Dear CAN friends and APInews subscribers, We are writing to let you know that we will be closing the Community Arts Network website on Labor Day, September 6, 2010. As you’re probably aware, we have spent much of the past year trying to develop a stable environment for CAN to move forward, but in the current economic environment those efforts have not been fruitful. With no money for staffing or basic operational costs we have no choice but to stop. It is our plan to seek funding for the purposes of preserving the CAN’s content in an online archive so it can be accessible, but until we find such funding the site will be dark. We will attempt to accomplish this task as soon as possible. Our heartfelt thanks go out to all those who contributed cash during our fundraising drive. It enabled us to keep the site online much longer than our original timeline and we regret that we weren’t more successful in honoring your support. We hope this decision does not signal the end of efforts to establish a “CAN 2.0” that will build on CAN’s history and network and provide vital services for the network that has developed around CAN during the past 11 years. There has been much hard and significant work done in that direction by extremely dedicated people and we hope they will continue to move forward with those plans. It does signal that we, Linda and Steven, will not be in the leadership of that process. We sincerely hope those efforts continue, and we will contribute what wisdom we have as it might be found useful, but we can no longer be a driving force in that process. We have initiated a CAN page on Facebook where we’re inviting folks to post information and to initiate and participate in discussions. The URL for that page is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Arts-Network/138591502832886 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 affirm CAN’s value to you and you work. Thank you for your courageous work in the field of community-based art. It has been our inspiration. We hope that a permanent CAN library will continue to serve your needs. --Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland