Artists for Humanity began with the enterprising idea that urban youth could provide a valuable service to their communities through art.  That was 18 years ago.  Today the Boston-based initiative is a national model for enriching the lives of youth through the commercial application of their artistic training.  AFH's core innovation is the Youth-Run Arts Micro-Enterprise - paid apprenticeships in which talented young individuals team with professional artisans to work on commissioned projects.  Unlike other job or arts programs, these young adults (most are between 14 and 18 years old) have "skin in the game".  They are directly engaged in client negotiations and see the commercial impact of their work.  Achievements and highlights include:

• AFH provides arts and business services to approximately 1,200 youth per year, about 85% from low or very low income families.
• AFH operates one of the nation's most energy efficient buildings, the AFH EpiCenter, which was Boston's first LEED Platinum rated building, and an unprecedented achievement for sustainable design in urban arts education.
• Outdoor media campaigns display messages via large murals designed and painted by AFH graffiti artists on 100% legal wall spaces in high-traffic urban locations.

Fort Point was once the hub of Boston's shipping sector, but like many of America's port districts, it has laid idle in recent decades.  Today, however, the tide is turning.  The Fort Point Arts Community has transformed the district through pioneering work - the establishment of partnerships between landlords and artists.  Now fused with the vitality of a thriving arts scene, the Fort Point Arts Community demonstrates how grassroots organizing around the arts can transform a neighborhood from the bottom up.  Events coordinated by the Fort Point Arts Community now draw thousands of visitors each year and are creating an artist-driven sub-economy.

• Fort Point Open Studios weekend, now in its 30th year, draws an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 visitors each October.
• Several hundred artists maintain studios through affordable leases made available by Fort Point’s facilitation of tenant/landlord relationships.
• Two limited equity cooperatives were developed that provide live/work space for 90 artist households.

ACT Roxbury puts the cultural and artistic riches of Roxbury - Boston's premier African American and Latino neighborhood - boldly on display. ACT facilitates the presentation of four annual programs that use performance, film, or poetry to teach African American history, explore contemporary issues, and challenge audiences to counter stereotypes. Its activities reflect, preserve, and nurture the arts, culture, and trade for the benefit of current, former, and future residents. Its name, ACT Roxbury, was chosen to convey the decisive actions being taken to revitalize the community using the arts as a platform. Current activities include:

• The 10th Annual Roxbury Film Festival, showcasing independent films
  made by filmmakers of color from Boston and other major cities.
• Collaboration with a number of performance groups from Greater Boston
  to bring a wide range of exciting and affordable entertainment to
  Roxbury.
• Roxbury Literary Annual, a collection of poems, short stories, and
  essays written by teens from the Greater Boston area who work in, attend
  school in, or have ties to Roxbury.
  

Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) represents a 21st century architectural statement -- a stunning, glass-walled building reaching out over Boston Harbor. The 65,000-square-foot, four-story museum was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to showcase outstanding contemporary works in all media and to envelope visitors in an environment for inspiration, reflection, and imagination. Unique features include glass walls, a skylight that allows natural light to be filtered throughout the space, and flexible, movable walls supporting column-free galleries.  Adjacent to Boston's HarborWalk, the ICA is in a unique location that intertwines civic life and contemporary art. 

• 17,000 square feet of exhibition space
• A 325-seat performing arts theater
• A unique form that appears to fold up from the ground

The Boston Cyberarts Festival is an international biennial festival of art through technology.  All media including both the visual and performing arts showcase ways in which artists throughout the world are using computer-driven technologies. In addition to advancing the use of new media, a University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth study found that the festival generates a total economic impact of about $2.6 million for artists, arts organizations, and a range of businesses. The festival is organized by Boston Cyberarts, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to the presentation and exploration of art created using new technologies. Components include:

• A virtual gallery - HyperArtSpace
• A web site where children can submit digital self-portraits - Faces of Tomorrow
• Initiated Artists in Residence at Technology Companies of Massachusetts (A.R.T.C.O.M.)

In an innovative effort to protect art galleries from rising rents, the Chelsea Arts Tower in West Chelsea Manhattan offers an entire modern high rise for gallery condominiums. Real Estate developer Bass Associates commissioned the building in response to a classic big city pattern: low real estate rents draw artists into a fringe district and galleries follow. Wealthier new residents and restaurants follow, and the "artistic ambiance" increases commercial rents, forcing gallery owners to pack up and move out, taking their galleries with them. By selling gallery space as a commercial condominium, the Chelsea Arts Tower looks to reverse that trend. Gallery owners can protect themselves from the rising rents by purchasing a gallery friendly commercial condominium, thus helping to establishing a long term presence in the community.

• Features 17 foot ceilings on the first floor, and 11 foot ceilings on subsequent floors
• Twenty stories of striking design
  

By collecting unique cultural materials from libraries and archives throughout the world and centralizing them in singular, multilingual, and annotated digital repository, UNESCO and 32 partner institutions have launched the World Digital Library.  An effort focused on expanding the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet and helping to promote international and intercultural understanding. The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints, and photographs and provides a level of "search engine friendly" optimization not previously available on such a repository.  Some of its innovations include:

• Consistent metadata, which helps to reveal connections between items and also improves exposure to external search engines.
• Multilingualism, in which content is translated into seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
• Individual descriptions, which answer the questions: “What is this item and why is it significant?” This provides context for users and is designed to spark the curiosity of students and the general public.

The International Child Art Foundation (ICAF) integrates arts education with science, sports, and technology for the creative and emotional development of children in the US and across the globe. Based on knowledge and experience gained from treating child survivors of 9/11 and other disasters, ICAF developed the program to help Tsunami child survivors and child victims of Hurricane Katrina. The circumstances and implications of each disaster are different, but knowledge gained in one tragedy helps in the diagnosis and treatment of others. The Healing Arts Program has helped children through expressive arts therapy in the following ways:

• encouraging children not directly affected by the disaster to create "encouragement art" that provides hope to the children affected
• Offering creative expression and psychological intervention for the traumatized
• Helping to provide teachers in the affected areas with needed art and school supplies

The goal of The Tile Project is to unite the world through innovative art. Between 2004 and 2008, more than 100 tiles were donated by international artists and installed throughout the world.  The donated tiles were incorporated into unique installations by local artists at 22 sites around the globe--from Berlin to New York and Sarajevo to Seoul. These tiles have been installed at museums, cultural centers, parks and other public places. Reaching out to and beyond the art world's hot spots, the project touches nearly every corner of the globe.  Local artists designed installations that were sensitive to their site's context, resulting in remarkably strong symbols of global cooperation and artistic innovation. A few of the projects objectives were to:

• Foster a viable and non-threatening means to unite all parts of the world
• Initiate and promote collaborations between a diverse group of international artists, their communities, nonprofit art institutions, and the educational sector
• Provide related global educational programs, talks and panel discussions, tolerance, and international cooperation at each of the project's global sites