This fall the performance group We Players will present Shakespeare's Hamlet on Alcatraz Island, and recent graduate Anna Whitehead (MFA Social Practice 2010) has been heavily involved in the project. She was awarded a Center Student Grant to work with at-risk youth, people incarcerated, and people on probation to create large-scale puppets and masks that will be used in the play. Hamlet opens Saturday, October 2, and continues through November 21.

In August CCA alumna Maria Ryan (BFA Sculpture 2005) started a community arts project in Africa. Maria emailed over the summer letting me know of her continued community arts practice as well as her upcoming project in Uganda. (Below is an interview with Maria Ryan (MR) and Center for Art in Public Life Design and Marketing Manager Jason Engelund (JE) conducted prior and following Maria's travels.)

Since graduating from CCA just one year ago, Ebony Iman Dallas (MFA Design 2009) has already done an immense amount of work promoting social justice through art. Her biggest and most important effort has been the founding of Afrikanation Artists Organization, based in Hargeisa, Somaliland, which empowers artists by building a more grounded foundation for the arts in communities lacking resources or opportunities to do so themselves.

The “Doing ‘Diversity’: Making It or Faking It?” conference was the first-of-its-kind, all-day planning and discussion meeting devoted specifically to the issues of diversity representation and celebration here at California College of the Arts. The discussion panels laid the groundwork for the college to ratchet up its commitment to fostering greater diversity at CCA.