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STAGEVISION is a collaboration between the National Corporate Theatre Fund (NCTF), Sharp AQUOS, Time Magazine, and Palace Digital Studios. NCTF has 20 member and affiliate organizations across the country that reaches over 5 million people. Through them, Sharp AQUOS is able to place products not only in an uncluttered marketing environment, but in front of highly educated and discerning entertainment consumers.

This partnership is based upon a shared vision of why this work is so important. Both parties believe that they are heightening the entertainment experience for all involved. They are able to develop and deliver unique programming to a target audience. They are offering a unique brand experience that transcends the moment. The content is both nationally connected and regionally specific. They are using new media to create a new network of national partners and supporters. They are helping innovate theaters in an unobtrusive way that is appreciated by their customers.

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I am at the NAMP pre-conference and have been hearing a lot about the sponsorship-partnership continuum between arts & cultural non-profits and corporations. The afternoon kicked into full gear over lunch with an address by Brenda Andolina, Director, Public Relations and Brand Marketing at Fisher-Price. She emphasized that we approach corporations as partners and not sponsors, noting that when the mission and the values of the two parties overlap well, we establish (and reinforce) mutually beneficial outcomes. When considering these partnerships, Brenda noted key indicators to assess whether a partnership will work for a corporation like Fisher-Price.

Is the venue able to:

• Offer an “uncluttered marketing environment” for the corporation?
• Create a permanent presence over a multi-year period?
• Animate the brand?

Corporations want to come to where the magic happens in the lives of their consumers. In the case of Fisher-Price’s partnerships with zoos around the country, the zoos were were able to increase attendance at their special Fisher-Price partnership weekends by 20% – 30%.

All of this is much more than child’s play.

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As many of our blog readers may know, the Arts & Business Council of Americans for the Arts has been a leader in exploring the world of arts-based learning in business through our Creativity Connection program. This program matches artist-practitioners with corporations interested in their services, provides consulting services to artists, arts organizations and businesses, and works to advance the field through publishing, disseminating information, convening and research. We’ve done sessions on the program at both Americans for the Arts conventions and at the National Arts Marketing Project conference. Arts-based learning in business can be an excellent vehicle for establishing a new, more equitable value-exchange relationship between the arts and business. It can also build new sources of income for artists and arts organizations, and can help develop new audiences, by getting corporate employees excited about how the arts can impact their performance and interaction with colleagues, and whet their appetite for more dynamic cultural experiences. I thought you would be interested in reading an excellent interview by Barry Hessenius with Harvey Seifter, director of the Creativity Connection program, posted recently on “Barry’s Blog.” I hope you will find it both informative and provocative.

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Well, the slow days of summer, as always, prove to be anything but slow. And probably like all of you I am continually snowed under by mountains of articles, magazines, newspapers, books, research studies and other reading material that seem to sit there threatening me with some dire consequence if I don’t get to them.  Herewith, in no particular order of priority, a round-up of what I have been reading and clipping:

Cause-related Marketing Fatigue – As reported in Business Week (July 9/16, 2007) consumers seems to be losing interest in cause marketing campaigns that link products to social causes. Of course, the big “(Product) Red” campaign designed to raise money for African Aids victims got a lot of press for failing to hit its goals, and perhaps serving corporate marketing goals more effectively than fundraising goals. And the support of Avon and others have helped push breast cancer awareness and the pink ribbon into the public consciousness (and has also in some ways suppressed awareness of National Arts and Humanities Month, since both causes share October).  According to the research firm Cone, in May 36% of consumers said they had bought a product during the prior 12 months after learning of the manufacturer’s commitment to a cause they believed in. This is down from 43% in 2004. Only 14% said they intentionally paid more for a product that supports a cause, down from 28%. And only 30% said they told a friend or family member about a product or company committed to a social issue, down from 43% three years ago.  This may make it harder for arts groups to build these relationships in the future. On the other hand, the numbers are probably still high enough to make it worth a company’s while to engage in cause marketing relationships.

Breakthrough Creativity – The same issue of Business Week reviews a new book, “Smart World: Breakthrough Creativity and the New Science of Ideas.”  The book attempts to provide new insights into how creative breakthroughs happen, and covers great leaps of genius and creativity in science, business and the arts. Without commenting on the merits of the book, which I have not yet read, it is another example of the growing recognition that creativity and innovation in science, business and the arts are linked, and that this holds great promise for efforts to persuade business and educators that the arts matter if we are to generate the next Francis Crick and James Watson (who discovered the structure of DNA) or Picasso. Todd Siler, an artist with a PhD from MIT who is now working with our Creativity Connection program, does creative training and brainstorming sessions for business using the visual arts, and addresses how creativity intersects science and art in his book Think Like a Genius , which was published back in 1999, so this is not entirely a new idea. However, “creativity” now appears to be hot, and that should be good for the arts.

Tapping Retiring Boomer Volunteers – Again from that same issue of Business Week, is an article (“Pro Bono Perfection“) about the gratification that early retiring boomers are finding through volunteer work. People that don’t volunteer indicate it is only because they have not found the right opportunity or don’t know where to begin.  The article comments how many younger retired Boomers jump into too many superficial volunteer opportunities at once to stay busy, but find themselves unsatisfied. It also cites the mis-perception by many groups using these volunteers that they “just need to keep the old folks busy” and don’t really take advantage of their often high-level skills. Many of this new breed of volunteers eventually find themselves working in highly professional virtually staff-like capacities. The article is major ammunition for a program like Business Volunteers for the Arts, which matches business-people with arts groups as pro bono management consultants.  While it focuses on working professionals, there is no reason why it can’t also target recent retirees, who have so much time, expertise, and energy.

Is Second Life Still Alive?  – Articles about Second Life continue to populate the business, technology and arts press, describing a bustling, growing “virtual world” with its own economy, businesses, art (and naughtiness).  At the same time, a recent Wired magazine article described a Second Life that appears to be vastly underpopulated, with most “users” creating an avatar, looking around and then leaving, never to return.  In The Art Newspaperon July 4th, however, an article was posted that described how Second Life is becoming a viable place for artists to interact and actually sell their work. The Andy Warhol Foundation has funded exhibits in Second Life, and the MacArthur Foundation has just announced a new grant program designed to explore the world of this new digital society.  The Art Newspaper has assembled video tours of exhibitions and performances on Second Life here. It reports that there are now hundreds of galleries in Second Life selling work, both real and virtual. Dealers collect a 30% commission, just like in the real world, and one gallery reports that about 200 avatars a day visit the gallery.  Another artist reports making abut $10,000 in recent months from Second Life generated sales. So maybe Second Life is not so dead after all, and we should all be exploring how to have a presence in this community? I am sure this is not the end of the story.

The Art of Diagnosis – The Carnegie Museum of Art, Andy Warhol Museum and the University of Pittsburgh Medical School recently launched Art and Medicine, a new four-week course for medical students designed to hone visual thinking and observation skills through the study of art in the museum’s galleries. A similar program has existed for some time at the Metropolitan Museum working with one or more of the major NYC medical schools. These sorts of innovative programs help highlight the critical role the arts can play in the lives of non-artists, in ways that can make them better at their jobs. While this is not the same “instrumental vs intrinsic” value argument, it points out how artificial that supposed dichotomy is. A strong arts education may or may not (as recent research suggests) help a student get higher math scores that will get them into medical school, but it WILL help that young person develop visual acuity and observation skills that will make them a better doctor. I think this one example highlights how the applied skills developed through the arts have an even impact that we are only just beginning to quantify and communicate.

Okay, my stack is still a few feet tall, but this is already way too long for a Blog entry, so I will spare you further reports. More to come in the coming weeks. Of course, by the time I get around to this again, the pile will have mysteriously replenished itself!

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In Thursday’s Washington Post, a column by John Kelly tells the story of a DC artist, Harold MacDonald, who rose to great prominence in the 1890s, but ultimately was institutionalized because of ‘mental illness’ and died there in 1923. Rudolphe de Zapp, the arts patron and journalist who tried to help him, said at the time, “The popularity of artists is a fragile thing. Anyone who sells beauty will tell you that the market rises and falls over night, and there is no forecasting the change in stocks.” How very true then and now.

An article this Thursday in Bloomberg News features our Americans for the Arts Policy Roundtable with Robert Redford at Sundance last fall, and talks about the increasing challenges facing private support for the arts. Noted in the article is the increasing trend among private funders to target dollars for solving social problems and away from the arts which they erroneously perceive as merely entertainment or about ‘beauty’ as de Zapp noted. There is nothing wrong with beauty, but ironically we all know that the arts deliver that and a whole lot more. Multiple stories in Thursday’s papers agree. 

Our Cultural Policy Listserv cites Forbes.com telling the story of how Tacoma, WA is enlisting music the power of symphonies to help combat street gangs and violence. There are literally hundreds of stories in the last month about the economic and jobs impact of the arts. Also on the Listserv, the Orlando Sentinel tells the story of the Davenport School in Polk County, FL, once rated as an extremely low performing D grade school. It enlisted a rigorous arts curriculum in 1999 and vaulted to a high performing A status by 2003 and stays there. We all know hundreds of such stories, yet seeing them in print today was ironic as the Center on Education Policy reported that 62 percent of school districts nationwide increased the amount of time in elementary schools spent on English language and math causing 44 percent to cut science, social studies, the arts and music, and even lunch. Somehow, the lessons of the multiple values of the arts continue to be lost in a quest for practical skills in a world where creativity in developing and using those practical skills will be the competitive edge.

This is not lost on China as I said in an earlier post, nor in the United Arab Emirates where, as pointed out in a Washington Post story Thursday by Hassan Fattah, the arts are being employed to change images and create new avenues of communication. “In nearby Abu Dhabi, which produces Poet of the Millions, (similar to American reality arts star programs) as part of an initiative to preserve historic heritage, the oil-rich emirate has begun a $10 billion plan to build and operate branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums on a sprawling arts and culture development meant to preserve Persian Gulf culture even as it embraces the arts and culture of the West.” $10 billion dollars!

On the good-news front, our ArtsVote 2008 project is noting that some presidential candidates are paying attention to the arts. USA Today quotes Governor Bill Richardson as calling for a massive federal program for the arts. Richardson made similar remarks last week in the debate among Democrat candidates. Governor Mike Huckabee, Republican candidate, misses no chance to talk about the value of arts and arts education and even talked about the importance of music and the arts as his closing statement announcing his candidacy on Meet the Press. Other candidates are welcome to chime in.

-Bob Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts

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The Chronicle of Higher Education carried a story about a Carnegie Mellon professor complaining that a film, Smart People with Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker, was being filmed on the Carnegie Mellon campus. He questions whether colleges and nonprofits are getting too commercial. Too late and wrong question. Too late because films have used college campuses and cultural and nonprofit facilities since the beginning of filmmaking. Then the question should be: are they getting commercial enough to stay in the competition? Our Americans for the Arts research shows that some 50 percent of the budgets of most arts organizations comes from earned revenue sources. This means sales and revenue come from something-tickets, coffee shops, bookstores, space rental, or perhaps even film shooting fees. All this is very commercial and necessary in today’s market. In a world where daily life is a blur of sectors and competing influences, this consideration is probably a fairly valuable one if taken as part of an overall learning opportunity. And all this commerce going on in the nonprofit sector today creates the need for commerce skills like branding and marketing. This is why our National Arts Marketing Project Conference and training programs are in such high demand. The for-profit and the nonprofit increasingly blur in creative ways. Ball State University in Indiana plans to name their $21 million communication and media building after television icon (commercial side icon) David Letterman who has been a $20k annual contributor to his alma mater since 1985, according to the Indianapolis Star and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

The New York Times also quotes business superstar (and friend of the arts and Americans for the Arts) Sidney Harman of Harman International as saying “get me poets as managers”—a succinct understanding of the value of the arts in 21st century workforce readiness and the value that an arts education can bring to someone whether they are entering the nonprofit or for-profit career worlds. In Business Week, the presence of the arts in airports is celebrated as being both good for airports and the cities they serve, as well as good for the arts. “You’ve got a captive audience,” says Greg Mamary of the American Association of Airport Executives.

And of course in our country, it all comes together in politics, as the Southbend Tribune reports that country music performer Sammy Kershaw announced to run for Lt. Governor of Louisiana. Why not Sammy Kershaw as a candidate, or Clint Eastwood as a mayor, or Arnold Schwartzenneger as governor, or Ronald Reagan as president, or Alec Baldwin, Issac Stern, E.G.Marshall, Uma Thurman and all the other non profit or for-profit artists I have had the pleasure to work with in advocating for the arts and arts education for all Americans. I am for more arts experiences, more arts involvement, more arts presence whether from the nonprofit, the for-profit, or the unincorporated sectors of America. The mix makes working, playing, and just living all the richer.

– Bob Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts

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Find me a sofa without a picture hanging above it. It might not be original, fine art bought in a white-walled gallery. Most of us choose to hang a framed print of people kissing in Paris, or a reproduction of an Impressionist master picked up as a museum souvenir, or a poster of beer bottles from around the world held in place by thumb tacks. Whatever the medium, whatever the image, we all put something on that blank stretch of wall that runs between the furniture and the ceiling.  What unites all of the different things we put there is that we choose them; we want to hang them there. “I think this one should go above the couch, we say. 

Ask a person why they chose to hang a particular thing in their living room, and they’ll give you an answer that doesn’t take a masters degree in art history.  They like the way it makes them feel. It complements the colors in the room. It’s interesting to look at. It matches the mood of the room. It’s happy.

In other words, without consciousness or recognition, we acknowledge that art has a role in our everyday lives.

Now here’s the question: how can we take this collective assumption, that art belongs in our homes, and use it to redefine how we make the case for the arts? I am by no means suggesting that arts professionals should walk into funders’ offices, and demand operating support because there’s a picture on the wall. What I am suggesting is that we as a culture broadly accept art plays an integral part in our lives. So why do we find it so difficult to translate that into case-making?

A recent Monograph,* based on a research study that was an outcome of the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable, asks corporations with a steady history of funding the arts why they think corporate support for the arts is declining. For many of the respondents, it came back to the perception that the arts are not relevant to a company’s business, their goals, their employees, or the communities in which they operate.

But we know that’s not true. The arts are just as relevant to communities, and therefore businesses in those communities, as paintings are to living room walls. Without them, we have a blank spot.

*The April 2007 Monograph, “The Quality and Nature of Corporate Support for the Arts’ A Pilot Study,” is one in a series of in-depth issue papers published by Americans for the Arts throughout the year. Monograph is a benefit of Americans for the Arts professional membership at the Standard level and above, and is also available for purchase in our Online Store.

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The second edition of ArtCast, the monthly podcast of Americans for the Arts featuring President and CEO Robert L. Lynch, focuses on a recent trip that Bob took to China.  Bob traveled to China to speak about arts marketing at a conference held in Shanghai.  In this episode, Bob discusses the tremendous changes that China is going through and future plans for international collaborations.  While in China, Bob had the opportunity to interview several arts administrators and excerpts from the following interviews are included:

• Sun-man Tseng, Chair and Professor, Department of Arts Administration, Shanghai Conservatory of Music
• Pan Yong, Assistant Director, National Grand Theatre, Beijing
• Juliet Yang, student in the Arts Administration Department at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music

To listen to the podcast, please click on the play button below.

National Grand Theatre of Beijing

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Uploaded to this blog post, you will find an audio podcast from the MetLife Foundation National Arts Forum Series Culminating Event: The Role of Arts Education in Lifelong Productivity featuring arts education innovator Sir Ken Robinson from the 2007 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention.

This session featured an interview with Sir Ken Robinson, followed by a panel of respondents on the relationship between arts education and workforce development.  Exploring this theme allowed for a comprehensive discussion of the central role the arts can play in helping to create a workforce capable of achieving corporate and citizenship objectives.

Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources. Now based in Los Angeles, he has worked with national governments in Europe and Asia, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, not-for-profit corporations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. They include the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, the Royal Ballet, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, the European Commission, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, the J  Paul Getty Trust and the Education Commission of the States. For ten years he was Professor of Education at the University of Warwick in England and is now Professor Emeritus.

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Uploaded to this blog post, you will find Lyn Heward’s keynote speech from the 2007 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention. As they become available, Americans for the Arts will post the audio files from all six Innovators, the Annual Awards, and the AEPIII Plenary Session on the Audio and Video section of the website.  They will also be featured on the blog, and will be sent out via our RSS feed.

Cirque du Soleil is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and creative companies in the world today. As the President of Creative Content for Cirque du Soleil, Lyn was responsible for managing, guiding, and channeling the incredible creative force of the company’s designers, performers, artisans, and technicians into a product that was both breathtakingly original as well as commercially successful.  In this talk Lyn goes behind the scenes of this global enterprise to explore the nature of creativity and innovation. She provides practical suggestions as well as the inspiration to find and develop the creative spark that lives within us all. Making brilliant use of images and video from Cirque du Soleil’s groundbreaking shows, Heward concentrates on key issues-risk-taking, leadership, and teamwork-relevant to arts leaders and their partners in education, business, community, and government.

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I recently had the pleasure, with an Americans for the Arts colleague, of participating in a “stakeholders convening” for The Conference Board on the issue of workforce readiness. Their recent study, “Are They Really Ready to Work,” found that businesses rate their incoming workforce (college educated, 2-year college educated, and high school educated) as poorly prepared with the skills needed in the workplace today. In contrast to the national obsession of the past few years on “basic skills” (see No Child Left Behind) – particularly math and science – the corporate folks surveyed (mostly HR execs) rated “applied skills” as particularly critical, and relatively poor in their incoming new workers. These include creativity and innovation, communications skills and teamwork.  Sound familiar?  We arts and arts education advocates often press our case based on the role the arts can play in building these skills, and in fact many of the HR leaders interviewed for this research cited the arts in talking abut the importance of creativity. But one thing made clear by this stakeholders meeting (the actual content of which I  can’t report on because confidentiality was promised in order to foster an open dialogue) was that we don’t seem to have enough data to support this linkage.

Do we really know that the arts foster creativity, innovation and imagination, in ways that make people more creative, innovative employees? (Not just in creative industries, but creative scientists, or financiers or factory supervisors.) It may seem obvious to us – one of those “duh!” questions - but can we prove it?  What about the other applied skills – teamwork, collaboration, cultural sensitivity, communications, etc. Again, seems obvious that the arts build these skills, but what research do we have that backs it up, particularly in a workforce context?

Americans for the Arts is now looking at how we might partner with the Conference Board and others to do some research that might build a clearer definition of creativity and innovation in a business context, and more clearly show how the arts can foster the so-called applied skills. The relationship between the arts and workforce development was also one of the themes of our MetLife Foundation National Arts Forum Series this year. And our Creativity Connection program fosters the use of arts-based learning with the current workforce – but this is different than making a case that arts education better prepares workers for 21st Century business challenges.

I would love to know if any of our ArtsBlog readers know of any good existing research in this area; if so, please share it with us. This could even include case studies – for example, a business that finds that new hires that have studied a musical instrument and played in a school orchestra or band excel in some measurable way in the workplace over those without such a background. The more data and tangible examples we can gather, the more powerful a case we can make for the arts and arts education as critical to business competitiveness. Making this case better could be the key to reversing the slippage in corporate arts support we have seen over the past ten years.

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I have been serving on the Communications and Marketing Advisory Task Force for Independent Sector, which met today and I thought would be a good opportunity to share some thoughts on our Blog about their efforts to change public perceptions of the sector. First off, the Task Force is really a response to the recent serious of major news stories that present a negative picture of nonprofits – from the Aramony/United Way scandal of a few years ago to the most recent stories about the Smithsonian and Larry Small.  Independent Sector has been doing some really interesting work on researching attitudes toward nonprofit groups.  We in the arts need to be following and taking advantage of this new research and the findings. What they found is that approximately 82% of American adults volunteer, donate or advocate with a philanthropic organization.  This group is what they consider the “engaged public.”  Among this group, those who think nonprofits are “on the wrong track” has steadily declined over the past year, from 32% to 24%.  Most interestingly, the percentage who are “not sure” is consistently extremely high – now at 41%.  The folks at Harris Interactive, who do the research, feel this is an extremely high “no opinion” response, and basically means millions of Americans are easily swayed by whatever negative story happens to be in the news. The other interesting finding: There are five qualities that the public rates as highly important in a nonprofit that are also rated as relatively poorly delivered – Selfless, Efficient, Accountable, Effective, Results-Oriented.  The public already gets that we are committed, caring and passionate about what we do, so we don’t have to work as hard change any hearts and minds on that front, though we certainly should take opportunities to reinforce our existing strengths in those areas. Independent Sector recommends that all nonprofits adapt their communications to especially emphasize these qualities. Here are some other important aspects of the “message framework” they are developing:

1. the phrase “nonprofit community” seems to resonate best when describing the larger sector (not words like charities, philanthropies – or sector)
2. find ways to illustrate the key values listed above
3. use plan language – nothing lofty, avoid jargon
4. don’t denigrate business or government – emphasize that all three sectors are needed 
5. Offer collaboration and solutions to problems, not complaints 
6. emphasize people, not organizations
7. tell our stories, and move from describing what you do to what impact it has on people

 While this research does not separate out the arts, as IS begins to roll out this messaging campaign (which is targeting not just the general public, but Congress as well), arts groups would do well to think about how their messaging can reinforce this effort.  These findings also reinforce what we learned in our National Arts Policy Roundtable about how the arts are perceived – that we need to be telling our stories better, and emphasizing the impact we have on the people we serve. Among all segments of the nonprofit community we especially have a tendency, I would posit, to use lofty and potentially alienating language in describing our work. Independent Sector’s annual conference, where a lot of this messaging work will be shared, takes place October 21-23 in Los Angeles. I’ll be there, and it would be nice to have some more arts folks participating. [Also, see the article about Arts & Economic Prosperity III on their Web site!]

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While I am in Wisconsin and South Carolina this week, several partners are unveiling their local reports across the US. One such example is the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington’s press conference in DC on Monday afternoon. The Cultural Alliance sponsored the AEP3 report for Greater Washington, including: the District of Columbia; Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland; Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Virginia; and the city of Alexandria, VA.

Jennifer Cover Payne, President of the Cultural Alliance, and her staff did a great job of putting together Monday’s event. They began with a performance from a local viola student at the Levine School of Music in DC, then welcomed my colleague, Chief Counsel of Government and Public Affairs Nina Ozlu to the stage to speak about the study findings. Nina did a great job detailing the national and local findings for Greater Washington, including presenting a wealth of comparative data for similarly sized study regions. An impressive panel of local leaders followed Nina, including: Kwasi Holman, President and CEO of the Prince George’s County Economic Development Corporation; Victoria Isley, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the DC Convention and Tourism Corporation; and David Robertson, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Each contributed valuable insight on how to use the study findings in building cultural tourism, forging alliances with legislators, and their own community development efforts.

The event was attended by over 80 people-what a success! Congratulations to Jennifer and her staff for a great launch!

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From left to right, top to bottom:Participants of the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable at the Sundance Preserve; Americans for the Arts President & CEO Robert L. Lynch with Eric Rogers, the 2007 Selina Roberts Ottum Award Winner, at the 2007 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Las Vegas; Jenny Holzer’s FOR LAS VEGAS commissioned by Americans for the Arts for the 2007 Annual Convention in Las Vegas; Wynton Marsalis testifying on Capitol Hill as part of the 2007 Arts Advocacy Day festivities; Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch with Robert Redford at the 2006 National Arts Policy Roundtable event at the Sundance Preserve; Haluk Akakce’s Skys the Limit presented by Fremont Street Experience for the 2007 Americans for the Arts Convention

Photographers: Jill Orschel (NAPR photos), Sylvain Gaboury (Annual Convention Photos), Jim Saah (Arts Advocacy Day photos).

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June 6 marked the release of the local study findings of Arts & Economic Prosperity III. We were able to partner with the Illinois Arts Alliance, the Arts & Business Council of Chicago, the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to announce the Chicago data as well as signal the release of local data for the 156 local partners.

The announcement event took place at the Chicago Cultural Center, a building that is itself a work of art and across the street from the great Millennium Park. The morning began with Ra Joy, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Alliance, and I briefing 100 members of the arts community with a special preview of the Chicago data and a call to action about how to apply them.

This was followed by a national press conference to announce the findings. The press conference featured compelling remarks from: Robert Lynch, President & CEO, Americans for the Arts; Jonathan Fanton, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, (read his remarks here); Lois Weisberg, Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Chicago; and Diane Swonk, Senior Managing Director and Chief Economist for Mesirow Financial. All passionately conveyed the cultural and economic value of the arts, both in Chicago and nationally.

Following the press conference, a panel of local leaders talked about how the arts drive tourism, business development, and strengthen the community fabric. The impressive group, moderated by Bob Lynch, included: Dorothy Coyle, Director of the Chicago Office of Tourism; Ra Joy, Executive Director of the Illinois Arts Alliance; Paul O’Connor, Executive Director of World Business Chicago; and Arthur Sussman, Vice President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

In addition to Chicago’s data, June 6 was the national release date for all of the local study partners. More than 100 stories appeared in newspapers across the county including numerous editorials. Visit our website for a sampling. And keep checking back with ArtsBlog for more updates On the Road to Prosperity!

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