ARTSblog

In 2012, Americans for the Arts resolves to invigorate political discourse and the nation by continuing to spotlight the importance of the arts in America. Artists, teachers, arts managers and professionals, lawmakers, administrators, and advocates are integral to this mission.

This election year, the urgency is growing to have political candidates and office holders understand how arts are vital to our communities. We ask that you make your own resolutions this year by responding to this question:

How can the arts energize the political dialogue in your community this election year?

Here are some insightful responses to get you thinking. Add yours in the comments below! Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Mikulski

It’s become a tradition that ARTSblog offers up a question as part of our annual New Year’s card (our 2012 question will be posted in two weeks), so I didn’t want to take away from that when I started writing a “Happy Holidays” post this morning.

As I began writing a simple message thanking our members, friends, arts leaders (both emerging and emerged), artists, arts administrators, arts educators, social media readers, bloggers, advocates, funders (current, past, and future), partner organizations, business leaders, and (insert anyone I accidentally missed here), I searched the Internet for a quote that would be appropriate for the holidays or New Year that also included the arts.

I found a few that I liked, but then it dawned on me. I need only look back to our 2009 Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy given by Wynton Marsalis. His performance/speech was titled “The Ballad of the American Arts.”

As he covered our country’s history, the end of Marsalis’ speech talked about the future and I think this passage sums up the end of year/holiday feeling that many of us have this time of year: Read the rest of this entry »

Stephanie Riven

Perhaps you have been following David Brooks’ series of op-eds in The New York Times. He asked people over 70 to send him “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well.

No need to wait until we turn 70 to reflect on these “life lessons” and devise our own, especially as we approach the time for New Year’s resolutions.

Formulating lessons are important for all of us who work in the arts, whether as a performer, an administrator, an advocate, or an educator. These lessons are especially important because of the nature of our field — low wages, long hours, competition for jobs, among other obvious challenges.

What can we learn from Brooks and those who submitted “Life Reports?”

Divide your life into chapters: Brooks talks about “the happiest of his correspondents being those that divided time into (somewhat artificial) phases.” He describes these people as those who could see time as “something divisible into chunks” and they could more easily stop and self-appraise. This approach, he says, “gave them more control over their lives.” Read the rest of this entry »

David Armano of the Harvard Business Review recently published six 2012 predictions for social media.

Although he made some inaccurate predictions about 2011, here is what he is suggesting for 2012 (with links added by me):

“Convergence Emergence. For a glimpse into how social will further integrate with “real life,” we can look at what Coca Cola experimented with all the way back in 2010. Coke created an amusement park where participants could “swipe” their RFID-equipped wristbands at kiosks, which posted to their Facebook account what they were doing and where. Also, as part of a marketing campaign, Domino’s Pizza posted feedback — unfiltered feedback — on a large billboard in Times Square, bringing together real opinions from real people pulled from a digital source and displayed in the real world. These types of “trans-media” experiences are likely to define “social” in the year to come.

The Cult of Influence. In much the same way that Google has defined a system that rewards those who produce findable content, there is a race on to develop a system that will reward those who wield the most social influence. One particular player has emerged, Klout, determined to establish their platform as the authority of digital influence. Klout’s attempt to convert digital influence into business value underscores a much bigger movement which we’ll continue to see play out in the next year.  Read the rest of this entry »

Throughout the country, many performing groups have taken to public forums to display Random Acts of Culture™ (supported generously by the Knight Foundation) covering all art forms including music, dance, and theater.

Just a few weeks ago, the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte captured this dance performance from their local airport:

But there are so many other examples to choose highlight including a string quartet at an outlet mall in Georgia:

Read the rest of this entry »

Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical by Marcia Muelder Eaton

“Great art rewards sustained attention.” This simple theory comes from philosopher Marcia Muelder Eaton, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

In my personal experience, it is true. Eaton has been considering art and writing about aesthetics for a few decades. Her early publications get to the heart of this definition but a later book, Merit, Aesthetic and Ethical (Oxford Press 2001) offers an inclusive concept of art, aesthetics, and value that is very relevant to the themes of Fusing Arts Culture and Social Change.

In that book, Eaton suggests that “formalists in the world of aesthetics ignore the roles that artworks play in the life of community and conversely, ignore the ways in which communities determine the very nature of what counts as artistic or aesthetic experiences that exist within them.” I recommend her writings in general and this book specifically.

I share Eaton’s work here because my enthusiasm for the conversation raised by Fusing Arts Culture and Social Change is not to call out the major institutions and question whether they deserve support, but rather to encourage sustained attention for small, mid-size, and community-based arts groups that are rooted in communities, neighborhoods, ethnic, and tribal traditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Barbara Schaffer Bacon

Grantmakers in the Arts asks, “What can private foundations learn from public funders who are working with marginalized communities?”

I think public support programs, some old, and some more current have a few lessons to offer. Though neither was without problems or controversy, both Roosevelt’s Federal Arts Projects in the 1930s and The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) in the 1970s suggest that light structure can produce great results.

They provide evidence that talented artists will answer the call and can produce great works that are relevant to and reflective of the communities for which they are created. While the Federal Art Project was more prescriptive, artists had a very public platform and some latitude to create their work. The public works created and the artist’s interaction with the public is credited with stimulating national interest in American art and laying the groundwork for the National Endowment for the Arts to be established.

As a jobs (not an arts) program, CETA had a looser structure. Artists and creative administrators were deployed, often creating their own job descriptions as they went to work in neighborhoods and community centers around the country; but they found their way and many of the programs created had staying power. Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Spring

Michael Spring has been pretty busy these days; even more so than usual. Not only does he oversee a half billion dollar capital project budget with the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, but Spring recently came off of a five-month stint as an assistant county manager while Miami-Dade searched for its new mayor.

“I accepted the challenge,” Spring says, “on three conditions: that I would not get the office, that I wouldn’t get the parking space and that I wouldn’t get the title; I really wanted it to be an interim responsibility.” Since 1990, Michael Spring has served as Director of his department, and 21 years later, he still just wants to be nothing but a “director of a great local arts agency”.

With the appointment of Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez in July 2011, Spring sees great promise for his community: “Our new mayor is a ‘progressive arts supporter’” and in realigning much of the county government, he “took all of the cultural facilities that were being managed by the parks department and transferred them to my department”.

When asked about this ‘added responsibility’, Spring says, “Organizationally speaking it’s the right thing to do. Practically speaking these facilities have been starved for years in the Parks Department. They come with enormous challenges. They are underfunded, understaffed, and in desperate need of capital improvements” In align with his Department’s mission, he resolves, “We’ll have to dig in and figure out a way to make them great. But that’s the job, right?” Read the rest of this entry »

Roberto Bedoya

I ended my previous blog post with a reference to the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grants (CEG) program that I want to expand upon in the context of the democratic ideals of inclusion and stewardship.

CEG is a national model of excellence that shows the cultural sector, how through grantmaking one can address the systemic roots of inequity in society. CEG’s 19 years of service illustrates how the stewardship ethos of taking care is made real through programming strategies that serves our culturally diverse society.

This cheerleader moment for CEG is tied to the backlash being felt against the equity conversation that is heating up in our sector and the nation. CEG is a reminder of what’s possible — that citizens can manifested their passion for equity in a cultural policy designed to serve all.

Let’s call this backlash an example of “Culture Wars 2.0.” The first Culture War of the 90s was an attack on art and artistic free speech. Cultural War 2.0 attacks are against our civil and cultural rights — the right to be taught the works of Latino playwrights in high schools; a women’s right to control her body; the right of gays and lesbians to marry their loved one; the right to be free from racial profiling that is happening within intensity to America’s Muslim and Latino communities; the right of collective bargaining…Attacks by whom? — The 1%, the “me and my friends” of a privatized a “we” of self-interests, the intolerants? Read the rest of this entry »

The Storyline Project is a great example of effective and inexpensive collaboration with valuable community outcomes.

Launched in summer 2009, the project had roots in an impromptu collaborative effort from the previous year. Charlottesville Parks & Recreation came to Piedmont Council for the Arts (PCA) for help painting a school bus to transport youth to recreation centers around town. Aware of our limited capacity, we reached out to another nonprofit, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, for help.

Though similarly small, The Bridge had experience working with local artists on public art projects. With their expertise, PCA’s commitment to managing the project, and our shared enthusiasm for the possibilities, a new partnership was born.

Together, we coordinated a team of local artists and Parks & Rec summer camp students for the exciting challenge of painting what became known as the Fun Bus. Read the rest of this entry »

Libby Maynard

Continuing the focus on community engagement and participation in arts and culture, I’d like to share with you how we at The Ink People in Humboldt County, CA, have been practicing these principles for the last 25 years.

Our DreamMaker Program invites community members who have a vision for an arts and culture project or see a need in their community that can be addressed through such a project, to partner with us.

Sometimes I think of us as the center of a broad web, supporting and nurturing community-initiated visions. We are not a fiscal receiver. The board of directors decides whether or not to adopt each project as a full-fledged part of The Ink People, with full nonprofit benefits and stakes our reputation on each one.

In addition to this, we give administrative support and intensive mentoring to each project, as well as offering a series of Mini Nonprofit “MBA” classes. The classes are designed only to give project leaders an idea of what they don’t know, so they can ask the right questions to have the best chance at success.

Generally, a project follows one of four paths. It may be short term, with limited and well defined goals and outcomes, such as the publication of a book about Japanese Senryu poetry by the artist’s grandmother, with illustrations by the artist, and a series of workshops on writing Senryu poetry. Read the rest of this entry »

Libby Maynard

There is a movement afoot for which I’ve been waiting for a long time.

Here in California in the last several years, the James Irvine Foundation conducted several studies and issued reports about arts ecology in California and engagement in the arts by diverse audiences, including folk and traditional arts.

The data was so powerful that Irvine is refocusing its grantmaking efforts “to promote engagement in the arts for all Californians, the kind that embraces and advances the diverse ways that we experience the arts, and that strengthens our ability to thrive together in a dynamic and complex social environment.”

The most exciting report is Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active Participation, by WolfBrown.

They are specifically talking about active engagement, not passive, such as attending a concert. By no means is the Irvine Foundation abandoning the concept of excellence in the arts, but recognizing that there is a broad range of accomplishment that is equally relevant, perhaps more so to community vitality. Read the rest of this entry »

Jan Brennan

The Denver Office of Cultural Affairs is no more. But don’t panic. In this case, it represents a positive development that helps ensure cultural programming and staffing remains strong in Denver.

This summer, the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs and the City Division of Theatres and Arenas combined forces to form a new, merged agency called Arts & Venues Denver.

The merger brings cultural programs and venues into an umbrella agency that brings together all of the City of Denver arts and entertainment assets. Arts & Venues Denver has adopted a new mission: To enhance Denver’s quality of life and economic vitality through premier public venues, artwork, and entertainment opportunities.

The former Office of Cultural Affairs has moved over as a department of the new agency, joining Facilities and Event Services Departments, and served jointly by Communications & Marketing and Finance sections.

We retained all of our staff, programs and budget in the transition, continuing to oversee public art, community events, arts education and creative sector initiatives. Read the rest of this entry »

Sara VanLanduyt

As I mentioned in a previous post, The Arts Council of Johnson County (ACJC) held a series of forums in 2010 for arts educators, organizations, and artists to gain a better understanding of how to support their work in the community. These ended up being the impetus for ACJC’s new website and solidified our role as a connector; a hub for the arts in our community.

The forums also introduced us to Nicole Emanuel, an artist and community developer, and inspired a partnership between Nicole, ACJC, and the Arts and Recreation Foundation of Overland Park that would become the InterUrban ArtHouse.

The brainchild of Nicole, the ArtHouse project’s initial inspiration came from her need for studio space close to home.

Through her research we confirmed that many artists living in suburban Johnson County felt disconnected from each other and from the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City. Armed with this information Nicole’s vision for the project grew exponentially; the ArtHouse would be a gathering place for artists, a catalyst for small business developmen,t and a critical link to the greater regional arts community. Read the rest of this entry »

Jill McGuire

Choosing what to write about is as hard for me as choosing what I should be working on — which new opportunity(s) should I pursue this week, which projects can I put on the back burner and even what phone calls do I have to return.

I don’t think I have ever been busier or more energized about the new exciting opportunities, the level of community engagement possibilities, the new partnership offers, and the vast array of community processes that the arts are now being asked to be involved with.

And, everyone I talk to feels the same way which, for me, confirms what we always knew and what we have been working for — the arts are HOT…the arts are in demand…the arts offer real and creative solutions….the arts produce results! (And, they can even be entertaining and fun.)

So, now what?

We are still working with diminished resources but we want to do it all — I do! And yet I know that it’s probably not possible to do it all and do it well! Read the rest of this entry »