ARTSblog

Sahar Javedani

If you’re reading this now, chances are that you’re in a place of contemplative or active transition—and I commend you!

Many of you know that after seven years of working as a choreographer with parallel work in nonprofit arts administration and education in New York City, I recently moved to Philadelphia to start the next chapter of my life which included re-evaluating my commitment to a career in nonprofit administration.

In my last two years in New York City I had aligned myself with an organization that channeled some of my greatest strengths (dance education, career/professional development, nonprofit administration) into one role. After years working at least three simultaneous jobs, I convinced myself that I had “arrived.”

What followed was one of the greatest learning periods of my life.

Holding the reigns of running my own program within a larger organization confirmed that I was indeed entrepreneurial, self-driven, motivated, an excellent networker, etc. These talents were coupled with equal frustrations in communications, core values, and logistics within the organization.

I will refrain from going into detail, but I do feel compelled to share some valuable books that encouraged me along the way. Read the rest of this entry »

Joanna Chin

As the lead for developing Animating Democracy’s new website, I can tell you that it’s filled to the brim with incredible resources from our Arts and Social Change Mapping Initiative and Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative as well as earlier publications, tools, and resources from the program’s first decade of contributions to the field.

In fact, I’d wager that if you’ve gone to the site, one of the problems is that there’s too much there! Have 10 minutes?

Let me walk you through my shortlist of the top-5 things to do on our new website:

• Become part of a growing database of arts for change practitioners and supporters. Create a profile for yourself as an artist, project, and/or organization.

• Learn about how evaluation has helped two artists learn the social outcomes of their work with Pam Korza’s and Barbara Schaffer Bacon’s paper, Evaluating Impact/Appreciating Evaluation.

• Find artists and groups doing work in specific disciplines or issue areas through our searchable profiles and through links to specialized databases. Read the rest of this entry »

Jessica Wilt

As an arts administrator, I’m constantly bombarded with information coming from all directions every minute of every day.

With endless emails, text messages, Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds, I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed.

Having the ”let’s get organized!” attitude that a New Year brings, I thought it might be nice to highlight some of the good work our colleagues are doing in the field with a condensed resource guide.

Which makes me wonder: Has anyone designed an app for this yet?

Arts Education Listservs: Two of my favorites are Kristen Engrebretson’s Arts Education Roundup from Americans for the Arts (an exclusive benefit of membership – join here or ask to be added to the arts education listserv if you are a member), and Arts Education Partnership’s ArtsEd Digest. The Center for Arts Education, Education Week, and Public Education Network’s weekly NewsBlast are also great sources of information.

Blogs:  It seems everyone is writing a blog these days! Who should we be reading? Americans for the Arts’ ARTSBlog and Artsjournal.com are terrific resources. Richard Kessler’s Dewey21C and Art Education 2.0 are good ones too. Read the rest of this entry »

Washington's Gorge Heritage Museum

As part of the Local Arts Agency Listening Post we asked if folks had additional comments beyond the specific questions in the survey, and several members took us up on it.

I had the opportunity to speak with Leigh Anne Chambers, the Executive Director of the North Central Louisiana Arts Council in Ruston, LA.

The North Central Louisiana Arts Council serves the five parishes of Lincoln, Bienville, Claiborne, Jackson, and Union – one of Louisiana’s poorest regions.

The council used to receive funds from two separate grants from the state, but now they receive about half of that. They filled in the gaps with fundraising and memberships but they are still haven’t made up for the loss of the state monies.   Read the rest of this entry »