Review by Kathy Dwyer Southern of the book The Community Cultural Planning Work Kit (Amherst, Ma., University of Massachusetts, Arts Extension Service, 1987, 1990 (two volumes) 114 p.)

The Community Cultural Planning Work Kit is a useful, inexpensive self-help guide for arts organizations in assessing and meeting their communities' cultural needs.

The kits were developed to serve the broadest possible range of communities and projects and should be adapted to local settings. The kits are step-by-step guides to assessment and planning, and the local arts professional can use them as is or as evaluation devices in hiring and working with a consultant. This flexibility of approach is a real strength of the publication and extends its usefulness beyond arts administrators/cultural planners to those who may need to build a case for local cultural support or who are considering new cultural facilities.

Together these volumes provide a well-written, practical and (despite the 1987 publication date of volume one) timely guide to community cultural planning. Although they do not provide a quick fix to all of a community's problems, with commitment and leadership - self-help guides are only as good as the self they guide - these kits can help a community develop a truer picture of its cultural identity and possible new directions for its development. (p. 276, 277)