ARTSblog

The Dana Foundation recently convened a symposium in New York on “Transforming Arts Teaching: The Role of Higher Education” as part of their ongoing commitment to arts education, as well as to the role the arts play in the development of the brain. Participants included a wide array of people from around the country who are leaders in arts education, including people from arts organizations, academia, government and the funding community.  [The link above takes you a page on the Dana Foundation site that includes some video excerpts from the Symposium.] I had the pleasure of participating as well, and found it particularly relevant to the work we are doing in linking the arts and arts education to workforce development issues. The better job we can do of getting business to be active advocates for arts education because they see it of benefit to their bottom line, the more effective we can be at getting greater recognition and funding of arts education in our educational system which has been so damaged by the relentless focus on measurement of a handful of subject area skills. I thought it would be helpful to share some of the Symposium conversation through this Blog. It is a longish entry so please remember to click the “more” link to read the whole report! Dr. David J. Skorton, President of Cornell University, gave a stirring opening keynote on the importance of the arts in education. He is trained as a musician, and supported himself performing jazz while pursuing his education as a scientist, doctor, biomedical research and academic. His talk wove actual examples of music of different genres into his speech, as well as snippets of video from musical performances. He talked with passion of his belief that arts exposure, participation and training results in graduates who are both better human beings and better workers and contributors to society. Read the rest of this entry »

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We are pleased to share with you the news that the Americans for the Arts Action Fund ArtsVote initiative was launched on Wednesday, May 23, 2007.

ArtsVoteis a national initiative to help the arts impact the presidential election. In New Hampshire, the Arts Action Fund has partnered with New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts (NHCFA) to identify, educate, train, and mobilize likely arts voters to help influence candidates to take strong positions for the arts.  Through this partnership, ArtsVoteNH was launched.

This is an exciting effort and already is being noticed by the New Hampshire press and by presidential campaign staff. Check out the press clippings below:

05/10/2007:  Hippo Press: “They’re Artists And They Vote”
05/17/2007:  Concord Monitor: “Putting New Color Into the Primary”
05/20/2007:  Nashua Telegraph: “Primary Mission: Promote the Arts”

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I recently asked members of the Emerging Leader and Student listservs which convention sessions, speakers, and events they were most excited about. Below are their responses.  Does their list match yours? Add a comment now!
NOTE: Registration for convention has closed, but we will be accepting on-site registrations in Vegas.
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I’m looking forward to hearing the Cirque du Soleil’s Creative Director speak.  I’m excited about the civic engagement and leadership sessions.  Since I registered so late, I did not have an opportunity to schedule myself for a tour.  Those sound awesome!!
-Janine Flores

I am interested in the following sessions…Especially the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” session on enterprise/earned income at arts nonprofits since currently I am writing my thesis on that topic!
Documentary – Class Act
Urban Arts: How Large Cities Get Creative
Innovative Models: Teaching Artists and Shared Values: An Approach to Building a Community of Arts Educators
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Making Money Inside Nonprofits
Emerging Vision-An Intergenerational Exploration of Our Collective Future
Innovative Models: Changing New Orleans Communities through Arts Integration
~Marisa Catalina Casey (Marisa is one of five recipients of the Underserved Communities full convention scholarship)

Sir Ken Robinson–a great guru of arts and creativity in education, and a very engaging speaker!
~Anne Katz (Anne will be blogging the Public Advocacy Track at convention).

I’m most excited about the following sessions:
The Performing Arts Center of 2032
Out of the Box: Coaching Leaders toward Balance, Fulfillment and Success
Maps to the Future: Mentoring in the Arts
Emerging Vision
Arts Giving from Small Businesses
Trends in Foundation Giving
Trends in Corporate Giving
Advocacy in Action
I’m also excited to meet people and network.
~Brenda Lee Johnston, South Milwaukee Performing Arts Center

I am excited about many things.  I love the opportunity to connect with my colleagues, the emerging leaders in particular, and can’t wait for all the great leadership sessions, peer group meetings and the EL reception to meet up with the EL folks.  I am also tremendously excited about the great guest artists, but Jenny Holzer in particular.  I’m a huge fan of her work; in fact, back in my art history undergraduate days, I wrote about her in my culminating thesis.  And now I get to see her work first hand.  I know what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I think we’re all going to come away with some great experiences and knowledge to bring back.
~Robin Iten Porter

After several hours of going through all the sessions, this is what I have come up with. Ugh, It’s so hard having to decide between so many good options! It’s like choosing between Double-Mint Chocolate or Rocky Road!
~Nicolle Gordillo (Nicole is a Summer Scholar at Americans for the Arts).

WARNING – shameless plug follows!
Mitch Menchaca and I are leading a convention session with Bill Moskin and Nancy Glaze on the last afternoon of the convention. Don’t leave the early, because you’ll miss out on the most lively discussion of the weekend!
The title of the session is Emerging Vision: An Intergenerational Exploration of our Collective Future.  We are going to bring many of our list serv conversations into one space to see what it means to our future when you link it all together.  Generational change, not-for-profit model, changing demographics, technology, professional development, attracting and retaining leaders and more, will provide greater insights, spark a dialogue, and hopefully lead us to develop some suggested strategies to move forward.  Bill and Nancy have actually just finished a related Monograph that you can purchase at the convention as soon as you check in. It’s a great read that helps provide further context for the session.  We hope to see you there!
~Jennifer Armstrong

Putting Cultural Assets to Work
Fostering Cultural Citizenship — How Can snd Should We Support the “Informal” Arts?
Arts and Econ Impact III
Econ Revitalization in the Northeast
Emerging Arts Leaders morning meeting
Future of Private Sector giving to the Arts
Artist Fellowships: Values and Vision
How to work effectively with your Local Government
Nontraditional sources of Federal Arts Funding
New Executive Directors
Making Money inside Nonprofit Organizations
~Nat May (Nat is one of five recipients of the Emerging Leader full convention scholarship)

I’m really excited about attending Dave Hickey and Rha Goddess’s sessions. Also excited about the Emerging Leaders Recption since this is my first convention and I’m looking forward to meeting some other individuals on the listserv.
~Jessica Thompson

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Exciting news from our Government and Public Affairs Department…

Yesterday afternoon the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, which sets the initial funding level for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), approved a $35 million increase for the NEA for its FY 2008 spending bill. 

If this funding level is maintained by the Senate and signed into law by President Bush, it will represent the largest increase in NEA history. The agency, currently funded at $124.4 million has only seen increases of under 3% for the last several years.

In his first public action on arts issues as chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA) invited Americans for the Arts to organize a high profile panel of witnesses to testify at a congressional hearing “Role of the Arts in Creativity and Innovation,” in conjunction with Arts Advocacy Day on March 13, 2007. This was the first hearing in over 12 years held on the importance of investing in the arts.

We want to extend a special thanks to all of Americans for the Arts grassroots activists for your letters and calls to Congress.  It’s working!

Continue to help the arts by becoming a member of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund  today!

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Recently Americans for the Arts released The Future of Private Sector Giving to the Arts in America, a report on the proceedings of the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable, produced in partnership with The Sundance Preserve.  I encourage everyone who cares about the arts to carefully read this report. In addition to reporting on the recommendations of the Roundtable, it also provides a summary of the research that was done as part of the process. In a nutshell, private sector giving to the arts, as a percentage of all private sector giving, has declined from 8.4% to 5.2% since 1992. If we had maintained an 8.4% share of giving, the arts would now be receiving $8 billion more in philanthropy. This market share decline has been masked somewhat because giving as a whole has been growing steadily so that even with a declining share, the total dollar amount of arts giving has grown, from $9.96 billion in 1995 to nearly $14 billion in 2004. However, in 2005 even the dollar amount of giving to the arts declined by half a billion dollars, or 3.4%. So a review of all the data out there seems to paint a picture of some real challenges in private giving to the arts.  Read the Roundtable report for an overview of the recommended solutions. (But more on that at another time!)

Now the Foundation Center has just issued a new study of giving by corporate foundations that shows an increase of about 6% for the second consecutive year. So what gives-is the picture rosy, or gloomy?  Well, the answer is,both, or perhaps muddy.  First, this new research covers only corporate foundations, not direct corporate giving, and there seem to be sharp differences between the respective patterns. Corporate foundations direct 11% of their giving to arts and culture, according to the new Foundation Center figures. This is much higher than the roughly 5% figure reported by the Conference Board and the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy which study mostly large corporations, a figure that combines corporate foundation giving with direct corporate giving. The Foundation Center statistics also don’t count the in-kind giving of pharmaceutical companies through special foundations, which was $3.2 billion in 2005, a 90% increase over 2004. Other corporate research does include these in-kind gifts of drugs. In other words, the total corporate giving pie is growing dramatically, but this growth is being at least partially driven by donations of drugs that arts groups don’t compete for (OK, on bad days with major grant proposal deadlines looming, maybe we wish we DID have some of those drugs). The growth of the pie makes it look like our market share is shrinking worse than it really is.

HOWEVER, the fact that the Foundation Center is finding a 6% growth in corporate foundation giving, and the arts are clearly not seeing corporate giving growth that is comparable, shows that the problem is still very real and must be addressed. To be continued in future blog entries, because there is much complexity and nuance in this issue.

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The MacArthur Fellowship can be seen as America’s equivilent to the Nobel Prize. Now in its 27th year, the Harvard Business Review profiled the work of its Program Director and asked him questions about the distinction between creatve individuals and business innovators. Excepts from his reponses are below. The full article can be found in the May 2007 issue, p 121-126 (subscription required) at www.hbr.org

“There’s no question that people of extraordinary creativity and originality are in business. The founders of Google are incredible. So are Steve Jobs and so many others. Our reasoning is that the market is a very effective support system for the best ideas in business. We serve those who do not fall under the influence of the market. That’s not to say that artists don’t live in the market economy, but we think that their driving motivations and rewards are different. And that’s precisely why the money is an important part of the fellowship. Look at the freedom and time this relatively modest five-year fellowship-with absolutely no obligations-can confer on an artist or scientist whose ability to experiment is often constrained by the need to satisfy the requirements of outside funders.”

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“Another thing we’ve learned over the years is that exceptionally creative people aren’t always the obvious suspects. It is a common trap in all areas”I’m sure in business, too-to give the limelight to people whose success isn’t the result of any special creativity on their part. They are just very good at promoting themselves. We have found that many of our winners are people whom others might never have thought of, at first, as MacArthur candidates. Many were unknown and ignored. So don’t assume that you can figure out who your creative people are all by yourself. Listen to others and look in the least likely places. As a business, you will probably start your search inside the organization. But to get a really good fix on somebody on the inside, you might want to ask those on the outside. Extend your networks and try to get information from as many people as possible, just as we do with the many evaluation letters we seek.”

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Americans for the Arts is proud to announce the release of Arts & Economic Prosperity III, our third study of the nonprofit arts and culture industry’s impact on the nation’s economy. These studies are the most potent and oft-cited advocacy tool used to justify public and private sector support to nonprofit arts organizations. This new study is our largest ever, featuring findings from 156 study regions (116 cities and counties, 35 multicounty regions, and 5 states). Data were collected from a remarkable 6,080 nonprofit arts and culture organizations and 94,478 of their attendees across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Read the rest of this entry »

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Some of you may have noticed an email Americans for the Arts sent our a while ago about “The Members Project,” a new intiative being launched by American Express.  Well, if you are like me, the e-mail may not have registered with you. Now that the project’s Web site is active and the initiative is underway, I wanted to bring it to your attention because I think it is pretty cool and innovative.  Basically, American Express has combined an array of components – social networking sites, reality TV shows with public voting (like American Idol), growing public interest in philanthropy and voluntarism – into a single initiative. Here’s how it works: American Express cardmembers register to participate and recommend or nominate project ideas – new programs or initiatives that will make the world (or their community) a better place. Cardmembers have a few weeks to nominate, as well as to review ideas posted by others. Read the rest of this entry »

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It seems that every couple of months I run into an article somewhere with the above title.  This time it was in the San Diego Business Journal.  It has long been rumored that the MFA degree would be the “new” MBA degree as our industrial economy shifts to a creative economy.  This always makes me chuckle, mostly because as having an MFA degree, I wish that I were paid anywhere near what most MBA alums are currently making.  If the MFA degree is the deus ex machina of the new economy, one would think the value of having one would increase tremendously.  I can only hope. Read the rest of this entry »

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Annual Convention Advance Registration Cut-Off is Today!
Today is the last day to register in advance for Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community, the Americans for Arts Annual Convention in Las Vegas, June 1-3, 2007.

Several of our speakers and activities at convention have been in the news recently:

New Hampshire Putting New Color into the Primary
This article highlights ArtsVoteNH, a partnership between New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts and the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, intended both to help candidates state their positions on the arts and humanities and to help voters learn those positions. “Our country, during the past three years, has exercised its communications primarily in some areas through military means, and through political and diplomatic means, and we’ve been sending out rough signals that the world has difficulty interpreting,” said Glen Swanson of Peterborough, who helped create the initiative and just stepped down as the New Hampshire Citizens for the Arts’ president. “One way to get across the true message of what America is all about is through the arts and humanities, and therefore we should put the arts and humanities up on top as far as the future of America.”

At the Americans for the Arts Action Fund Member Reception scheduled for the afternoon of Saturday, June 2 at the convention, Arts Action Fund Executive Director Nina Ozlu, will give details on ArtsVote2008, the Arts Action Fund’s latest initiative to impact the 2008 Presidential elections. The Americans for the Arts Action Fund was created for citizens and organizations who want to help advance the arts politically in America.

Other headlines:

• Public Artist Katie Salen discusses OneNature commissioned by Americans for the Arts for the Las Vegas convention
• Public Advocacy Innovator Mathew Gross featured in Forbes article on political blogging
  
• Houston Chronicle highlights findings from National Arts Policy Roundtable on arts philanthropy; NAPR findings detailed at convention session on Saturday June 2.

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The flip side of work/life debate begs the question: What is the relationship between fulfillment and workload?  Personally, I readily confess that I am an uber-achiever. Always have been; wired that way. There have been times when I have been at my happiest when working really hard, which is why I really enjoy the work on “flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced, as I understand it, chic-sent-mee-highly). He contructs the “Creative Personality” along 10 dimensions of complexity.  Each statement embodies a contradiction. Taken as a whole, they are a great for seeing how we can reconcile the paradoxes within ourselves. Which ones resonate most with you?

[Adapted from Csikszentmihalyi (1996). "Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention." Harper: New York. p. 51-76.]

1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
3. Creative individuals operate with playfulness and discipline; responsibility and irresponsibility.
4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality on the other.
5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.
6. Creative individuals are remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
7. Creative individuals, to a certain extent, escape rigid gender stereotyping.
8. Creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent, yet grounded in cultural traditions.
9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.

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One of the highlights of the Americans for the Arts 2007 Annual Convention is the national release of Arts & Economic Prosperity III, our third study of the nonprofit arts and culture industry’s impact on the nation’s economy. These studies are the most potent and oft-cited advocacy tool used to justify public and private sector support to nonprofit arts organizations. This new study is our largest ever, featuring findings from 156 study regions (116 cities and counties, 35 multicounty regions, and 5 statewide studies). Data were collected from a remarkable 6,080 nonprofit arts and culture organizations and 94,478 of their attendees across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

A series of release events and publications are planned for the upcoming months, and a few key dates are listed below. I will be traveling to many partner communities to help promote their local findings. Keep checking ArtsBlog throughout the summer months for tales of my trips “On the Road to Prosperity, and entries featuring the great efforts of our partner communities as they release their AEPIII findings!

Dates to Remember

• Tuesday, May 22, 10:00 a.m. ET is the release of the national economic impact findings to the media.
• A Congressional Briefing will also take place on Capitol Hill on May 22.
• Friday, June 1, is a plenary session about the study at our Las Vegas conference that focuses on the national data.
• Wednesday, June 6, the 156 local studies will be released at a press conference and policy forum in Chicago.

There are many national, statewide, and local events and publication opportunities that follow in the ensuing months. Email research@artsusa.org to see if any AEPIII events are planned in your community, or if you’d like to schedule an event!

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We at Americans for the Arts are having some fun about the office getting really excited about heading to Las Vegas for the Risk & Reward Annual Convention , so we started to kick around a list of “must see Vegas movies” to watch between now and the end of the month. Of course “Lucky You” is currently showing in a theater near you, but maybe you want to rent some of the movies below  {in no particular order….}

If the list below gets you excited, you will want to make sure you are registered for Convention before it closes this Friday, May 18.

• Casino. (1995). Robert DeNiro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci. Martin Scorcese (Dir.) 
• The Cooler. (2003). William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin
• Viva Las Vegas. (1964). Elvis Presley. Gotta see The King in Vegas!
• Read the rest of this entry »

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The countdown to National Arts and Humanities Month (NAHM) 2007 has begun. Americans for the Arts is the online portal for arts organizations celebrating NAHM in their communities this October.

ArtsBlog and the NAHM online toolkit will provide you with up-to-date information, as well as tips and ideas on how you can take part in the only nation-wide celebration of the arts and humanities. Visitors to the website will be able to share their local activities on the national events Read the rest of this entry »

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In today’s working culture, there is a lot of pressure to be accessible all the time, to deliver on your action items, to prove your value to your organization. Multi-tasking and working cross-departmentally is the norm. Then, there are those workers who brag about the hours they pull (I used to be a high school teacher and every job I have had since has a light workload compared to that job). The culture of complaint can be the norm around the water cooler. How can we structure policies so that people are working smart, as opposed to just working hard? If the bottom line and productivity are the foundation of any performance evaluation, where does efficiency factor in? A recent article from Fast Company profiles a consulting company that “red flags” employees who pull long and late hours.
Joe Robinson (May 2007) The Red Zone. Fast Company.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/115/next-worklife.html

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