ARTSblog

Six months ago, talk of the recession would have barely registered with 13-year-old QocTavia Shabazz of St. Paul. “When I think of the economy I relate that to politics, government,” she says. “I think, ‘That’s not my problem. Why do I have to deal with it?’ But it is my problem.”

Her perspective changed after Twin Cities artists worked with QocTavia and three other teens to connect what’s happening in the economy to what’s happening in their personal lives, and then to express those experiences through song and video.

QocTavia, her sister Aunrika, Jalil Shabazz (no relation) and Tony Gonzalez met weekly with spoken word artist Desdamona and multi-media producer Patrick Pegg. The artists helped these young people to make sense of the economic downturn’s devastating impact on their lives through art.  The  project, called My First Recession, is a unique collaboration between Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts that fosters civic engagement through arts and culture; American Public Media’s Public Insight Journalism initiative at Minnesota Public Radio, which cultivates diverse voices that deepen and enrich news coverage; and Neighborhood House, a multi-cultural center in Saint Paul. It was funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

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The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) is trying out a new way to connect with the audience tonight at Wolf Trap: Twitter. The NSO will use the popular micro-blogging site during the performance to send messages about the pieces they are performing to those following the NSO’s Twitter feed, whether they’re in the audience or not. The NSO hopes that these tweets will allow followers in the audience to gain a better understanding of the music and what’s happening during the performance. For more information on the NSO’s Twitter experiment, click here.

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Arts teach many things – and one really important lesson of the arts is persistence and perseverance. I was thinking about this notion all week as a new TV show, Ruby and the Rockits premiered on ABC Family. The show is a family sitcom centered on the Gallagher family, two of whom were pop stars of the 80s (Patrick and David Cassidy).  Ruby, the daughter David never knew existed, suddenly comes into their lives at which point all the fun begins to unfold.

My friend Larry Reitzer is a writer on the show, so I’ve been following the show’s development for nearly a year, and  to celebrate the premiere of the show, my daughter hosted a big premiere party.  Later that week, having the inside track, we were lucky enough to attend a live taping of the show in Los Angeles, and were able to meet some of the cast and crew. Read the rest of this entry »

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I sometimes leave my desk and actually see performances occasionally (how exciting!). A month or so ago, I was lucky enough to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at BAM, one of my favorite companies at one of my favorite spaces. My friend Anna let me buy one of her subscription tickets from her, so she picked the date. It turns out that she magically picked opening night.

As we settled in our seats, out comes Judith Jameson to do the pre-curtain speech.

Side Note: this being Ailey in Brooklyn, it is a well-dressed multiculti crowd who just can’t wait for the show to start. While I am normally a fan of church hats and headwraps, they do tend to ruin sightlines. But everyone looks great, so I get over it. Read the rest of this entry »

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For those local to the Washington, DC metro area, tonight, The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts present a free performance featuring hip-hop artists from Argentina, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, the Philippines, and Vietnam on the Millennium Stage, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, at 6:00 PM. As participants in the Cultural Visitors Program, this program provides artists like these with instructive and informative experiences in their discipline, exposing them to the creation and performance of world-class art, and giving them opportunities to develop relationships with U.S. arts professionals. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described these programs “as one of the ‘smart power’ elements that are integral to the State Department’s public diplomacy mission to increase mutual understanding between Americans and people of other nations.”

How important do you think cultural exchange is to diplomatic relations between the U.S. and other countries?

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Peripatetic arts visionary Sabato “Simon” Rodia completed his artist-initiated private art project, Watts Towers, in 1954.  He moved away from his masterpiece and LA property that year,  and he died in 1965 purportedly without seeing his lifework again.

Mike Boehm’s Los Angeles Times artblog articulated the history, maintenance and conservation shortfalls of the City-owned Watts Towers in a recent post. The complaint is that the City doesn’t spend enough to take care of the 55 year-old work.  Truthfully, few cities, counties or states adequately fund public art collection maintenance or staff collection management to implement the multiple assessments, maintenance and conservation projects that are part of a mature civic collection.

When collecting and commissioning art in public spaces as building enhancements, governments rarely consider the specialized maintenance and continuing conservation needs of art in public spaces.  The results are predictable. All stuff, from buildings to computer systems, car fleets and carpets, need maintenance. Public art assets need specialized attention that can be anticipated and should be planned. Read the rest of this entry »

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Merce Cunningham, the renown and prolific dancer, has died. He died in his sleep last night. He was 90.

“The only way to do it is to do it.” - Merce Cunningham

Merce Cunningham website.

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Nick Rabkin, former founder and director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago, researcher, teaching artist expert, and esteemed colleague, has moved from the Center over to the University of Chicago and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). He’s conducting the first-ever, national research project about teaching artists. The number one need? Teaching artists who will fill out the survey.

If you’re a TA, click here to be heard. There are geographic restrictions, but if you don’t try you’ll never been seen.

If you’re an arts org, contribute. Send a message to your TA’s urging them to participate in the survey. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that “without numbers, you’re just another person with an opinion.” This means that if someone asks for money, for say, a national association for teaching artists or for health insurance programs for teaching artists, they’ll need numbers and other data to show that it’s truly needed. Nick’s work could bring huge visibility and benefit to the entire field of teaching artistry. Read the rest of this entry »

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First lady Michelle Obama hosted the National Design Awards last Friday, July 24, in the East Room of the White House. At the event she called for more arts exposure for children to further supplement early education.

“An educational foundation is only part of the equation,” Michelle Obama said.  “In order for creativity to flourish and imagination to take hold, we also need to expose our children to the arts from a very young age.”

Are there other ways the first lady and President can put the arts on the national agenda? What are your suggestions?

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On Friday, July 24, 2009, the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee passed their funding bill, setting the initial appropriation level for both the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and Arts in Education programs (AIE) at the U.S. Department of Education for fiscal year 2010.  The Senate Appropriations Committee is preparing to take up this funding legislation within the next week, and Americans for the Arts needs your help to urge your Senators to match, or exceed, the funding levels for these programs set in the House.

Play your part. Visit our Arts Action Center and take two minutes to send an email to Congress.

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In the next few months we’ll be working to improve the functionality and design of our blog. We want to make it easier for you to scan page, find information you need, and comment on blog posts. Another aim is to help you quickly find blog posts in specific categories such as arts education, public art, marketing, community building, and other topics.

If you have any ideas of blog functions you think we should investigate, or for that matter any other suggestions or comments, please email them to us or comment below. We’re hoping ArtsBlog can be a place to discuss important topics with colleagues and friends; be inspired about the arts; and discover new ideas and best practices.

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At the recent Americans for the Arts annual convention, Animating Democracy debuted a newly published essay by Ron Chew, former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle.  In “Community-based Arts Organizations: A New Center of Gravity,” Ron underscores the crucial contributions of small and mid-sized community-based arts organizations, often culturally specific, to the cultural ecosystem, to civic engagement, and toward achieving healthy communities and a healthy democracy.  He points out that these groups offer artistic excellence and innovation, astute leadership connected to community needs, and important institutional and engagement models for the arts field amid changing demographics, a new political climate, technological advances, and globalization.

We distributed the essay at several convention sessions, including two of the pre-conferences.  After only one day, we were amazed at how many people had already read it cover to cover (notable given jet lag, the convention’s juicy program, and Seattle’s enticing distractions) and gratified by the enthusiastic comments about the importance of what it has to say. Read the rest of this entry »

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A question I hear constantly from emerging leaders is “Should I go to Graduate School or Not?”  This has been a topic of conversation on the Emerging Leader Listserv, and the same question was asked during the Career360 roundtable sessions at the Americans for the Arts 2009 Convention in Seattle.  Even after all these conversations, the only answer I can provide to this question is that the choice to go to graduate school is a very individual decision.  There is no “magic formula” for a successful career.  If you choose to go back to school, you’ll likely learn some very valuable lessons, build up a network of peers, and perhaps have other doors open to you that may not be there otherwise.  However, if you decide graduate school is not the right path for you at this time, you will still be learning on the job, building up a different network of peers, and be in the job market instead of out of it. 

There are an endless amount of professional development opportunities out there, with arts management graduate degree programs being one of them.  I did choose to go back to graduate school after working for a few years.  At American University’s Arts Management program, I learned the basics of fundraising, financial management, presenting and programming, and running an arts organization.  All of these skills are necessary for an arts manager to have. 

However, now that I’ve been out of school for a bit, I’ve begun to question what the next generation of leadership would look like if in addition to being taught fundraising and financial management, we were also taught how to advocate and build relationships with city/state government.  What would our future look like if young leaders learned how to reach beyond the walls of their organizations, into their community, and understood the connection between the arts and community development?  What if we are taught today how to be true leaders in our community tomorrow?  By learning and practicing advocacy and community development skills, emerging leaders will not only be successful managers of arts organizations, we’ll have the resources necessary to communicate our organizations’ value to those who need to hear it. 

Did you graduate from an arts management degree program?  If so, what else would you have liked to see offered?  For professionals working in the field, what professional development do you need now to be successful at your job?

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The White House music series, an effort to support the arts and demonstrate the importance of arts education in America, continues this week when the president and first lady host country music artists Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss and her band Union Station. Joining them will be 120 young music students, forty of which will travel from the Nashville area, who will get the opportunity to attend a workshop and an evening concert with the country artists. This is the second installment of the White House music series, which last month featured jazz music with the Marsalis family, and will feature classical music in the fall. For more information on this week’s event, click here.

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Even without being a knitter I quickly understood the attraction of the quiet, creative, collegial atmosphere that quickly emerged in the Knitting, Networking & Conversation evening session at the 2009 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Seattle. It was the closest to calm I have been during an Americans for the Arts Convention in 20 years. This “informal arts” session readily demonstrated the power of the arts to engage, restore, and build community.

Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, Executive Director of the Queens Arts Council in NYC knitted the group together (so to speak) by engaging everyone and inviting introductions. Each participant brought a project and each project had a story.  There was a bit of every kind of needlework – crocheters, quilters, embroiderers were all there.  The circle expanded easily, tips and tools were traded, amateurs and professionals connected and degrees of separation melted away. Mandy Greer, a distinguished fiber artist from Seattle joined us, coached us and shared examples of her exciting and creative work. We eagerly await the announcement of her “river” exhibition.

The torch is already passed for Baltimore — so plan to join us — or start your own “informal arts” session (we used to have a chorus at convention) – Who knows, next year I may even knit!

Hoong Yee has also created a short video of the Knitting, Networking & Conversation session in Seattle. Check it out.

Posted on behalf of Barbara Schaffer Bacon

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