Arts & Democracy jumped into the new year with the Cultural Organizing for Community Recovery workshop in New Orleans, February 3-5, cosponsored by Moving Stories and Urban Bushwoman. It was a great time to be in town when our host site Ashe Cultural Center was celebrating its annual Red Linen benefit and the Krew du Vieux was rolling through the Marigny and the Lower French Quarter. The same weekend we moved forward our new collaboration with Service Workers Union International (SEIU) with a planning meeting in Miami with SEIU Local UHE Florida and artist in residence Sonia Baez Hernandez.

In New York City we are proud members of NOCD-NY, the Naturally Occurring Cultural District Working Group which launched its website in early February. Check out the great video postcard that EmcArts created about our coalition. And we're fully engaged in Participatory Budgeting - looking forward to the neighborhood voting on March 30-31 and to our arts and culture workshop at the International Participatory Budgeting Conference. 

On January 24 we held a national briefing call on Arts, Culture, and Environmental Justice Organizing and followed up with an e-newsletter on this theme. We are busy planning out next call on creative forms of participatory democracy which will March 7 at 3 est, noon pacific.  Send email to RSVP@artsanddemocracy.org for call in number.  We're also planning our April Pratt Institute Urban Planning course "Culture, Planning, and Community Engagement" taking place in Los Angeles and involving many of our partners there including LA Commons, Los Angeles Poverty Department, and Cornerstone Theater. And we are thrilled to launch the new Arts & Democracy web site where we can let you know about the progress of this work and much more!