New Mexico CultureNet
ProjectY! rocks!!!!
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For more information, email
[email protected]
an independent non-profit organization.
New Mexico CultureNet, an independent non-profit organization, was foundedin 1997. Its focus is on culture, education, and technology. CultureNet workswith artists and writers, youth, educators, and students as well as arts councils,museums, and other groups. CultureNet does strategic planning with culturalorganizations around the issue of using technology to increase public access tocultural information; it also builds web sites and databases for culturalorganizations. At the heart of CultureNet is its web site, which is made up ofmany web-based projects, including poetry, painting, photography, teen arts,curricula, links, an artists directory, a New Mexico cultural events calendar, andmore.
COMMITMENT TO ARTISTS
CultureNet is playing an important role in helping New Mexico artists receivegreater exposure and recognition through its Artists and Artisans Directory,Artist Showcase, and Cultural Events Calendar. CultureNet director AlexTraube says, “Artists are celebrated when it is in the interest of communitiesand, even, arts organizations to do so. For the most part, they are notsupported. We are attempting to provide some mechanisms for them toshowcase their talents and reach a wider audience.”
DIRECTORY: The Artists and Artisans Directory is one such mechanismwhereby artists, artisans, and arts professionals can submit information aboutthemselves and their work directly on the CultureNet web site. Once registered,artists and writers can update their listings whenever they need to do so. Rightnow, there is an option to have a photograph included with one’s listing; in afew months, it will be possible to have writing samples as well.
CALENDAR: Artists, writers, and others can submit listings of shows, readings,book signings, etc. to CultureNet’s Cultural Events Calendar-this also can bedone online. At present, there are over 800 listings of events taking placethroughout New Mexico; more are being added all the time. Traube says thathe hopes the calendar will become THE online resource for cultural events inNew Mexico.
SHOWCASE: There are several ways for writers and artists to strut their stuffon CultureNet. As mentioned above, anyone can have a photo or (soon) awriting sample included in the Artists and Artisans Directory. But there also is amonthly artists showcase, which has featured photographers, painters, and thepoet, Valerie Martínez. In addition to Martínez’s poems, her translations, articleon Latina Poets, curricula, as well as poems of her students were included inthis profile.
POEMS, CRITICISM, AND WEBSLAMS: Each week CultureNet sends out a Poem-of-the-Week to subscribers to ourlistserv; the poems are also uploaded to and archived on the web site. In recentmonths, CultureNet has been fortunate to have guest editors Greg Glazner,Arthur Sze, and in July, Rebecca Seiferle. Each guest editor presents fourpoems by students or colleagues and one by herself or himself in successiveweeks. This brings diverse voices to CultureNet and has a fortuitouscommunity building effect as well.
Each month, R.W. French, poet, editor, and critic, writes an online columncalled “Where We Live: Poetry of New Mexico.” His commentaries haveincluded Jimmy Santiago Baca, Miriam Sagan, and Valerie Martínez.
For the past two years, CultureNet has sponsored an online poetry slam,dubbed “WebSlam.” Between four and six high school and middle school teamsfrom all over New Mexico compete over three-weeks, each team memberwriting a new poem each week. Poems are submitted via email by the teamcoach, who is usually an English teacher. They are read and judged by studentsin an advanced technology and creative writing class, taught at the University ofNew Mexico by Professor E. A. (Tony) Mares. Their scores and comments areposted to the CultureNet web site within 72 hours of the poems’ submission.Feedback from students and teachers has been enthusiastic.
POETRY IN THE SCHOOLS
Many will remember that the Poets-in-the-Schools program was the flagship ofthe NEA in the 1960s. And, the first Artists-in-the-Schools in New Mexico, infact, were poets. CultureNet believes that poetry in the schools fosters literacy,self-awareness, pride, and tolerance. In the first of what it hopes will be manysuch residencies, CultureNet sponsored the aforementioned Valerie Martínez towork with 7th and 12th grade classes in the West Las Vegas Schools this pastspring. This collaboration with West Las Vegas will continue in the 2000-2001school year.
OUR CONTINUING COMMITMENT
New Mexico CultureNet is engaged in a process of continual discovery. Weseek and are finding new ways to work with writers, artists, educators, andyouth. We celebrate the diversity of New Mexico. We practice collaboration.We learn and are ever humbled by those with whom we work. We welcomecomments, suggestions, and inquiries.
Dial in, log on, and linkup to CultureNet: http://www.nmculturenet.org/
ProjectY! rocks!!!! http://www.nmculturenet.org/projecty/index.html#
For more information, contact:
ALEX TRAUBE
PH: 505.474-8500
FX: 505.474-8585
Email: [email protected]
