and children. ITVS holds the following values as essential to carrying out the organization's work: Freedom of expression is a human right; A free press and public access to information are foundations of democracy; An open society allows unpopular and minority views to be publicly aired; A civilized society seeks economic and social justice; A just society seeks participation from those without power, prominence, or wealth; A free nation allows all citizens forums in which they can tell their own stories and express their own opinions. Notable Feature(s): Schedule and descriptions of current shows. Contact Information: Independent Television Service (ITVS) 501 York Street San Francisco, CA   94110 USA Telephone: 415.356.8383   Fax: 415.356.8391 Email: itvs@itvs.org India Relief & Education Fund (IREF) http://iref.homestead.com/Index.html India Relief and Education Fund (IREF) was founded in 1993 in the San Francisco Bay Area with the twin objectives of organizing India awareness educational activities in the U.S. and supporting like-minded organizations in India, as well as supporting disaster relief work in India. IREF has organized seminars and lectures by several speakers from India including leading journalists, renowned film makers, theater personalities, scholars, social activists and other leading cultural figures. IREF also organizes screenings of films, theater events, and exhibitions with strong social and cultural themes, and serves as a resource conduit for literature, audio/video materials, posters and other educational materials from organizations engaged in social awareness activities in India. Contact Information: India Relief and Education Fund P.O. Box 14360 Fremont, CA   94539 USA Telephone: 510.490.0231   Email: iref94@hotmail.com Indivisible http://www.indivisible.org/ http://cds.aas.duke.edu/ http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/branches/ccp/ Indivisible is a national documentary project exploring community life in America today. Through photographs and recorded voices, Indivisible focuses on the real-life stories of struggle and change in twelve communities—from Delray Beach, Florida, to Ithaca, New York; from the North Pacific Coast of Alaska to Chicago's Southwest side; from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to the Yaak Valley, Montana. In these places people are patrolling streets, building homes, reviving towns, protecting ecosystems, and otherwise finding ways to improve their lives and surroundings. Their compelling experiences, captured through the creative lens and on audiotape, provide the content for Indivisible, presented in a traveling museum exhibition, a touring free postcard exhibit, a book, and this Web site. The project also includes a guide for educators, a booklet for documenting community change, and major research archives. Indivisible is a project of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona, and is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Notable Feature(s): A book on the project, Local Heroes Changing America: the book provides a permanent record of Americans engaged in public life at the end of the twentieth century; Indivisible news. Contact Information: Elana Hadler, Project Coordinator Center for Documentary Studies Box 90802 Durham, NC   27708-0802 USA Telephone: 919.660.3663   Fax: 919.681.7600 Email: ehadler@duke.edu Ingenious http://www.ingenious.org.uk/ http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/ Ingenious is a Web site that brings together images and viewpoints to create insights into science and culture. It weaves unusual and thought-provoking connections between people, innovations, and ideas. Drawing on the resources of NMSI, the site contains over 30,000 images which are used to illustrate over 30 different subjects, topics, and debates. Notable Feature(s): Debates on current topics; image archive of some photos from the collections of the Science Museum, National Railway Museum, and the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television. Contact Information: Science & Society Picture Library Science Museum Exhibition Road London SW7 2DD U.K. Telephone: (+44) (0)207 942 440   Fax: (+44) (0)207 942 440 Email: ingenious@nmsi.ac.uk Ink People Center for the Arts Reaches Out to Youth in Community http://www.connectforkids.org/benton_reviews1565/benton_reviews_show.htm?doc_id=11973 Institute for Transformation Through the Arts (ITA) http://www.arts-for-life.org/ Institute for Transformation Through the Arts (ITA) uses innovative arts-based programs to support the health and well being of individuals, families, and communities -- especially those affected by underachievement, marginalization, and violence. Traditional approaches to education, mental health, and community development often unintentionally reinforce the feelings of isolation, shame, and rage that are the root causes of underachievement and violence. ITA works within a new paradigm of mental health treatment, education, and community development. Its work extends the body/mind/spirit orientation of energy medicine to individual/community. It's important to point out that this isn't therapy. ITA never tries to diagnose or fix problems. Using the arts, the organization teaches people how to respond creatively to life issues. It works as facilitators, collaborators, creative partners, and witnesses. ITA's core values include curiosity, empathy, spontaneity, and authentic self-expression. Notable Feature(s): Article on ITA's founding principles and rationale, Crisis and Creativity in Developing Communities by Juliet Bruce; program and workshop descriptions; links to creative connections on the Web. Contact Information: Juliet Bruce, Ph.D., founder, ITA Email: juliet@arts-for-life.org International Child Art Foundation (ICAF) http://www.icaf.org/ The International Child Art Foundation (ICAF), a Washington, DC based non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, celebrates and promotes children's art, imagination and creativity globally. Using art as a universal language, ICAF advances communication and cooperation among the world's children and inspires them to be creative in meeting challenges of the 21st century. Contact Information: International Child Art Foundation 1350 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 1225 [ P.O. Box 33099, Washington, DC 20033-0099] Washington, DC   20036-1702 USA Telephone: 202.530.1000   Fax: 202.530.1080 Email: childart@icaf.org International Protection of Cultural Property http://www.international.icomos.org/icomos/otherwww.htm Journeys in Film (JIF) http://www.journeysinfilm.org/index.html The purpose of Journeys in Film is to teach cross-cultural understanding and media literacy to middle school students nation-wide through an integrated program based on quality films from leading filmmakers around the world and supporting curricula. Journeys in Film, a nonprofit organization, uses a collection of 12 films and corresponding curricula constituting a three-year, multi-disciplinary program in cross-cultural understanding. Films are selected from existing age-appropriate domestic, foreign, art and documentary films. Prominent educators, filmmakers, and film critics are consulted in the creation of educational packages distributed to schools and school districts throughout the United States. A lesson plan, significant resource materials, and additional tools to facilitate dialogue accompany each film chosen by Journeys in Film. Program goals are for students to: Explore their own cultural structures and beliefs; Learn the social, historical, geographical, and cultural aspects of the country depicted in each film; Improve their media literacy and their ability to critically view films; Examine how their own "filters" influence their perceptions of others; Develop their intercultural understanding and communication skills. Notable Feature(s): The films selected for use with the JIF curriculum; useful collection of links and resources for teaching with film; Journeys in Cultural Awareness by Marcus Robinson, and other articles on JIF. Contact Information: Joanne Ashe, founder and chairman Journeys in Film 50 Sandia Lane Albuquerque, New Mexico   87043 U.S.A. Telephone: 505.867.4666   Fax: 505.771.1090 Email: joanne@journeysinfilm.org Kham Aid Foundation http://www.khamaid.org/ The Kham Aid Foundation was founded in 1997 by Pamela Logan to support conservation of Tibet's architecture and art. Since its founding, she has developed a broad range of assistance programs. Nevertheless, KAF is still a small outfit, with one full-time employee in China and one full-time unpaid staffer in the U.S.: Logan herself. Office space is generously provided by the Avery China Program in Pasadena. Kham is the Tibetan name for the eastern third of the Tibetan plateau. While the culture and history of Kham are closely connected to those of central Tibet, the region has many special features. Khampas are known for their warlike spirit and fierce independence. Notable Feature(s): Information on tree planting, ancient text conservation, education and disaster relief, wheelchairs in Tibet, English teachers and instruction, books for schools, tourism development, cultural heritage preservation, health, the environment, economic development, and more. Contact Information: Pamela Logan Kham Aid Foundation 711 E. Walnut Street, Suite 413 Pasadena, CA   91101-4403 USA Telephone: 626.449.7505   Fax: 626.628.3109 Email: pam@khamaid.org Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom http://www.lannan.org/CF/news.htm http://www.lannan.org/ Santa Fe, NM-- Lannan Foundation announced that it has awarded its 2002 Prize for Cultural Freedom to the writer Arundhati Roy of Delhi, India. The Prize for Cultural Freedom was established to recognize people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and expression. As defined by the foundation, cultural freedom is the right of individuals and communities to define and protect valued and diverse ways of life currently threatened by globalization. Arundhati Roy's writing, precise and powerful, highlights her commitment to social, economic, and environmental justice. Roy will receive $350,000 in prize money, and she has announced that the money will be shared by 50 people's movements, publications, educational institutions, theater groups, and individuals in India. Roy first gained international recognition in 1997 when her book The God of Small Things was published. Her first and only work of fiction to date, the book garnered Roy the prestigious Booker Prize. Later, in The Cost of Living, she condemned India's nuclear weapons testing and the displacement of its poor and indigenous citizens by the construction of massive hydroelectric dams. Most recently, her book Power Politics discusses the privatization of India's power supply and the politics of writing. Lannan Foundation is a private family foundation located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Funding is focused on special cultural projects and ideas that promote and protect cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity. The foundation established the Prize for Cultural Freedom in 1999. The first recipient was the writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano of Uruguay. Claudia Andujar, a photographer from Brazil, received the award in 2000 for her lifelong work on behalf of the Yanomami Indians. In 2001 the foundation awarded the Prize to the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Notable Feature(s): Roy's acceptance speech; list of Indian organizations, projects, and individuals to receive a share of Roy's prize monies. Contact Information: Lannan Foundation 313 Read Street Santa Fe, NM   87501-2628 USA Telephone: 505.986.8160   Fax: 505.986.8195 Email: jo@lannan.org Learning and the Arts: Crossing Boundaries http://www.naea-reston.org/Crossing%20Boundaries.pdf This report documents a year 2000 meeting of educators discussing the place of arts in education. Worldwide, every post-industrialized nation is considering major reforms in education, and with these changes are opening real opportunities for the arts to make distinctive contributions to learning and development. Qualitative new practice in arts education is trickling into our schools—practice that not only opens the world of the arts to children, but also opens the world to children through the arts. And it does so at a time when research is showing substantial cognitive, social and emotional benefits to kids who participate deeply in the arts, regardless of socioeconomic status. Contact Information: Email: artsedinfo@grdodge.org Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Agee and Evans' Great Experiment http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_5.html It was in 1936 that James Agee and Walker Evans, on assignment for Fortune magazine, drove into rural Alabama and entered the world of three families of white tenant farmers. And it was in this same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his second term as president, his New Deal having won the resounding support of American voters. Fortune was not unique in its concern for the tenant farmer; Roosevelt himself appointed a Committee on Farm Tenancy to investigate the situation of this segment of the nation's farming population. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the attempt of a photographer and a journalist to describe accurately the lives of three families of tenant farmers in rural Alabama in 1936, is, in the same sense as Roosevelt's New Deal, an experiment addressing the challenges of social responsibility and the salvaging of human dignity in the midst of the Great Depression. Both Agee and Evans' book and Roosevelt's New Deal, characterized by a humanist perspective, a willingness to experiment with new structural forms, and a deep self-consciousness of their objectives, invite evaluation. Life in Africa http://www.lifeinafrica.com/ Life in Africa is a community-based social purpose enterprise. Life in Africa emphasizes job creation and then encourages members earning new incomes to leverage their earnings for investing in the long-term security of their families. LiA offers qualified members in good standing the opportunity to apply for small loans on the Internet, backed by a LiA community guarantee. After the member loan plans have been prepared and approved by LiA's loan review committee, Kiva.org promotes them to global grassroots investors for funding. Members who earn an income at Life in Africa are connected with commercial banking services and training on how to use their account through Stanbic Bank. For most members this is the first bank account they have ever had. Life in Africa is a membership community of grassroots changemakers in Kampala, Uganda. LiA produces social-awareness-raising craft products, provides practical earn-and-learn training opportunities, and offers services that connect its community and others to global resources for local change. Members include families from some of Uganda's most impoverished residential settings. Its uccess as a community is driven by its unique Webbed Empowerment (WE) approach, that guides both online and offline activities. Notable Feature(s): LiA blog. Live Pieces to Masterpieces (LPTM) http://www.lifepieces.org LPTM's mission is to enable youth to understand that in life, there exist experiences, 'pieces', some positive, some negative, and that within all of us, there is a transforming power that can mend those experiences together to create something of great beauty and value. LPTM uses art as a catalyst to help disadvantaged boys in Washington, D.C., examine their world, discuss it, and think about positive ways to deal with their experiences. Notable Feature(s): Profile of LPTM executive director Larry Quick and his innovative program of using art for social change and community/individual development. Contact Information: Larry Quick Telephone: 202.396.4102   Fax: 202.396.4079 Media Arts Organizations and Social Change: A Working Paper by Julie Mackaman http://www.namac.org/Newsletter/winter98/nng.html http://www.namac.org/ An excellent introduction to the communications role of film, video, audio and multimedia in progressive, grassroots social change activities, including media training, community development, advocacy for disabilities, information exchange and networking between journalism, media arts (including documentary), and communities. "Across the land, media arts organizations provide regional hubs for innovation and diversity in media, for point-of-view films and videos, for community-based works that draw average citizens into the discussion of social issues and public policy debate. Together, these regional centers form a support and communications network for disparate artists and communities that often have little in common beyond an irrepressible belief that in a pluralistic society, media belongs to us all." Notable Feature(s): Links to related groups, initiatives, and funding sources; free e-mail Bulletin from National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture; intermedia literacy tools; comprehensive guide to media arts organizations. Contact Information: National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) 346 - 9th St San Francisco, CA   94103 USA Telephone: 415.431.1391   Fax: 415.431.1392 Email: namac@namac.org Mirror Art Group http://www.bannok.com/english/ The Thailand-based Mirror Art Group formed as a group of young people committed to social change. Drama and children's activities were the tools used for contributing to this change. Since inception in 1991, the Mirror Art Group has run over 100 children's activity camps and led over 500 mobile theatre performances in schools, communities, temples, foodmarkets, streets and theatres. In October 1998, the Mirror Art Group closed its office in Bangkok and eleven of its members set off for a site beside a small village of Akha hilltribe people ... Hoykhom, Chiangrai ... with the same commitment to social change and a challenging set of projects: Contact Information: Sombat Boonngananong, Ashoka Fellow, Director The Mirror Art Group 106 Moo 1 Ban Huey khom Meayao, Ampur Meunang Chaingrai   57100 Thailand Telephone: 66.053.600554   Fax: 66.053.600554 Email: moo@thebangkok.com Museum of the Person http://www.museudapessoa.com.br http://200.186.91.71/ Ashoka Fellow Karen Worcman is an historian and the director of the Museau da Pessoa (Museum of the Person), a virtual museum in Brazil. The museum aims to document, preserve, integrate, and transform into information life stories of any and every person in society as well as to promote social change by reinforcing individual and community identity and self-esteem. Founded in Sao Paulo in 1991, the Museum of the Person holds approximately 6,000 life stories and more than 5,000 digital photographs collected during projects, in recording studios set up in public places, or sent to the museum via the Internet. Since it was founded, the Museum of the Person has aimed to create a virtual network of life stories as a way to democratize history. Creating a digital archive of a group's culture provides the opportunity for research and a new awareness of the world. Beyond allowing for a more democratic perspective of history, the formation of this kind of digital collection can serve as a reference for development policies for, and interaction with, communities. This is because the collected narratives represent values and expectations of communities or individuals who do not normally have a "voice" in western society. Experiences like the project conducted by the citizen sector organization Save The Children in Somalia serve as an example (La Fond). Interviews with Somali women uncovered the reasons why the women do not let their children participate in the official vaccination program, and the project showed how important oral memory can be as a way of hearing and understanding the values of individuals and groups. Museum of the Person projects have repeatedly proven the strong social impact of preserving the histories of anonymous persons and fragmented groups. Notable Feature(s): Worcman's article "Digital Division is Cultural Exclusion. But Is Digital Inclusion Cultural Inclusion?"; Memory, the Internet and Social Change by Paul Thompson; Brazil's Museum of the Person by Thom Gillespie; Life Stories. Contact Information: Karen Worcman, Founder and Director Museum of the Person Instituto Museu da Pessoa.Net Rua Delfina, 342 - Vila Madalena CEP 05443-010, São Paulo - SP Brasil Telephone: 55 11 3814-4912   Email: Karen@museudapessoa.com.br museu@museudapessoa.net Music on Film Festival http://www.radio.cz/en/article/71669 http://www.moffom.org/ Based in Prague, the Music on Film—Film on Music festival (MOFFOM) is an innovative celebration of the special relationship between music and film through screening of documentary films and other events. The festival is globally diverse in terms of the types and genres of music that are featured. Africa and the Islamic world are represented, as well as cinema from Brazil and other places. One example of MOFFOM's interest in addressing social problems by looking at music on film was its screening of "The Rock Star and the Mullahs"—a UK/Pakistan coproduction 2003—which is a probing look at a genuine clash of the civilizations"—within one Islamic society. Balancing humor, pathos and provocation, the film demonstrates the stuggle that is so evident Pakistan. Salman Ahmad, lead singer of Pakistan"s leading rock group, Junoon ("the U2 of Asia"), travels to the troubled region of Peshawar where the local government has banned all music, and asks, "Why can't spirituality be expressed in pop song? Who are the mullahs to say it is forbidden?" The Rock Star and the Mullahs cleverly use the debate between Ahmad's moderate but charismatic presence and rousing music and the hard-line fundamentalism of his clerical opponents as a basis to examine the larger battle of definitions and rhetoric raging within Islam today. Contact Information: John Caulkins, founder Music on Film Štěpánská 61 116 02 Praha 1 Czech Republic Telephone: +420 296 236 509   Fax: +420 296 236 510 Email: info@moffom.org National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) http://www.namac.org/ NAMAC is a nonprofit association composed of diverse member organizations who are dedicated to encouraging film, video, audio and online/multimedia arts, and to promoting the cultural contributions of individual media artists. Included in NAMAC goals is the desire to ncourage media arts that are rooted in local communities, as well as those which are global in outlook. In addition, NAMAC wants to integrate media into all levels of education and advocate for media literacy as an educational goal. Notable Feature(s): On-line Support for Independent Media; Member Directory; MAIN (Media Arts Information Network); links to advocacy, funding, conferences, management practices, community building and other resources. Contact Information: The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture 346 - 9th Street San Francisco, CA   94103 USA Telephone: 415.431.1391   Fax: 415.431-1392 Email: namac@namac.org Open Studio: The Arts Online http://www.openstudio.org/ Open Studio is a national initiative that funds organizations to train the arts community to use the World Wide Web for gathering resources, sharing information, and building new audiences. Open Studio's nationwide network of technology training sites provides free access and training to artists and nonprofit arts organizations. Notable Feature(s): Digital Canvas newsletter full of resources, advice, best practices for technology training, fundraising strategies, and networking in local communities; Toolkit; directory of free Internet access sites around the United States offered to help arts organizations increase the presence of arts and community cultural organizations online. Contact Information: Open Studio: The Arts Online Benton Foundation 1800 K Street NW Washington, DC   20006 USA Telephone: 202.638.5770   Fax: 202.638.5771 Email: openstudio@benton.org Orion Society http://www.orionsociety.org/index.html The Orion Society's programs and publications seek to inform, inspire and engage civil society in becoming a significant cultural force for healing nature and community. Orion writers are interviewed on topics ranging from education, to conservation and sustaining ideas. A program of the Orion Society, the Orion Grassroots Network, actively connects and supports grassroots organizations that are engaged in healing nature and community. It is the fastest-growing network of environmental and community organizations in North America. The network now actively supports 559 nonprofit organizations and connects them to the full diversity of groups involved in the social and environmental movement, and since 2002, engages them in coordinated campaigns on regional, national, and global issues. Notable Feature(s): Extensive collection of articles and features from Orion magazine and Web exclusives including photo essays, personal reflections, book reviews, poetry, and incisive commentary, e.g., Wendell Berry's The Idea of a Local Economy. Contact Information: The Orion Society 187 Main Street Great Barrington, MA   01230 USA Telephone: 413.528.4422   Fax: 413.528.0676 Email: orion@orionsociety.org grassroots@orionsociety.org Peter Sellars and the Children of Herakles by Euripides http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2003/01/20030109_b_main.asp http://www.amrep.org/articles/1_2/welcome.html This link provides access to a January 2003 radio interview with theater director Peter Sellars, talking about his production of the ancient Greek drama Children of Herakles and the lessons it offers about making the creative world and its products the key ingredients of policy and planning that would hope to solve social problems. In this case, the topic is exile and the price it exacts. Refugees are the sort of people who too often live in our minds as a group, like "the homeless" or "the disabled." Sellars says it's easier that way, to see them as television images, as long lines of bedraggled people stuck at some border somewhere. In a new production of an old Greek play, Peter Sellars is asking people to look longer, and think harder, about what it means to be a refugee. In "The Children of Herakles", real refugees occupy the stage with Euripides' play about people who were caught without a home 2400 years ago. It is a reminder that what separates theater and politics is our own desire for comfort and entertainment. Notable Feature(s): Additional articles and reviews of the production, e.g., The Balm of Ancient Words: Every page of The Children of Herakles reinforces a sacred, moral order that lies beyond our own consciousness, governing and empowering our actions. There's something twisted about a moral order whose only yardstick is self-interest. Theatre allows us to access spiritual values in a secular society. If you remove culture from the diet of your citizens, as has happened in this country, you shouldn't be surprised that you have the most violent society in the history of the world. If you really wanted to do something for national security you would fund the arts. You can have all the armies and tanks in the world and you are not secure. Security is based on communication, on mutual understanding, on the ability to look somebody in the eye, and that is a cultural program, not a military program. Until we realize that no neighborhood will be safe until there are serious and flourishing cultural initiatives, we've missed the boat. Contact Information: American Repertory Theatre (ART) Loeb Drama Center, Harvard University 64 Brattle Street Cambridge, MA   02138 USA Telephone: 617.495.2668   Email: info@amrep.org PhotoVoice http://www.photovoice.org/ Founded in September 1999 by Anna Blackman and Tiffany Fairey, PhotoVoice is an international nonprofit organisation, based in London, U.K with a US representative in Boston, Massachusetts. The organization was established to correct the lack of information and resources bringing together the worlds of photography, mainstream media and development. The founding aim was to satisfy the need for an organisation dedicated to participatory photography that gave voice to people in need...that would allow them to represent themselves and raise awareness of their situations to people around the world. Accordingly, PhotoVoice specialises in photographic training for marginalised groups of people around the world. Working alongside both international NGOs and local groups, PhotoVoice provides in the field training in photography and documentary skills for those whose views are marginalised within society. Projects to date include work with refugees, streetchildren, children in need and women living with HIV. PhotoVoice help these groups to raise awareness of their lives through photography and to generate an income though their new skills. Notable Feature(s): Projects in Congo, Nepal, UK, and Vietnam. United States contact info: Marjorie Victor PhotoVoice US Representative Telephone: 617.868.1516 StreetVisionUSA@hotmail.com Contact Information: Anna Blackman Telephone: 44 (0)7980 758928   Email: anna@photovoice.org Photovoice - Social Change through Photography http://www.photovoice.com/index.html Photovoice blends a grassroots approach to photography and social action. It provides cameras not to health specialists, policy makers, or professionals, but to people with least access to those who make decisions affecting their lives. From the villages of rural China to the homeless shelter of Ann Arbor, Michigan, people have used photovoice to amplify their visions and experience. Photovoice has three goals. It enables people to record and reflect their community's strengths and problems. It promotes dialogue about important issues through group discussion and photographs. Finally, it engages policymakers. It follows the premise that, as Caroline C. Wang explains, "What experts think is important may not match what people at the grassroots think is important." Photovoice enables us to gain "the possibility of perceiving the world from the viewpoint of the people who lead lives that are different from those traditionally in control of the means for imaging the world." As such, this approach to participatory appraisal values the knowledge put forth by people as a vital source of expertise. It confronts a fundamental problem of community assessment: what professionals, researchers, specialists, and outsiders think is important may completely fail to match what the community thinks is important. Most significant, the images produced and the issues discussed and framed by people may stimulate policy and social change. Photovoice is a methodology to reach, inform, and organize community members, enabling them to prioritize their concerns and discuss problems and solutions. Photovoice goes beyond the conventional role of community assessment by inviting people to promote their own and their community's well-being. Notable Feature(s): An extensive collection of article abstracts by Caroline Wang, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the School of Public Health, University of Michigan, on the photovoice method and community-based health work with the concept and practice; photo projects. Contact Information: Caroline Wang Assistant Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education 109 South Observatory M5039 SPH 2 Ann Arbor, MI   48109-2029 USA Telephone: 734.936.9854   Fax: 734.763.7379 Email: wangc@umich.edu PictureMumbai http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications/newsletters/12_1/gcinews5.html PictureMumbai was part of a series of documentary initiatives of the Getty Conservation Institute to engage young people with their communities by building consciousness and recognizing their relationship to the values inherent in a community's built environment. Through this body of work they have perhaps unwittingly yet unerringly distilled the essence of life in this city and offered every Mumbaiite the power to embrace the familiar. The sights, sounds, and smells of Mumbai are faithfully embedded within the graphic beauty of each black and white image; freeze frames that would serve to change the perspective, give pause for reflection, and provide the bedrock on which to anchor our identities. It has been a cathartic experience for all of us who have been involved in bringing this project to fruition. The process as powerful as the product. Anil Rao, Project Manager The GCI project began with Picture L.A. An exhibition of Picture L.A. opened at Los Angeles City Hall on December 6, 1994, accompanied by a book and a video. Its success led the GCI to do similar projects in Cape Town, Mexico City, Mumbai/Bombay, and Paris. Salzburg and Delaware followed independently. Notable Feature(s): Other cities in the series: Paris, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Cape Town, and Salzburg. Contact Information: The Getty Center 1200 Getty Center Drive Los Angeles, CA   90049-1679 USA Telephone: 310.440.7300   Email: info@getty.edu Reaping the Golden Harvest: Pare Lorentz, Poet and Fimmaker http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/FILM/lorentz/front.html During the second half of the 1930s, the United States Government embarked on a unique project, a public relations campaign to keep the American people informed about the New Deal and the necessity of its programs. Under the direction of the Resettlement Administration, the Government first sponsored radio and photography campaigns to document environmental and social conditions that were plaguing the country. The goal of the Resettlement Administration was the relocation of impoverished farm families and poor city families. It also focused on the prevention of unprofitable farming techniques and improper land use, as well as the preservation of natural resources. The filmmaker Pare Lorentz played a prominent role. In Lorentz, the RA found a perfect match to its purposes. Lorentz was a passionate patriot and a staunch supporter of Roosevelt and the New Deal. He believed that the American people had a right to expect the American government to provide them with information. And he also believed that the government should take advantage of the film medium to present the public with more truthful information than he felt they were receiving from the commercial media. His somewhat revolutionary use of the documentary format inspired other groups in the 1930's as to the usefulness the film media in transmitting social and political messages. In 1939 the American Institute of Planners commissioned a film to be released at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The result was The City, a film about the historic importance of rural, small town life in America, the evils of the city dwelling that had developed as America industrialized and the possibility of reclaiming the "good life" through suburban housing initiatives. Search for Common Ground http://www.searchforcommonground.org/ Search for Common Ground is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization based in Washington, DC, which works in partnership with the European Centre for Common Ground in Brussels to transform conflict into cooperative action. Notable Feature(s): Resources, program initiatives, and contact information in several regions, including Africa, the Middle East, the Ukraine, Macedonia, and America; various media and other educational enterprises, including an annual film festival, designed to bridge ethnic differences and to change the way people think about conflict, violence, and societal divisions over race and economic opportunity; story leads for journalists; publications. Contact Information: John Marks, President Search for Common Ground 1601 Connecticut Ave. N.W. Suite 200 Washington, DC   20009 USA Telephone: 202.265.4300   Fax: 202.232.6718 Email: search@sfcg.org JMarks@sfcg.org Sound Portraits and StoryCorps http://www.soundportraits.org/ http://storycorps.net/ Established as a nonprofit organization in 1994 by MacArthur Fellow David Isay, Sound Portraits Productions is an independent production company dedicated to telling stories that bring neglected American voices to a national audience. Whether on the radio, in print, or on the Web, Sound Portraits is committed to producing innovative works of lasting educational, cultural, and artistic value. Sound Portraits's radio documentaries (broadcast on National Public Radio's All Things Considered and Weekend Edition) are audio profiles of men and women surviving in the margins. Told with care and dignity, the work depicts the lives of Americans living in communities often neglected or misunderstood. Sound Portraits frequently collaborates with people living in these hard-to-access corners of America, giving them tape recorders and microphones and helping them tell their own stories. Sound Portraits is known not just for its cutting-edge radio documentaries but also for its innovative approaches to disseminating ideas, sparking discussion, and broadening the national debate on such issues as poverty, juvenile justice, prison, and race. After broadcast, their documentaries live on through extensive education outreach in classrooms across the country. In 1997, Sound Portraits was awarded funding from the MacArthur Foundation to bring the documentary Ghetto Life 101 into thousands of classrooms in collaboration with the national education outreach organization Facing History and Ourselves. This was just the beginning of an effort to make Sound Portraits work available as a learning tool, a mission that has grown with the company. StoryCorps is a national project to instruct and inspire people to record each others' stories in sound. Its goal is to help you interview your grandmother, your uncle, the lady who's worked at the luncheonette down the block for as long as you can remember, indeed, anyone whose story you want to hear and preserve. To start, StoryCorps will be building soundproof recording booths across the country, called StoryBooths. One can use these StoryBooths to record broadcast-quality interviews with the help of a trained facilitator. The first StoryBooths opened in New York City's Grand Central Terminal on October 23, 2003, and the oral historian Studs Terkel gave a rousing speech. Since StoryCorps wants to make sure your story lives on for generations to come, it will also add your interview to the StoryCorps Archive, housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, which the organizers hope will become nothing less than an oral history of America. StoryCorps, in spirit and in scope, is modeled after the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the 1930s, through which oral-history interviews with everyday Americans across the country were recorded. These recordings remain the single most important collection of American voices gathered to date. One aim is that StoryCorps will build and expand on that work, becoming a WPA for the 21st Century. Notable Feature(s): Extensive archive of print and radio documentary material, including Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones, a Buffalo, NY, photographer whose work has created a searing portrait of life on the city's West side over three decades of transition. His haunting portraits depict an often overlooked aspect of the country's social history: the lived experience of working-class communities whose cultural expression and everyday struggles rarely make the day's headlines or wind their way into the chapters of history; Sound Portraits Youth Program, including Youth Portraits, a collection of stories of young adults, prisoners at Rikers Island with short documentaries about their lives; Smithsonian June 2004 article on StoryCorps, "Hear Here" by David Taylor. Contact Information: Dave Isay, Sound Portraits Productions 176 Grand Street 3rd Floor New York, NY   10013 U.S.A. Telephone: 212.941.8517   Fax: 212.941.9562 Email: matthew@soundportraits.org Southern Africa Communications for Development (SACOD) http://www.sacod.org.za/index.htm The Southern Africa Communications for Development (SACOD) is a network of southern African filmmakers, film and video production organisations and distributors. Founded in 1987, SACOD has members spread over 10 southern African countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Angola, Lesotho, Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia and Botswana. A key annual event is the SACOD Forum when regional and international filmmakers meet for five days to discuss, debate, critique, and celebrate a pre-selected programme of films and videos. These films predominantly address social, political and developmental issues. The objective of the Forum is to enable filmmakers in the southern Africa region to make more effective programmes on social issues. The themes cover social, political and developmental issues with the intention to inform, educate and entertain. The ultimate goal is to make programmes that will enable change and promote democracy, peace, popular participation, race and gender equality, development and cultural identity. Contact Information: Chris Kabwato Email: sacodnet@icon.co.za Ten Thousand Things - Michelle Hensley http://www.twincities.com/entertainment/onstage/2001/dec/dom1206.htm http://www.startribune.com/stories/1555/1017107.html Michelle Hensley brings justice to theater but does not want one to call her cultural enterprise "social justice" even if it does carry the hallmarks of social engagement and change for the better for marginalized populations in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, including those in prisons, homeless shelters, and housing projects. Making magic with the barest of ingredients is Hensley's métier. As artistic director of her initiative, called Ten Thousand Things, she produces three plays each season on a budget that would not feed a typically anemic small theater: She spends about $1,000 per show and keeps her sets small enough to fold into the trunk of her car. Notable Feature(s): Another article on Hensley's work. The Digital Journalist http://digitaljournalist.org/contents.html The Digital Journalist is a multimedia magazine for photojournalism in the digital age. Dirck Halstead is the Editor and Publisher. He started in photojournalism when he was in high school. At the age of 17, Halstead became LIFE Magazine's youngest combat photographer covering the Guatemalan Civil War. (LIFE had no idea how old he was). After attending Haverford College, he went on to work for UPI for more than 15 years, covering stories around the world. In 1972 he accepted a contract for Time Magazine, and for the next 29 years covered the White House for them. In 1992 he played an instrumental part in the formation of Video News International (VNI), which started what is now the Platypus movement, allowing still photojournalists to cross the barrier between print and television. Notable Feature(s): Digital Filmmaking Forums; audio/video interviews and archives of previous issues; a collection of 51 Feature Presentations from around the world about a wide-range of issues and cultures. Contact Information: Dirck Halstead Email: dirck.halstead@pressroom.com The Land Institute http://www.landinstitute.org/ The Land Institute has worked for more than two decades on the problem of agriculture. Its purpose is to develop an agricultural system with the ecological stability of the prairie and a grain yield comparable to that from annual crops. The strategy now is to collaborate with public institutions in order to direct more research in the direction of Natural Systems Agriculture. The institute is seeking funds to construct and operate a research center devoted to Natural Systems Agriculture and to underwrite scientists elsewhere who will engage with its research. The research cost is estimated at $5 million a year for 25 years, which is a small fraction of one percent of the nation's annual agricultural research investment. The goal is to improve the security of our food and fiber source by reducing soil erosion, decreasing dependency upon petroleum and natural gas, and relieving the agriculture-related chemical contamination of our land and water. The institute's specific research is an innovation for agriculture, using "nature as the measure" to develop mixed perennial grain crops as food for human beings just as farmers use nature as a standard or measure in making their agronomic decisions. Over 75 percent of human calories worldwide come from grains such as wheat and corn, but the production of these grains erodes ecological capital. The institute's research is directed toward the goal of having conservation be a consequence of agricultural production. Notable Feature(s): Program descriptions and calendar; extensive collection of scientific publications and research findings and applications; general publications; Prairie Writers on the character and culture of rural farm life; and an online bookstore; Contact Information: Wes Jackson The Land Institute 2440 E. Water Well Road Salina, Kansas   67401 U.S.A. Telephone: 785.823.5376   Fax: 785.823.8728 Email: theland@landinstitute.org The Literature of Poverty: A Collection http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/povlit/index.htm http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/index.htm From PovertyNet (World Bank Group initiative), here is a collection of works from writers and poets of many cultures and many eras. Some emphasize the tragedy of poverty in striking the most vulnerable of society. Some describe long-perpetrated social and political injustices as contributors to poverty. Others write that poverty is a noble existence which shows the human potential for strength and spirituality in the face of hardship. Notable Feature(s): Voices of the Poor. Contact Information: Email: PovertyNet@WorldBank.org The Power of Culture http://www.powerofculture.nl/uk/ The Power of Culture is a Web site about culture and development. Culture is not a peripheral matter. The ideas, ideals, and creativity of people are the driving force behind development toward more political, economic, and social freedom. The Power of Culture reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation, and democratization. The site offers a list of projects, initiatives, and objectives of Dutch organizations active in this area. The site also reports on the part played by cultural organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and South-east Europe. News and background information illustrate how culture is inextricably entwined with ethics and policy. The Power of Culture also points the way to other Internet sources, media, and organizations. Notable Feature(s): News and resources on many themes of universal importance, including Cultural diversity and Global ethics. Contact Information: The Netherlands Email: kvc@support.nl The Power of Culture http://www.powerofculture.nl/uk/ The Power of Culture is a Web site about culture and development. Culture is not a peripheral matter. The ideas, ideals, and creativity of people are the driving force behind development toward more political, economic, and social freedom. The Power of Culture reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation, and democratization. The site offers a list of projects, initiatives, and objectives of Dutch organizations active in this area. The site also reports on the part played by cultural organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Europe. News and background information illustrate how culture is inextricably entwined with ethics and policy. The Power of Culture also points the way to other Internet sources, media, and organizations. Notable Feature(s): Informative e-newsletter; thematic material on global ethics, cultural heritage, diversity, migration, and economic development. Contact Information: Email: kvc@support.nl The Power of Culture http://www.powerofculture.nl/uk/current/2006/may/co_rapport.html http://162.23.39.120/dezaweb/ressources/resource_en_65267.pdf The Power of Culture is a website about culture and development. Culture is not a peripheral matter. The ideas, ideals and creativity of people are the driving force behind development towards more political, economic and social freedom. The Power of Culture reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation and democratisation. The site offers a list of projects, initiatives and objectives of Dutch organisations active in this area. What is the value of culture and the arts in international cooperation? The recent publication Culture at the Heart of Transformation delves into the experience of seven countries in which Pro Helvetia and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) established the Swiss Cultural Program South-East Europe and Ukraine (SCP). The study is a combination of a program evaluation and a best-practice publication. The entire project cycle is reviewed, from objectives to results and recommendations. Contact Information: Email: kvc@support.nl The Use of Arts in Development and Humanitarian Work http://www.developments.org.uk/data/arts.htm This site offers numerous case study examples of arts programs that have been useful in helping children and others to see social and individual problems in an effective and empowering way. The World Heritage Convention and List http://www.unesco.org/whc/nwhc/pages/home/pages/index.htm This site contains detailed information on the 721 properties which the World Heritage Committee has inscribed on the World Heritage List (in 124 countries). Notable Feature(s): News; full-text of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Contact Information: World Heritage Centre UNESCO 7, place de Fontenoy 75352 Paris 07SP France Fax: +33 (0)1 4568-5570 Email: wh-info@unesco.org This American Life (TAL) http://www.thislife.org/ This American Life host and producer Ira Glass started working in public radio in 1978 when he was 19, as an intern at National Public Radio's Washington Headquarters. Over the course of the next 17 years, he worked on nearly every NPR news show, and did nearly every production job they had: he was a tape cutter, desk assistant, newscast writer, editor, producer, reporter and substitute host. He moved to Chicago in 1989. From there, he did several documentary series about public schools and about race relations for NPR. One followed a group of sophomores at Lincoln Park High School over a span of three years. Another documented school reform at Taft High School for a year. Yet another tracked life at Washington Irving Elementary School for a year. This American Life went on the air in November of 1995. Notable Feature(s): The legendary audio documentary interviews are available online and can heard with (free download) ReadAudio player. All of the interviews since 1995 are archived at the site; special re:generator online interview with Glass on the social mission of radio documentary, The Necessity of Stories: "The most powerful thing you can hear and the only thing that ever persuades any of us in our own lives, is if you meet somebody whose story contradicts the thing you think you know." Contact Information: This American Life WBEZ Radio Navy Pier 848 East Grand Avenue Chicago, Illinois   60611 USA Email: web@thislife.org Towards Cultural Citizenship: Tools for Cultural Policy and Development - by Colin Mercer An international team of researchers has undertaken a major project aimed at mapping and systematizing the tools needed for analysing, planning, reporting and assessing cultural policies for human development. The project, which is part of the follow up to the World Commission on Culture and Development and the Stockholm Action Plan to strengthen the knowledge base for culture and human development, was commissioned by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), with the participation of the Swedish Ministry of Culture, the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO, the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation and the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs. The research team was headed by Professor Colin Mercer, Director of the Cultural Policy and Planning Research Unit (CPPRU) at The Nottingham Trent University, in collaboration with researchers and specialists in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Towards Cultural Citizenship: Tools for Cultural Policy and Development, published in November 2002, contains an analysis of the dimensions of culture that connect to human development. The report targets a number of constituencies '…from policy makers and practitioners in the field of culture and development, to institutional and community-based researchers, to 'stake-holders in the cultural field' in the broadest sense. The authors also call for a new type of communication between and within different sectors, between research and policy in the cultural field, and between cultural policy and economic, social or environmental policy in order to be able to consider culture as a basic driving force behind human behaviour and as a central element of human development. The short working title for the project - and an indicator of its vision and objectives - is TOWARDS CULTURAL CITIZENSHIP. Notable Feature(s): More information on the project, participants, and sponsoring organizations and institutions. Contact Information: Professor Colin Mercer Director, Cultural Policy and Planning Research Unit, The Nottingham Trent University, Broadway Media Centre 14-18 Broad Street Nottingham NG1 3AL UK Telephone: + 44 (0)115 848 4920   Fax: + 44 (0)115 848 4921 Email: colin.mercer@ntu.ac.uk. UNESCO Awards for Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity http://www.unesco.org/opi/eng/unescopress/2001/01-71e.shtml http://www.unesco.org/opi/intangible_heritage/index.htm Here is a May 2001 report on the first 19 masterpieces of intangible cultural heritage declared by an international jury. The Garifuna Language, Dance and Music Belize (nominated with the support of Honduras and Nicaragua) The Oral Heritage of Gelede Benin (supported by Nigeria and Togo) The Oruro Carnival Bolivia Kunqu Opera China The Gbofe of Afounkaha : the Music of the Transverse Trumpets of the Tagbana Community Côte d'Ivoire The Cultural Space of the Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit of the Congos of Villa Mella Dominican Republic The Oral Heritage and Cultural Manifestations of the Zápara People Ecuador and Peru Georgian Polyphonic Singing Georgia The Cultural Space of ‘Sosso-Bala' in Niagassola Guinea Kuttiyattam Sanskrit Theatre India Opera dei Pupi, Sicilian Puppet Theatre Italy Nôgaku Theatre Japan Cross Crafting and its Symbolism in Lithuania Lithuania (supported by Latvia) The Cultural Space of Djamaa el-Fna Square Morocco Hudhud Chants of the Ifugao Philippines Royal Ancestral Rite and Ritual Music in Jongmyo Shrine Republic of Korea The Cultural Space and Oral Culture of the Semeiskie Russian Federation The Mystery Play of Elche Spain The Cultural Space of the Boysun District Uzbekistan By proclaiming these 19 masterpieces, UNESCO - whose World Heritage List of the outstanding cultural and natural sites is very well-known - has wanted to raise awareness about the importance of safeguarding intangible heritage, an essential component of cultural diversity. During the proclamation, Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura stressed that the proclamation was just one first immediate initiative made ahead of the future undertaking of another one going in the same direction: the creation of a standard-setting instrument that will complement the 1972 World Heritage Convention. UNESCO defines as oral and intangible heritage as: “The totality of tradition-based creations of a cultural community, expressed by a group of individuals and recognized as reflecting the expectations of a community in so far as they reflect its cultural and social identity; its standards and values are transmitted orally, by imitation or by other means. Its forms are, among others, language, literature, music, dance, games, mythology, rituals, customs, handicrafts, architecture and other arts. In addition to these examples, account will also be taken of traditional forms of communication and information.” The next proclamation of masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity will take place in May 2003. The deadline for the submission of candidatures - limited to one per country but unlimited where multinational candidatures are concerned - has been set to June 30, 2002. Contact Information: UNESCO Press Service Telephone: (+33) (0)1 45 68 17   Email: webmaster@unesco.org Visit the World Heritage Sites http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~salmon/world.heritage.html Site offers a tour of world heritage sites. Notable Feature(s): additional links to resources relevant to world heritage. Contact Information: Email: salmon@cco.caltech.edu Words Without Borders - The Online Magazine for International Literature http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/ Why Words Without Borders? Along with the myriad ancient virtues of storytelling -- giving pleasure, passing time, stimulating thought, connecting strangers -- literature is a passport to places both real and imagined. In an increasingly interdependent world, rife with ignorance and incomprehension of other cultures, literature in translation has an especially important role. Few literatures have truly prospered in isolation from the world. English-speaking culture in general and American culture in particular has long benefited from cross-pollination with other worlds and languages. Thus it is an especially dangerous imbalance when, today, 50 percent of all the books in translation now published worldwide are translated "from English," but only 6 percent are translated "into" English. Words Without Borders undertakes to promote international communication through translation of the world's best writing -- selected and translated by a distinguished group of writers, translators, and publishing professionals -- and publishing and promoting these works (or excerpts) on the web. Its aim is to introduce exciting international writing to travelers, teachers, students, publishers, and media. Thus Words Without Borders hopes to present international literature not as a static, elite phenomenon, but a portal through which to explore the world -- promoting a vision of travel that is not about consumption, but about cultural engagement and exchange. Notable Feature(s): Literature collections organized by region: Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Middle East, and Pacific Rim, AND, by habitat/ecosystem: cities, coasts, mountains, plains, deserts, forests, and villages; extensive collection of links; Contact Information: Words Without Borders Bard College Institute for International Liberal Education Annandale-on-Hudson, NY   12504-5000 Email: wwbinfo@bard.edu World Heritage http://www.unesco.org/whc/nwhc/pages/home/pages/homepage.htm According to the World Heritage Convention, "cultural heritage" is a monument, group of buildings or site of historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological or anthropological value. "Natural heritage" designates outstanding physical, biological, and geological features; habitats of threatened plants or animal species and areas of value on scientific or aesthetic grounds or from the point of view of conservation. UNESCO's World Heritage mission is to: (1) encourage countries to sign the Convention and ensure the protection of their own natural and cultural heritage; (2) encourage States Parties to the Convention to nominate sites within their national territory for inclusion on the World Heritage List. Notable Feature(s): World Heritage Operational Guidelines; details on nominating process; WH List in Danger; materials for teachers; special kids' section. Contact Information: World Heritage Centre UNESCO 7, place de Fontenoy 75352 Paris   07SP France Fax: +33 (0)1 4568-5570 Email: wh-info@unesco.org