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Boston's Expansion of Arts Education
Posted on March 14, 2012 by Steve

From Marjorie Pritchard at Boston.com:

At a time of great stress on Boston’s school budget, private philanthropists and charitable foundations launched an initiative to raise $10 million to increase access, equity and quality of arts learning for all students. The city and its schools stepped up with increased public funding for arts teachers... This year, 14,000 more Boston students are experiencing the arts in schools than three years ago. Nine of 10 students in the elementary and middle grades now receive weekly, year-long arts instruction in school, up from two-thirds in 2009. In the same period, twice as many high school students are accessing arts learning during the school day.
Lisa Cremin Receives Nexus Award
Posted on March 13, 2012 by Steve

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (ACAC) announced that Lisa Cremin is the recipient of the third annual Nexus Award. Cremin is the founding director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund at The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. She will receive the Nexus Award at a celebration at ACAC on Thursday, May 24, 2012.

Read the full announcement.

Clout Observations from Roberto Bedoya
Posted on March 13, 2012 by Steve

First up to respond to the discussion points brought forth yesterday by Barry Hessenius and Arlene Goldbard is Roberto Bedoya, executive director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council:

So advocacy for me is not about arts advocacy, it advocating for and defending the very meaning of public—of the public good embedded in civil society. I believe strongly that my charge is to build and defend civil society through the tools at my disposal—the creative community that the arts council serves and our collective passionate belief in democracy. It also has to deal with how complicity is constructed through laws and policy that says you belong, you don’t belong. How the cultural sector plays into the politics of belong/dis-belonging is a charged topic that we must engage in with more rigor and vigor, if we want our advocacy efforts to have weight and soul.
Art and Political Power
Posted on March 13, 2012 by Steve

Barry Hessenius and Arlene Goldbard have launched a week-long “blogfest” around the theme of art and political power. From Arlene Goldbard:

The series begins with a dialogue between Barry and myself. Subsequent entries will be authored by Roberto Bedoya, executive director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council; Dudley Cocke, director of Roadside Theater; Ra Joy, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois, and Diane Ragsdale, creator of the Jumper blog.
GEO National Field Survey of Grantmaking Practice
Posted on March 13, 2012 by Steve

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations has published a field-wide survey of 755 staffed grantmaking foundations in the U.S., conducted by TCC Group. In light of the global economic downturn, Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter? builds on a similar study conducted in 2008 to highlight some of the shifts in grantmaking and what they mean for supporting resilience in the nonprofit sector.

Doris Duke Residency Program Guidelines Posted
Posted on March 12, 2012 by Steve

The guidelines for the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Artist Residency Program are now available online. The program is designed to support artists and organizations with annual income of at least $300,000 to work together to increase demand for jazz, theatre and/or contemporary dance. These residencies are not designed to support creative time or the creation of new work as the primary residency goal.

Animating Democracy Online
Posted on March 12, 2012 by Steve

AFTA’s Animating Democracy program has a new website. You can check it out at animatingdemocracy.org.

Occupy the Arts
Posted on March 9, 2012 by Steve

Scott Walters, director of the Center for Rural Arts Development and Leadership Education, writes for Huffington Post:

Often hanging on financially by their fingernails, arts leaders have been taught to play a particular game that exists only within a specific artistic ecosystem, and no matter how unjust that system might be, they often become extremely defensive if that game is questioned. And yet, more and more artists and arts bloggers are doing just that—asking uncomfortable questions about economic equity, diversity, and fairness within the world of nonprofit arts institutions.
Forty Years of LGBTQ Philanthropy
Posted on March 8, 2012 by Steve

To commemorate its 40th anniversary, Funders for LGBTQ Issues has produced a historical overview of the history of LGBTQ philanthropy. The document is rich with data, including annual reports of US-based foundation funding, along with narrative passages describing highlights in the movement of LGBTQ philanthropy.

Wallace Report on New Concepts in Audience Development
Posted on March 8, 2012 by Steve

Arts organizations are looking for ways to develop their audiences. What works? What doesn’t? And how can successes be sustained? Building Arts Organizations that Build Audiences is a new report documenting a June 2011 Wallace conference of foundation-supported arts groups, marketing mavens, researchers and others, provides some potential answers, including encouraging organization-wide learning.

From the report: