ARTSblog

Lex Leifheit

“And I need you to be better than me

And you need me to do better than you.”

—Thao With The Get Down Stay Down, “Know Better, Learn Faster”

Over a week has passed since the 50^th Anniversary Summit, and what a whirlwind week it was. Back at SOMArts Cultural Center we closed out an amazing turnaround year. We more than doubled our gallery attendance, revived our intern and volunteer programming, launched a website, renovated our lobby and office spaces, invested in long-overdue equipment upgrades, fought to protect our city funding, and lived to tell about it.  And yet, in many ways we are just catching up. There’s so much to do and it feels like the more we succeed, the more people we connect to who have urgent needs and high expectations.  Such is the life of a thriving nonprofit.

At convention, I connected with peers who had similar stories. We’re all exhausted. So we sat in the audience and listened to panels talk about new models, veering between skepticism and hope.

I came to convention still stubbornly hanging on to the idea that a “new model” was a structure I could study and apply to my organization—that magical combination of for-profit innovation, technology application and nonprofit altruism.

I left convention having reached the conclusion that we need to stop treating “new model” like a noun, in panels or anywhere else, when what we’re talking about is changing the system. We’re asking how we can achieve dramatic organizational change necessitated by the factors mentioned above, but succeeding via thoughtful communication and a process of enrolling (vs. influencing) stakeholders in one’s vision. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jennie Smith-Peers

I’m thrilled to be serving as an Ambassador for National Center for Creative Aging Green Paper on Aging Creatively in the 21st Century. It is my intention to use this paper as a catalyst for discussion around ideas of what it means to be creative as we grow older and the impact it has on our lives; and so, I welcome your comments, questions, and feedback.

My hope is that this dialogue will foster discussions around the latest ideas on aging and creativity, the challenges we face, and strategies to address and perhaps overcome these obstacles. 

So dig in – read the paper, add to the discussion, and share with me your ideas of what it means to remain creatively engaged while growing older. What does it look like? How can we reinvent – with compassion, dignity, and creativity – the face of aging through the arts?

Also, be sure to subscribe to the blog, through the RSS feed, so you can stay up to date on the most current entries. And finally, resources have been posted in the resources section, so please be sure to visit this list.

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In the history of the community arts movement in America, July 3 stands as a notable day.  On this day, we celebrate the birthday of one giant, Robert Gard, born in 1910 and the passing of another, Ralph Burgard, in 2008. Gard and Burgard each created processes and pathways to creative engagement for individuals and communities.  Each advanced the idea and value of community arts development through direct community work and the creation of infrastructure to promote community arts development and grow a movement. Each worked tirelessly to advance the right to creative expression for residents in every Americans city, town, and hamlet in America.  This makes the juxtaposition to the 4th of July, a day when we celebrate our freedoms, just – sweet! Read the rest of this entry »

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