RESOURCE: Playnation an Online Video Gallery

The Gistter project at the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair was a great success! The site is now filled with tons of great content, browse the content and feel free to leave comments (you can leave "anonymous" comments also if you like). That's what Web 2.0 is all about: inserting yourself and your perspective into the content so it becomes a two-way street and stimulates more discussion and movement across the web.

We shared a tent with an awesome project called Playnation. The folks were with a UMTV partnership called Playgallery, "a gallery for time-based work on tv and on the web" and they set up an animation station which allowed fair goers of all ages to make their own animations right there on the spot. I've embedded one of their clips below:

ARTS ED: Art video game

This group began "following" me using Twitter, so I decided to check them out. Apparently they have a very basic video game that deals with 2 players: Art Dealer and Art Critic. All one needs is a keyboard and mouse to play it seems, not going to raise the eyebrows of young gamers, but teachers may be able to use it to engage their students in a different way. Tell me what you think after you check it out here at http://ttt-games.com:8080/ttt/art-game.html

ANN ARBOR: A2 Art Fair Goes Techie! 7/16-7/19

ArtServe MI has launched GIST, a new arts dialogue project which will allow people to text comments and share impressions of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair via the web. Get Gisting during the fair – sign up to follow and participate via Twitter (http://twitter.com/gistter) and contribute content (images, videos, text, audio, etc) to the blog (http://gistter.blogspot.com/). ArtServe MI's mobile messengers will walk the site on the hunt for hot activities. Located alongside the New Art New Artists tent, Gist will be onsite each day from 10 am – 6:00 pm, so whether you are a technophobe or technophile there’s no excuse to not get Gisting. Michigan has an abundance of vibrant, diverse, and dynamic arts and cultural communities; Gist is one way to let everyone know about it. For more information, visit http://www.artfair.org/

RESOURCE: Staying Legal for Michigan Nonprofits

A one-stop shop for state and federal laws and regulations affecting Michigan nonprofits, great resource! http://www.stayinglegalmi.org/

DETROIT: Concert of Colors 7/17-7/20 FREE admission!

The Concert of Colors takes place July 17th-July 20th, 2008 and is metro Detroit’s free annual diversity music festival. It is presented by ACCESS/Arab American National Museum, New Detroit Inc. and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) with the goal of bringing together metro Detroit’s diverse communities and ethnic groups by presenting musical acts from around the world. Over its 15-year history, the festival has become a beloved highlight of metro Detroit’s summer festival season.

This year's Forum on Community, Culture, and Race entitled "The Rhythm That Beats In All of Us" takes on a different format in its third year focusing on drummers from the different ethnic communities in the Detroit area. The Forum opens at the Music Box in the Max M. Fisher Music Center, 3711 Woodward Avenue, in Detroit, on Friday morning, July 18, 2008.

ARTS ED: NEA invites MI team to Nat'l Conference

Arts/education conference invites team from Michigan
The National Endowment for the Arts has chosen a team of educational and cultural leaders from Michigan to participate in the second Education Leaders Institute in Chicago this week. The six-member team includes Steve Hamp, chairman of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan, and Cindy Ornstein, board member of Wixom-based ArtServe Michigan. The Michigan team will consider fundamental changes to how arts, creativity, culture and education in Michigan can better prepare students.

http://crainsdetroit.com/article/20080714/SUB/807140344/1076

ARTS ED: High School for the Recording Arts

I learned about the High School for Recording Arts program at a “HipHop inside K-12 Education” session at the Americans for the Arts conference in Philadelphia, PA last month. The program has had tremendous success with many students that other schools had either failed or given up on. Many of the students were dropouts before enrolling and the program now boasts incredible retention and graduation rates. The kids get access to professional equipment to produce their own projects and learn the business of the recording industry hands-on AS LONG as they are able to keep up a certain grade point average with their regular high school classes. This program is currently ongoing in Minnesota and in the session they mentioned that another location will be opening soon in NY. We need programs like this in MI!