GIA Blog

The McKnight Foundation has named Minnesota-based dancer and choreographer Ranee Ramaswamy as the 2011 McKnight Distinguished Artist, in recognition of artistic excellence spanning more than three decades. Now in its 14th year, the annual honor includes a $50,000 cash award and recognizes individual Minnesota artists who have made significant contributions to the quality of the state's cultural life.

Nonprofit Finance Fund has published a new series on the need for and uses of capital in the arts. The materials convey stories and lessons learned from NFF’s $15 million Leading for the Future Initiative, the first national Initiative to deploy a specific kind of investment – change capital – to help arts organizations adapt their programming, operations and finances to thrive in a changed and changing economic and cultural landscape.

A new month, a new slide show of member-supported projects on the GIA website! Our June featured member is ArtsMemphis, which has been serving local arts organizations and school arts education programs in Memphis, TN for over 50 years. Our gratitude to Julia McDonald at ArtsMemphis for collaborating with GIA staff on the photo selection.

We will be featuring a different GIA member each month—and we welcome and encourage submissions. If your organization would like to provide photographs, please contact Abigail Guay at (206) 624-2312.

Remember to check in with the Major State Arts Agency Budget and Restructuring Proposals document from NASAA for updates on State Arts Agencies. Kansas, of course, is the big news today. But other states are facing similar situations and NASAA is keeping us informed of them all.

Late last week, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback line item vetoed appropriations for the Kansas Arts Commission in the 2012 state budget. KAC staff has already been given pink slips. Unless the Legislature over-rides this veto, which is not likely based on what I’ve read, Kansas will be the first state to eliminate its state arts agency since the inception of these offices in every state in the late 60’s.

From Standford Social Innovation Review:

Most successful foundations and nonprofits understand the importance of advocacy. Over the last decade, foundations have put more resources into advocating for the policies they believe in, with some notable successes. Yet grantmakers have often hesitated to plunge in. Sometimes they worry about appearing too political or partisan. But more often they hesitate because effective advocacy is difficult, and evaluating whether various approaches are working is even harder...

From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

After Grand Rapids, Michigan found itself listed in January by the news website Mainstreet.org as one of America's top ten “Dying Cities,” (a piece that was picked up and re-printed by Newsweek magazine), the community turned out on Sunday to create a nine-minute, continuous-take LipSync video to the Don McLean classic “American Pie.” It's an impressive, and creative, show of community spirit that reportedly includes almost 5000 citizens of Grand Rapids, all of whom were behind the project enough to show up for the second scheduled shoot (the first was a rain-out) and then find their positions to do five takes of the epic song.

Diane Ragsdale's May 20 Private Sector post begins, "People have been talking about the blurring line between the commercial and nonprofit arts sectors (and related mission/market tradeoffs) for decades...." and finishes here. Spend some time with the comments for more perspectives on this blurring.

Aaron Koblin began his March 2011 TED Talk by stating: "So I think data can actually make us more human." And then he presented several technology-based, crowd-sourced projects that perfectly prove his point.

Watch him here. He is contagiously interested (and interesting) and has a knack for letting things be the right amount of funny for the right amount of time.