Carmen Graciela Díaz's Blog

Artists at Work, "a pilot that launched last summer in Western Massachusetts to pay artists a living wage — including healthcare — to collaborate with cultural organizations and local initiatives in creating work that responds to issues such as youth mental health, food justice and COVID awareness campaigns in marginalized communities," is the center of a recent article in Next City.

In an essay published by the National Endowment for the Arts, Eleanor Savage discussed how the pandemic "has highlighted and amplified technology’s central place in every aspect of our daily lives" and "the vital role of artists in the development and shaping of social and cultural tools and in world-building through technology."

"We have to find business structures that meaningfully place people first and upend the practice of concentrating decision-making power and money in the hands of administrative leadership while undercompensating and disenfranchising the majority of workers," wrote Arianna Gass and Daniel Park on a worker cooperative.

"Trust-based philanthropy encourages funders to adopt a set of values that include leading with trust, centering relationships, collaborating with humility and curiosity, redistributing power, and working for systemic equity," wrote Melinda Tuan, managing director of Fund for Shared Insight, in a recent article published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

The Pittsburgh Foundation, in collaboration with The Opportunity Fund, is seeking submissions from local artists striving for social justice solutions in recently available funding for the grant initiative “Exposure: An Artists Program.”

The “Fix Team” at Grist, an independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future, brought together Anjali Nath Upadhyay, a philosopher and political scientist at Liberation Spring, and facilitator Gibrán Rivera in what Rivera described as an experiment called "Where Shift Happens: A Narrative and Cultural Power Mini-School."

National Assembly of State Arts Agencies released a new report that "provides a forecast of state government funding for the arts in fiscal year 2022."

Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust awarded recently more than $2 million to 26 performing arts organizations to "help strengthen performing arts organizations’ re-emergence following severe disruption caused by the pandemic and provide vitally important access," according to the press release.

"Discover Somatic Practices to Embody Racial Justice in Your Work," a free workshop with Dara Silverman & Brooke Stepp offered by Strozzi Institute, seeks to tackle "how to transform patterns that reinforce unhealthy power structures — in your life, in your practice, and in the world" and to "explore new practices for embodying your chosen values of liberation, justice, and healing."

For the month of August, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange.