Good Citizens – The CSPA

Sonidos de la Tierra â€“ Community and social development through music

http://youtu.be/cmp5E9gEYvU

Sonidos de la Tierra (Sounds from the Earth) is a project for children and young, created by Luis SzarÃ¡n,through the formation of music schools, musical groupings and cultural associations, it facilitates the shortcut to the musical education to more than 3.000 participants of scarce resources, in communities of the Paraguayan countryside.

Sonidos de la Tierra, is based on the concept of â€œeducation through artsâ€ and began in 2002 in 18 towns, with support from the AVINA Foundation. Today, with alliances with more than 100 other local, national and international institutions, both public and private, the program reaches over 72 communities throughout Paraguay.

In Cateura, one of the many communities where Sonidos de la Tierra has music schools, started a project whose aim is to build musical instruments out of garbage, this city is one of the poorest in Paraguay, and a great amount of garbage is sent daily there.Â People who work in this project say that they arenÂ´t â€œlooking for good musicians, but for good citizensâ€. Last month, the Recycled Instruments Orchestra from Cateura performed at the Entreperneurship Forum in the New Economy during the Rio+20 summit.

To know more about the project, you can visit http://www.sonidosdelatierra.org.py/

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21â€²s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in LÃ¼neburg, Germany) and Rana Ã–ztÃ¼rk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Creativity, Action and Rhetoric.

Any fellowship program that respects artists will not set out like missionaries to train them to be good citizens, which will do as much to reinforce the popular assumption that artists are irresponsible children as supporting facile aesthetic tantrums . . . The visual arts field should be seen as en ecosystem in which many different kinds of art must be able to flourish.

â€“ Michael Brenson, â€œVisionaries and Outcastsâ€

Last year at the UN talks in Copenhagen there was an awful lot of art. I mean a big glorious bucketful. I mean exhibitions and performances and people-hosting-people-as-art, and there was a great amount of debate as to how that was going to affect policy. If at all. In an interview with me for Inhabitat.com, Ian Garrett of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts reported that in Copenhagen, â€œThese creative ventures, in talking about climate change, are reinforcing what people are feeling around town here and they have an increasing voice with the policy makers of the world,â€ while admitting that the influence art had on policy was indirect at best.

So now what? Tonight, in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there was a gathering of minds looking to answer exactly that question. Part of the PEN World Voices of International Literature, the even was called Weather Report: What Can We Do? and featured, among others, Bill McKibben, author of the 350.org campaign, Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, Climatologist James Hansen and Dot Earthist Andrew Revkin.

Would love to read somebodyâ€™s lecture notes. In the meantime, Iâ€™ll be â€œdoingâ€ some blogging and art-ing.

Go to the Green Museum