Patience is a word that has been showing up for me lately—at least three reminders this month to consider a slower mode of living. In this why-didn’t-we-fix-it-yesterday world, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer potential of what we can do, what we feel we should do, and what we feel we must do, not mention what we wish we had done. Finding reminders about patience, I am nudged to give myself permission to ease into the space of just appreciating what is, take off the yanking bridle that pulls me ever forward and really feel the luscious grass on my bare feet.

You may think this is only metaphor, but that is exactly what I did this past Saturday at a festival called the Big One that our parent organization, ADPSR, co-sponsored at Golden Gate Park in SF. Wisely we were invited on arrival to take off our shoes and sit down for a guided meditation. I never put those shoes back on and enjoyed all day the glorious lawn of Sharon Meadows that stretched for a hundred yards in all directions from the event center, a space dressed in colorful Indian cloths and tables of fresh organic strawberries, bread and beverages.

The Big One was billed as “a community convergence for conscious change,” and it was exactly that. Conceived by Torie Jacobs and Saba Malik, The Big One was set up as a village of themed “neighborhood” tents offering solutions to issues related to Social Justice and Spirit, School and Community Gardens, Health and Wellness, Food Justice and more. Except for howls and whistles from the Storytelling tent, the Permaculture and Design tent was the liveliest of them all, featuring an hourly series of speakers and an adjunct display tent on composting toilets and greywater.

In the Local Green Economy tent I heard the most illuminating presentation by the founders of Cafe Gratitude, Matthew and Terces Engelhart, who gave us the gift of an exercise in how to listen. In pairs we were invited to describe what we imagined was getting in the way of our being fully present in the moment and then to describe what it felt like to run those thoughts. Our listening partners told us back what they heard us say and later acknowledged some beautiful quality we embodied (even if we did not show evidence of it!). No surprise, I noticed I wasn’t present because I didn’t believe I had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. I was perpetually thinking I needed to be doing something else, something more important. Feeling anxious about that, I missed the experience I was having! Some irony, eh?

The Big One was offering me release from that habit. The event itself was free and non-commercial. I could not sell books, so I put them on display to go play. Right away, someone offered me free homemade lemonade. I sat under umbrellas for live musicians in the Music tent. I took a free chair massage in the Health tent. I tossed bean bags (and missed!) at eco-carnival games from the Sustainable Living Roadshow. I watched inspiring short films by the Global Oneness Project. I talked to Mr. Fun about eco-arts for kids in the Youth Engagement tent. I saw a dog catch a frisbee in his teeth and a woman spin him round holding the frisbee. The highlight of the day, to be honest, was watching a gopher pop right out of the lawn, pushing up a load of dirt with his nose—right in front of me!

Why hadn’t I noticed before that everything is happening at the right time in the most delightful way! And I am exactly where I ought to be. Just to prove it, someone reminded me it was the first day of summer. Yes, summer, now!

I am wearing orange today in solidarity with Plain Human, a group of artists and designers in San Francisco and Northampton Massachusetts who are making March 11th Prisoner Awareness Day.

This week and last, prison issues have been prominent in the mainstream press, as more Americans are starting to see the physical and fiscal realities of rocketing incarceration rates, even if they have yet to feel the profound suffering it causes individuals, families and communities. A Pew Center on the States report, which came out February 28, offered the startling statistic that one in 99.1 adults in the United States is behind bars. Overwhelmingly, those incarcerated come from the least educated, most impoverished neighborhoods. If the distress of low-income communities and communities of color hadn’t got anyone’s attention, the price tag for putting and keeping people in jail or prison finally has. States, alone, are paying nearly $50 billion annually, on a par now with their spending for higher education. (more…)

Thousand Kites is a national multi-media arts project created to spark a dialog about incarceration in the United States. The project uses film, theater, radio, and the Internet to explore the criminal justice system and bridge racial, cultural, and geographic divides between stakeholder communities. (more…)

I recently discovered an uplifting body of work by a group of public-realm artists called the Cause Collective. Their projects aim to “explore and enliven public spaces by creating a dynamic conversation between issues, sites and the public audience.”

“Along the Way” image courtesy the Cause Collective

Take a look at their video “Along the Way“, a 20-minute mosaic made from original footage of more than 1,500 Oakland residents. I had to smile at their clever and lighthearted assembly, which includes a few people I recognize like Bakesale Betty (Alison Barakat), with her distinctive blue hair, from my own Temescal neighborhood! The work runs continuously until 2010 in the baggage claim area of the Oakland airport and was recently shown at The Temporary Museum of Permanent Change (another site worth visiting!) in Salt Lake City during the Sundance Film Festival.

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, the parent organization for New Village Press, is deeply concerned about the escalation of incarceration in response to violence. Rather than build more prisons, ADPSR believes in investing in the health of our communities. ADPSR’s national Prison Design Boycott has recently evolved into a Prison Alternatives Initiative and will be making an effort to learn about and promote programs that strengthen communities rather than break them apart.

Today’s New York Times featured “A Home Remedy for Juvenile Offenders”, a report by Leslie Kaufman about an alternative sentencing program started a year ago this month in New York City called the Juvenile Justice Initiative. The program allows medium-risk youth offenders to stay with their families and provides intensive home therapy instead of jail, prison or other correctional facilities. (more…)

If you read our January newsletter, you know that I am much enamored of Toronto’s Poet Laureate Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, that lyric champion of Creative Cities. One of my favorite of his public addresses is “Civic Valentines”, which starts,

When one falls in love, one becomes credible; and so it is with a city when it falls in love with itself. It becomes credible, believable to itself. And it attracts. When a civic leader is in love with a city, he/she is listened to. He/she is credible. People know this: that the quality of life is initially and inevitably predicated by love. (more…)

Works of Heart: Building Village Through the Arts was featured in two blogs this week, in both cases being read for the first time and surprising the readers enough they decided to write about it. Margaret, a social worker and educator from Eastern Washington, comments in her blog Margaret’s Wanderings, “How joyful it is to see people using their creative gifts in and for their communities. It helped reiterate something I have always known: Art can change the world.” The second blogger is a young pastor of a suburban Presbyterian church in a Mid Atlantic state, whose blog, Reverendmother, notes “One of my favorite sections of the book was about an artist who got a grant to rent out a stall at the local public market as a place for storytelling, music and performance art. How wonderful.” She found the book in the Tools for Change catalog from Syracuse Cultural Workers.

Works of Heart is being adopted by more and more college courses as a textbook. One early adopter is Professor Amara Geffen, a notable community artist and chair of the art department at Allegheny College in Western Pennsylvania. Amara has stepped outside conventional boundaries of academia by directing two initiatives in an ambitious program that involves faculty and students in college-community partnerships that address local and regional sustainability issues—The Center for Economic and Environmental Development (more…)

The work of cartoonist author Keith Knight is featured at the Euphrat Museum at DeAnza College in the show Graphic Storytelling as Activism, which runs February 11 - April 17, 2008.

Graphic Storytelling as Activism presents a variety of art forms, including cartoons, political posters, digital art, book art, and more to explore a range of imagery with an activist bent. It began with graphic storyteller Keith Knight, who sees comics and cartooning as a powerful tool for social change. (more…)

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…)