ARTSblog

Katherine Mooring

It’s an understatement to say that I learned a great deal from some very engaged individuals representing both the arts and the corporate worlds while writing the recently released BCA Monograph. But one comment in particular, from Bob Speltz, The Standard’s Director of Public Affairs, has really kept my mind turning. “We are facing intergenerational changes in business leadership,” he said. “The elder statesman CEO is gone, and the men and women leading companies today are seeing fundamental change. Doing it “the old way” is not an option, and it will require a very different set of skills for arts administrators to appeal to new leadership and the people who work around them.” Bob was a fantastic interview, but I found this to be an especially insightful observation. For me, it was particularly refreshing to hear given the NEW ways we’ve begun experimenting with professional and leadership development initiatives for Charlotte-area arts leaders, many of whom have direct responsibility for securing private sector support.

Certainly Arts &Science Council is not alone as an arts council in providing critical capacity building and technical assistance programs for the artists and organizations we support, and like many others, we started down this new-ish path (for us) with a more traditional approach. Over the past 5 years or so, we’ve offered a series of high quality full and half-day workshops featuring hot topics of the day delivered by experts in the field, and we’ve had success with that approach – great attendance, positive feedback, and appreciative constituents. In the past year though – largely in response to significant psychological changes faced by those of us still working in a sector that’s taken quite a beating – we’ve shifted the focus somewhat. We’re still offering workshops, but intuitively it began to feel like those of us working in the cultural sector were really craving opportunities for deeper, more personal professional and leadership development. So, we’ve gone in a few new directions…! Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7%

Jim Rivett

The business community has commonly perceived the arts as ancillary to its day-to-day operations and important only to the enrichment of its community’s cultural vitality. Now thanks to positive research and a new understanding of creativity’s potential—including efforts to meld creativity and the arts within and across multiple disciplines such as science and mathematics—business is just beginning to “get it.” Companies and corporations are s-l-o-w-l-y changing their perceptions and discovering the untapped success potential the arts can deliver.

The business community is beginning to understand the value the arts and creativity bring to the workplace. It’s realizing the arts can positively shape corporate culture and enhance the lives of workers both in and out of the workplace. But more importantly, business is gradually getting the message that by supporting and embracing the arts, the true impact of art’s potential to foster creative inquiry, entrepreneurial thinking, pure imagination and inspiration can serve as fuel for authentic corporate competitiveness.

Translated: The arts have bona-fide, bottom-line benefits.

That’s the message businesses throughout Wisconsin have been receiving through our firm’s volunteer work on behalf of the Wisconsin Arts Board. By creating brochures, presentations, and videos, and through our task force involvement, our business has been working to change the perceptions that Wisconsin businesses have about the arts. We want our state’s business community to understand that by juxtaposing and infusing the arts and creativity within the realms of technology, science, engineering, and beyond, unlimited possibilities spring forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7%

Michelle Dean

What are all those letters after your name? is a frequent question I am asked, to which I often jest I have more letters after my name than in it. In a long-overdue, two-part installment of the blog, I will not only explain what all those letters mean, but also convey some significant changes that the granter of the credentials, The Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB), is making. Deborah A. Good, ATCB President and Rita Maloy, Exective Director, were very generous to grant an interview to discuss the vision for the future of art therapy from the ATCB’s perspective. The ATCB is an organization that credentials art therapists.  Credentialed art therapists must prove competency and are accountable to ATCB in terms of maintaining ethical standards of practice. The organization has recently unveiled an update of opportunities for becoming a registered art therapist (ATR), as along with a new certification for supervisors, the Art Therapy Certified Supervisor (ATCS). Additionally, the ATCB plans to apply for accreditation of the ATR-BC through the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) later this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14%

Megan Van Voorhis

Partnership is the future of arts support in this country. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at a few indicators:

• HUD launched a $100 million Sustainable Communities Planning Grant program earlier this year in an effort to create stronger, more sustainable communities in the U.S. They placed an emphasis on planning processes engaging in non-traditional partnerships (including arts and culture) – a move supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
• The Kresge Foundation, long known for its capital challenge grants, is now considering how the different disciplines (e.g. arts and culture, health and human services, education) approach their work differently, but are really working toward the same end – the creation of “exceptional communities.”
• The BCA Triennial Survey of the Arts suggests that 61% of businesses are motivated to support organizations that “offer programs that tie into social causes such as hunger, violence and homelessness.”

Often I talk with artists and arts organizations who ask me “When are we going to be able to stop talking about the ancillary benefits of arts and culture [economic development, education, neighborhood development] and get back to what we’re really about – art?” This concerns me, because it suggests that our discussion of the arts’ role in these activities is mere messaging alone – a means to help other people understand our work so they will fund us for the stuff that is harder to explain. It suggests the arts community itself doesn’t believe all of those things are core to the arts. They are. To suggest otherwise devalues the arts. It traps us into a paradigm from which we cannot escape, and to a set of diminishing resources. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6%

Bruce Whitacre

We are tracking some interesting information as 2010 comes to a close.  One of the obstacles to arts giving, according to the Triennial Report, has been corporate earnings.  Yet we just concluded a quarter of record corporate earnings.  What does this mean for the cultural sector as a whole?  I’d like to explore a link we in culture don’t often make, although it is immediately apparent: the companies that support us are usually after someone else: our top individual donors!

Many companies draw upon NCTF to entertain high-end clients in New York and around the country.  Demand for these services is climbing, and our conversations for 2011 are to a surprising degree about increasing engagement with theatre.  Bigger budgets mean more to spend on top clients.  Good times!

But are we positioned to make the most of this slow but now apparent recovery?  I’ve been attending a lot of networking sessions that focus on the behavior of the affluent.  After all, the single largest source of support for not for profit theatre is affluent individuals, and as I said, a great deal of our corporate giving is focused on chasing those same individuals.

But who are they, and what are they after?  How have they changed in the last few years?

The most important point about the affluent is that they are older, generally above 55 years in age, and they grew up middle class.   In other words, they’re mostly Boomers.  And at this age, they have nearly all the things they want.  So what’s next? Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 6%

Valerie Beaman

Business priorities for sponsorships and donations have shifted dramatically during the economic downturn, and you don’t need me to tell you that the arts have taken their share of the cuts. It’s important for arts organizations to look towards creating partnerships with businesses, strengthening and starting relationships that are beneficial to the business organization as well as the arts organization; you have to convince businesses why they should partner with the arts at all.

Next week, Americans for the Arts will be releasing the Business Committee for the Arts (BCA) Triennial Survey on Business Support to the Arts, a survey that explores not only the numbers but the motivations behind and goals of business partnerships with the arts. This survey is unique in that it surveys all business sizes, not just corporations.  We are interested to hear how the survey results may reflect what’s  going on in your communities and what new and innovative partnerships are being developed.

Have you ever questioned why some businesses partner with the arts or how an arts organization got a grant from a corporation?  We will be hosting a week-long blog salon from December 6-10 where bloggers including Akhtar Badshah, Microsoft; Courtney King, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy; poet Amena Brown; Megan van Voorhis, Community Partnership for Arts and Culture; Jim Rivett, Arketype; Katherine Mooring, Arts & Science Council; Bruce Whitacre, National Corporate Theatre Fund, and others will discuss innovative arts and business partnerships, changing corporate giving priorities and what the survey means to their organization, business and community.

On December 8 at 3:00pm EST, learn why an international bank, a Cincinnati based advertising agency and the largest utility company in Portland make the arts a priority in their giving on our webinar, Why and How Businesses Support the Arts: Business Committee for the Arts Triennial Survey of Business Support for the Arts. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 7%