Author Louise Dunlap is on tour presenting her new book, Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing, and offering writing workshops throughout February in Grass Valley, Nevada City, Berkeley, Oakland, Washington DC, New York and Cambridge. Check the New Village Calendar for details.

Evidence of Humanity has posted a beautifully crafted review of Undoing the Silence on their webblog. What a work of grace that Evidence of Humanity! Thank you, Don Baker, for your clarity of vision and execution in creating a simple, handsome website to highlight good work in the world.

The University of California Berkeley’s Center for Community Innovation hosted an interdisciplinary symposium on the arts and community development on Friday January 25. The one-day conference came from a collaboration of Karen Chapple, Director of the Center and Professor of City and Regional Planning, and Shannon Jackson, Chair of UCB’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. A dozen presenters and nearly a hundred attendees explored the role of the arts in urban revitalization and civic engagement on the neighborhood level. (more…)

The World Social Forum has called a Global Day of Action on Saturday January 26th. “From your community to the world; from the world to your community” is their slogan. Events include an ACLU conference — Reclaiming Our Civil Liberties — in Massachusetts with Daniel Ellsberg and Rachel Maddow and a three-day Independent Media Strategy Summit in Santa Cruz, California.

Find the link to this with Louise Dunlap’s report on the first U.S. Social Forum in our magazine, New Village Online. Noteworthy in the comments following Louise’s article is a poignant letter from Gaza by photojournalist Skip Shiel.

Louise Dunlap is the author of Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing.

New Village Press is using an innovative form of copyright for our newest publication, Building Commons and Community, called “Creative Commons”. Creative Commons encompasses a spectrum of use rights for intellectual property that range from “no rights reserved” to the unprotected public domain. Offering work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public, but only on certain conditions.

Leading the development and employment of these new models of copyright is the 501c3 non-profit of the same name — Creative Commons.

We selected a combination of license conditions for Karl Linn’s book from a thoughtfully written menu of licensing options. We chose Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (by-nc-nd), which are described in detail on the Creative Commons website.

You can see how we stated it on our book’s copyright page.

Friend Dwayne Parish is a magician with acronyms and specializes in a spoken word poetry that he calls hiphopnotherapy. When you hear it live, it does put you into a trance. Here is a piece he wrote for us as a gift last year and I am happy to have a place to share it. Thank you, Dwayne!

NEW VILLAGE PRESS

Near, if not nearest to the heart of humanity is our dear friend–New Village Press!
Earnestly infusing art into community-building & filling the needs of a world pleading to become
Whole. New Village Press is achieving this goal through the power of the printed picture and word. I’ve heard
Voices rise from the pages of their books. I urge you to look & it’s my wish to introduce you to works they publish. (more…)

Dear Friends,

Imagine a city learning how to love, find its true heart, awaken its own soul through the leadership of a poet! This is exactly what is happening in Toronto, Canada, and it is an inspiration for all our towns and communities. Toronto’s Poet Laureate, Pier Giorgio DiCicco, has captivated the spirit of his city’s citizens with his beautiful notions and words. Creative City is the name of a ten-year visionary strategy, which, in DiCicco’s language, aims to “restore intimacy, curiosity, trust, and play into the happenstance encounter of citizens, in an era when the happenstance and the unpredictable are a threat.”

I too am captivated by DiCicco’s wisdom as it mirrors the thrust of New Village Press and the passions of our authors to create their beloved communities. How else can we build the cities of our dreams, if not first by engaging our imaginations with each other and sharing what we find most precious. (more…)

Hello!

Welcome to the New Village Commons! We’re excited to offer an online community spot to share timely tidbits and regular feature articles in between producing our books. We are inviting our authors to contribute news and views, and we extend the invitation to you, our readers, as well. Here are some of the Commons highlights.

Besides this blog, we are launching a monthly magazine - New Village Online. To start the Year 2008 on the right note, the theme of our premiere issue is “Peace: Another World is Possible.” (more…)