GIA Blog

Dudley Cocke on Art and Political Power
Posted on March 16, 2012 by Steve

The Friday installment of the weeklong Clout: A Blogfest on Art and Political Power is penned by Dudley Cocke, artistic director of Roadside Theater and a former GIA Board member:

...So the question is: What would it take for a theater like Roadside to have real political clout? Part of the answer: For low income, working class, and middle class audience members like ours to have real political clout.

This raises the question of how, in our democracy, the majority of us have become subjugated to a wealthy minority of us. When we talk about the arts gaining political power, I think this is the bigger problem we need to address, and I’m worried that we’ve lost the democratic infrastructure to pursue a solution.

Art Hack: Crowdsourcing Digital Art From The City
Posted on March 15, 2012 by Steve

Ariel Schwartz for Co.Exist:

Stick a bunch of artists, web designers, developers, and hackers in a room, and what do you get? A visual and acoustic representation of Bay Area earthquake data, a sound collage of randomly dialed phone numbers, and on-the-fly digital art created from MP3 files.
Ra Joy Joins Art and Political Power Discussion
Posted on March 15, 2012 by Steve

The latest installment of the online discussion Clout: A Blogfest on Art and Political Power is Ra Joy, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois:

The best way to move the needle on arts policy issues (whether it’s Barry’s NEA budget or Arlene’s WPA 2.0 idea) is to create strong grassroots and grasstops networks that transcend age, race, ethnicity, geography, and other factors.
"Intrinsic Impact" Study Published, Extended Into Book
Posted on March 15, 2012 by Steve

Theatre Bay Area has published Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art, a book that builds from “Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Live Theatre,” the final report of a two-year national research study, prepared by research firm WolfBrown. Interviews with 20 prominent artistic directors, as well as essays by Diane Ragsdale, Arlene Goldbard, Rebecca Novick and others, are all available in the book.

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.