GIA Blog

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations recently released a publication that, as the website explains, "builds on the principles outlined in Strengthening Nonprofit Capacity and will take a critical look at the ways in which capacity-building practices can be grounded in approaches that acknowledge and center racial equity."

"Despite tough lessons learned after Hurricane Harvey, most artists and arts and history organizations in the Houston area are still unprepared for the next disaster," states a new guide by the Houston Arts Alliance designed to help local artists and nonprofits on how to become resilient now.

The Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI) announced recently the inaugural Zoo Labs Fund grant recipients. According to the announcement, 14 unrestricted grants ranging from $5,000 - $50,000 were awarded to Bay Area BIPOC-led artist teams with music-based projects or businesses that are contributing to the region’s arts and culture environment in positive ways.

Brookings recently published a piece by Paula Arce-Trigatti, director of the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships, reflecting on various aspects of partnership work, lessons on defining research-practice partnerships, and how to know whether partnership work is making a positive impact.

Walking with a camera, the images found provoke and confound ceaselessly. And catching and maintaining the look and sound of an image has been a gift for Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, for whom filming is life enhanced.

Art needs to be talked about. Discussed. Verbalized. Felt through words. Mareia Quintero Rivera stresses that the joy and complexity of cultural production, and of the need to catalogue and study the framework and infrastructure of art in Puerto Rico, should be - must be - addressed and seriously covered in the media in Puerto Rico.

Nono never imagined that name would cross seas and languages, and that the beloved granddaughters - mapenzi and mulowayi - would forever espouse this unconditional surrender to the familial.

From the images of a crowd attending a show at a soon-to-be-closed Rio Piedras movie theater to the photographs of drowning Puerto Ricans, scholar Frances Negron-Muntaner probes the uncomfortable  definitions of the end of an era and of the start of another in troubled times.

This session spoke to me deeply from my own experience deployed this year in my local public health department’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign. Whether it was being yelled at by angry people during the early days of limited supply and restricted eligibility, the unrelenting and thankless demands of countering disinformation and overcoming distrust, the highs of contributing to saving lives, the lows of confronting your own personal and institutional shortcomings, and the destructive self and interpersonal dynamics that can emerge under extreme stress…I got a small taste of the demands facing healthcare providers, demands that were heightened by the Covid crisis.

Two things jumped out at me the most from this workshop. The first was the set of sharp and wise recommendations for guiding organizational change and sectoral change during uncertain times from the ArtsEd Response Collective, which was convened by Ingenuity to address the immediate challenges of COVID-19 and the police murders of Black people. And the second was the deeper dive into dance as an educational tool uniquely well-suited for engaging children and youth around issues of anti-racism and racial justice.

The ARC Final Report presents a plethora of resources for arts educators and organizations, schools, and equity practitioners in adapting and innovating new strategies and best practices that are responsive to the challenges of remote learning and pandemic conditions. The report lifts up what I think is one of the most important principles for any sector during these times of rapid change and volatility—to commit to open source knowledge sharing and learning, which is part of recognizing that we must engage in building anew and that “experimentation is now a part of the new operating norms for every industry…in order to do important work in an uncertain landscape.”