Americans for the Arts will present a series of seven hour-long webinars that will support The Arts Education Field Guide, an upcoming publication that “will illuminate ways to navigate the complex web of citizens, policymakers, government entities, and organizations that influence arts education from the school house to the White House and from the living room to the board room.” The seven webinars will be presented by Narric Rome and Kristen Engebretsen and the first, Understanding Federal Constituents in Arts Education will take place on Thursday, January 26, and will coincide with the publication of the Field Guide.
Steve's Blog
Posted on January 10, 2012 by Steve
Grantmakers in the Arts has posted an opening for the position of Development & Membership Associate.
Supervised by the Director of Development & Membership, the Development & Membership Associate is responsible for maintaining accurate and up-to-date member and donor records and membership and funding partner files; conducting timely membership renewals and member and donor acknowledgements; and assisting with all aspects of member/donor recruitment, retention, engagement, and acknowledgement.
Posted on January 9, 2012 by Steve
From Diane Ragsdale in her Jumper blog:
Direct grants to artists may make it possible for an artist, at a particular point in his or her career, to make (better or more ambitious) work (by removing the necessity to maintain a day job). Funds may be used to help an artist acquire a critical resource or asset that has longer term returns (a marketable artistic output, knowledge and skills, marketing and promotion, staff, representation, a piece of equipment, a studio, a car, etc.). And often direct grants (particularly if competitve or associated with awards) send a signal to other gatekeepers (funders, donors, producers, press, intermediaries, curators, etc.) that a particular artist is worthy of time and support and may result in more resources and attention flowing to that artist.
Posted on January 6, 2012 by Steve
The Bush Foundation announced today that President Peter Hutchinson has resigned and will transition from his leadership role with the Foundation in January of 2012. After joining the Foundation in November of 2007, Hutchinson led a dramatic redesign of the organization and its work. He will serve in an advisory capacity on select Foundation initiatives.
Posted on January 4, 2012 by Steve
Socialbrite has assembled a listing of 2012 events relevant to the nonprofit and social change sector.
Posted on January 4, 2012 by Steve
In March 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services hosted a first-of-its-kind event to showcase and discuss recent research on the arts and human development. The one-day forum examined the relationship between the arts and positive health and educational outcomes at various segments of the lifespan — from early childhood, to youth and adolescence, to older adult populations. A white paper, The Arts and Human Development: Framing a National Research Agenda for the Arts, Lifelong Learning, and Individual Well-Being summarizes major themes from the forum, and highlights related studies. It also makes recommendations toward establishing a long-term federal partnership to promote research and evidence-sharing nationwide.
Posted on January 3, 2012 by Steve
The Board of Directors of The Center for Arts Education has announced the selection of Eric G. Pryor as Executive Director. Pryor replaces Richard Kessler who left CAE in August to become Dean of Mannes College the New School for Music.
Before joining CAE, Pryor served as the Executive Director of the New Jersey State Museum where he successfully revitalized the institution with the re-opening of three major galleries, the Planetarium in 2009, and the Cultural History Collection gallery and the Fine Art Collection Gallery in 2010.
Posted on January 3, 2012 by Steve
From Richard Florida at The Atlantic Cities:
In case you missed it last week, Matt Yglesias wrote a provocative piece for Slate arguing that while Washington, D.C., is thriving, it's not all that terrific for artists. In particular, he singles out young artists at the formative stage in their careers, writing that “if you're a semi-employed artist or guitar player it's much more expensive than Philadelphia or Baltimore and still smaller and less interesting than New York City, which has less than one-third our murder rate.”
Posted on December 23, 2011 by Steve
Oliver Zunz, author of Philanthropy in America: A History, writes for the opinion pages of The New York Times about the origins of the Christmas Seals campaign to fight tuberculosis:
CHRISTMAS SEALS, first sold 104 years ago in a Delaware post office, transformed the treatment and control of tuberculosis, one of the most feared killers of the age.
Just as important, they produced a revolution in philanthropy. At that time, the 1 percent of the late Gilded Age, men with names like Carnegie and Rockefeller, were creating major new philanthropic institutions. Christmas Seals, in a way, was the response from the other 99 percent: by marketing something as inexpensive as a stamp and using the proceeds to attack a major disease, the founders of the Christmas Seals program demonstrated the collective power of the American public.
Posted on December 19, 2011 by Steve
Arlene Goldbard continues to drill down on the issues around Equity in Arts funding:
Let’s have a national El Sistema in all art forms, a new WPA, a teaching artists corps, an infusion of artists’ work in every social and educational system! What are your ideas?
But before the makeovers start flying, its really important to look at first principles. The current system is astoundingly inequitable in sharing resources with rich and poor, rural and urban, genders, races, practices, ethnicities, and so on: however you slice it. But that’s not all that’s wrong. The system fails because it is built on faulty wiring, with significant tangles where there should be flow. Below, I single out three big ones: the private-public toggle, the means-and-ends muddle, and the public-interest pickle.