When the internationally renowned contemporary dance company the Trey McIntyre Project (TMP) needed a permanent home in 2008, they chose Boise, Idaho, a place where they felt they could thrive artistically while building a new type of community-integrated organization. Many in the industry thought they were crazy. But the city of Boise has since become TMP’s greatest cheerleader and inspiration, leading to a 2010 New York Times headline, “Dancers Adopt a City and Vice-Versa”.
Read how the small city of Morristown, New Jersey is putting the pieces together to highlight and enliven the community arts scene. From Sharon Sheridan at Morristown Green:
From the beginning, our goal was to highlight the writing and artwork of the younger members of our community. Junior correspondents covered events ranging from First Night to LARPing at Headquarters Plaza. One of them even interviewed Santa Claus atop an undisclosed tower in town. We featured artwork from local schools, the Neighborhood House and individual artists.
It wasn’t too long before Morristown Green Editor Kevin Coughlin suggested we showcase kids’ creativity further with an art show. Last spring’s series of cultural events at a former car dealership on Bank Street seemed the perfect opportunity.
Mark Stern writes for ARTSblog as part of its May blog salon focusing on Social Impact of the Arts:
Susan Seifert and I began the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) in 1994 in response to the attention that economic impact studies were gaining at the time. We felt—in addition to their methodological flaws—that these studies captured only a fraction of the importance that the arts held for society.
Public art is more than a beautifying (or inspiring) public amenity—it is social catalyst and civic infrastructure. Picasso’s untitled sculpture was dedicated in Chicago’s Civic Center in August 1967 the same month that the first community mural, The Wall of Respect was painted by the artists of Organization of Black American Culture just a few miles away. Each were astonishing moments in the history of public art. But can we say that the Picasso has ever brought more than a handful of people in to town just to look at it for 90 minutes—or that the loss of The Wall of Respect in 1970 ended its ability to inform and inspire?
Theatre Communications Group has joined with the University of Minnesota Libraries Performing Arts Archives and the American Theatre Archive Project to examine how theaters think about their cultural legacy and what they do about their archives. An online survey is now open to gather data on the subject:
We want to know how your theater companies are (or aren’t) documenting your productions for future use. We hope to hear from as many people as possible who are working in theaters. If you know of other theater companies who could contribute to this discussion, please share the survey link with their directors. We are particularly interested in hearing from theaters of color, whose history has been most at risk of disappearing without a full or reliable story, but we are interested in hearing from everyone.
In 2010, Knight Foundation funded two social impact games as pilot projects in two cities – Macon Money, in Macon Ga., and Battlestorm, in Biloxi, Miss. Unlike past foundation support for digital games, these took place in real-time with real people in the real world and they supported ongoing efforts to tackle local issues. There is already an existing body of research about how digital games have the potential to improve learning and influence behavior. But less attention has been paid to the effects of real-world games – i.e., games that are played out in the physical world. Knight wanted to explore which aspects of real-world games were most effective in addressing community issues.
New this week to the TED website, a brief talk by social science researcher Michael Norton on the benefits of spending pro-socially, which is spending on others and spending to benefit a group. A little insight into why we love working in this field.
Americans have rarely come close to agreement about the role of art in society, let alone how to fund it. But a growing consensus in the media and the general public contends that crowd funding is a democratizing force, a peer-to-peer system of market-driven benevolence far more fair and efficient than the traditional, top-down model of government and foundation support.
For better or worse, the rise of networked culture over the past decade has changed the way artists approach their art. Crowd funding further clouds the issue. More than pure creative talent, marketing and promotion skills are part of a successful crowd funding campaign: Those who can sell their work before it’s even made are the ones that receive the most funding.
Most people who haven't been living under a rock are aware of the newspaper industry's precipitous decline. And even the least media savvy surface dwellers could guess that this sorry state of affairs has disproportionately impacted arts journalism. In comparison with the one in four newsroom jobs that have been lost in the last decade, approximately half of all arts writing staff positions and beats have disappeared, according to estimates by Arts Journal editor Douglas McLennan.
Gender inequality is not ignored in the arts world, but the underlying causes behind it, and the effect that has on the structure of arts organizations, is not deeply discussed. I would like the field to directly address these questions: why are so many directors men when a majority of women work in the arts in entry and middle management-level positions and have strong professional experience and education? And how does this impact arts organizations’ capacity for innovation and dynamic change?
