Jaime Sharp's Blog

Launched in 2015, Common Field - a national network of independent visual arts organizations and organizers that connects, supports, and advocates for the artist-centered field - announced that, “after a comprehensive auditing and strategic visioning process in 2021, Common Field has made the decision to begin an intentional sunsetting process and will close as an organization in December 2022.”

From National Endowment for the Arts:
"We invite you to join us in sending the below letter to the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in support of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)."

"Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts joined more than 90 federal agencies in releasing its Equity Action Plan to the public, and shared the plan with stakeholders and partners."

The Barr Foundation seeks a Learning and Evaluation Consultant to support the newly launched cohort, Powering Cultural Futures (PCF), a new six-year initiative that provides funding, technical assistance, peer networking, and other supports to a diverse cohort of 15 BIPOC-rooted organizations in Massachusetts.

The new grant from Basic Income for the Arts, “will give 2,000 artists €325 (~$354) a week with no restrictions on spending.” This pilot program will be tested over the course of three years (2022-2025).

The Packard Foundation’s Bioenergy strategy is issuing a request for project proposals to grassroots organizations based in the U.S. South or Canada that have programs focused on frontline community organizing and power-building around social, environmental, or climate justice in one of the following issue areas: Forest protection, Community land rights, Combating extractive energy industries.

“Grants management professionals are strategically positioned to influence a funder’s racial equity and racial justice funding. But in three decades of working in and with foundations, I have consistently seen a pattern where people serving in these roles are excluded from these conversations as a matter of institutional habit,” explains Lori Villarosa, Founder and Executive Director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Justice.

On the book, Are the Arts Essential?: “As Arthurs puts it, in addressing ideas and ‘challenging our systems’ we have been more easily in awe of the arts than activated by them. To begin with, I am greatly in favor of the ‘we,’ for this convergence of intelligent minds and pens speaks for all of us, wherever we are meeting it,” explains The Brooklyn Rail contributor Mary Ann Caws. “I shall borrow the words of Catharine R. Stimpson about our need for ‘cultural interpreters who can tell the story of this brilliant pluralism’ and affirm that we have exactly those here.”

Forecast Public Art announced the Public Art for Racial Justice Fund to, “provide much needed guidance, coaching and technical assistance to artists and communities as they undertake the complex task of confronting racial inequities...”

From the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation:

In the first episode of a three-part podcast series by Grantmakers in the Arts, DDCF Program Director for the Arts Maurine Knighton spoke about the impetus behind the Racial Equity Coding Project, which aims to gather data around racial equity funding practices to illustrate a more nuanced and accurate accounting of grantmaking efforts to advance racial equity. The Equity Coding Project began with a culmination of research led by DDCF with Callahan Consulting for the Arts and provides funders with an opportunity to examine and refine their own coding practices, as well as to adopt new data collection practices for the future.