Stumbling through the 1s and 0s of the internet as I often do, I came across an interesting arts resource– CANuniversity. A program of the Community Arts Network, the university exists “a resource for people involved or interested in community arts training. CANu looks at college and university programs and courses and at the university-community partnerships and faculty- and student-led projects that enhance that training and put it into practice.”

The “Why CANu” section of the web page kinda creates a scrappy atmosphere for the project

The field of community arts is growing rapidly, attracting practitioners, thinkers and participants around the world. And when the arts intersect with education, community development, healthcare, environmental concerns, religion, politics – in fact in any sensitive area of community activity – skills are required that have never been a part of a traditional arts education.

Training in these skills is not yet the field norm. Certainly many practitioners have no formal training whatsoever, relying primarily on peer advice and lessons learned “on the job.” Only now as the field matures are formal training opportunities becoming available, often taught by those pioneers whose wisdom comes from years of practice.

Universities are beginning to offer degree programs in community arts, usually as a minor or a concentration within an art degree. But even as this kind of education proliferates, it is still flying below the radar, tucked into arts departments like theater, dance, performance studies or public art, under rubrics like “applied theater” and “art for development.” But it’s also showing up in programs like public administration, business management, social work, social justice, education, community development, public dialogue, social sculpture, architecture, citizenship, public policy, even tourism. This diffusion is partly because its proponents have to use every trick in the book to squeeze this work into the severely protected fiefdoms of academia. But it’s also happening for a healthy reason: As artists collaborate with – and even become part of – other fields, the professionals in those fields are demanding adapted training programs too.

This actually sounds like a reflection of Daniel Pink’s new book coming out called a Whole New Mind which argues that right brained folks who currently don’t get paid very well will be the element that allows the US to maintain a competitive edge in the world market of tomorrow. He suggests that creative people will be in demand in those fields mentioned in the last CANu paragraph I quoted.

I haven’t really had a chance to read the essays and syllabi listed on the website at this point, but I will obviously report anything interesting I come across.

But given that my interests and yours certainly will differ–give it a look-see yourself!

I am not usually star struck or more impressed by celebrities I meet than I am of people I meet in the general course of my life, but for about 10-15 years now, I have sincerely admired one person– Danica McKellar. Most people know her as Winnie from The Wonder Years, though she has been in quite a number of shows and movies since then.

What earned my admiration was the fact that she did not define herself as a person by her celebrity and has earned laurels in other areas upon which she can rest her reputation. In addition to her on screen involvement, she has a BA in Math from UCLA and has a math proof named after her. For a long time now, she has devoted time on her website to helping kids with math problems and has been the spokesperson for Figure This!, a website that provides math challenges for families to work on together.

Given that I was so awful at math in school, her involvement helping other people in this field of study has been enough to make her my hero for a long time now.

I found a very interesting Studio 360 session with her as a guest that discusses the right brain/left brain connection between the Arts and Math. Her segment begins about 11 minutes into the show, but her comments intertwine with other interviews. The first is Eve Beglarian, a composer who explores the use of math in music. There is also a story on David Galenson, an economist who is using quantitative measures like regression analysis and statistics to figure out what artists are trying to say and at what time in artists lives do they produce the most creative works.

There are some interesting commentary by Danica and Eve about how their math lives/mindset and artistic lives/mindset were almost violently in conflict with each other socially and internally. In some cases, they say their right brain and left brain activities are often mutually exclusive. At the same time, they discuss the aesthetic beauty inherent to pure math and the fact that the solutions to right brain activities lay in left and vice versa.

The third story on Studio 360 addresses the right/left conflict pointing out that usually those skilled in math are usually portrayed in movies and television as abnormal- they are borderline insane or anti-social or idiot-savants. McKellar acknowledges that mathematicians can tend to become absorbed in their work and seem a little flighty at times, but in general, the characterization is more of a caricature than reality.

A pretty interesting series of stories all in all. The program is rather long to listen to in its entirety, but fortunately the individual interview segments are broken out as separate links so one can return to the webpage to listen to each section separately without having to scroll through to the appropriate time stamp.