It is with great sadness to hear that the Community Arts Network (CAN) has decided to shut down their website. CAN provided (and still provides, through their archives) enumerable amounts of resources for those in the Community Arts—from the professional to the academic side of this field.  It was one of the very first websites to highlight the international development in community arts. I first learned about the website when I took the York University course “Community Arts for Social Change” with Professor Deborah Barndt in 2008. We often referred to the American-based website as it was a great resource for required readings and our research in the course. Even though we are looking at the Canadian perspective of the community arts field here at ArtBridges/ToileDesArts, CAN was one of the starting points for our initial research and it continues to be a great resource for our ongoing research. It provided us with a comprehensive look into what was going on internationally in the community arts field.

Many thanks to founders Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland for their tireless efforts and the best of luck to the both of them from everyone here at ArtBridges/ToileDesArts. Please visit CAN’s facebook page for more information and join (“like”) their facebook page to get updates and contribute your thoughts.

-Lisa Tran, ArtBridges, Social Network & Communications Assistant

From the Community Arts Network homepage:

“Because of a lack of resources and a difficult economy we’ve had to shut down the Community Arts Network website. Thanks to the Open Folklore project, a joint effort of the Indiana University Libraries and the American Folklore Society, the CAN website, as it existed at the beginning of September 2010, has been preserved in an archive. All materials are available and may be found by visiting this link.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

It is our plan to seek funding for the purposes of developing a sophisticated library/archive of the existing CAN materials for the benefit of people interested in community-based arts. We will attempt to accomplish this task as soon as possible.

We have initiated a CAN page on Facebook where we can keep friends updated. We’re inviting folks to post information and to initiate and participate in discussions.

Please visit that page, and “like” it and use it to share your field news and thoughts. In addition, it will help our search for archive resources if you go to the Facebook site and write about CAN’s value to you and you work.

Thank you for your support and attention over the years.

Sincerely, Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland”

– reprinted with permission from Steven Durland