Advocacy and Public Policy

2005, 28 pages. California Alliance for Arts Education, 495 East Colorado Blvd. Pasadena, CA, 91191, 626-578-9315.

This briefing paper describes the benefits of arts learning for all students, current policies in the state of California and nationwide supporting arts education in public schools, and current implementation practices affecting access and equity. It also offers policy recommendations.

A few years ago, Laura Penn, managing director of Intiman Theatre in Seattle, met me for coffee at the Saint Francis Hotel. I was between sessions of the Independent Sector's (IS) national conference in San Francisco. Laura had never heard of IS and was curious about it. The Independent Sector is a coalition of corporations, foundations, and private voluntary organizations that works to strengthen nonprofit organizations and is committed to advancing the common good in the U.S.

It is very unusual for any urban renewal plan not to include reference to the role that arts organizations and arts buildings can potentially play in regeneration. Most recently, in Hurricane Katrina's wake, both have figured prominently in discussions about the future of New Orleans and Biloxi. But the discussions about arts organizations and those about arts buildings are curiously and uncomfortably divorced.

We live in a world of "widespread hostility toward the United States and its policies."1 This antipathy is not limited to the countries and peoples that are directly affected by the U.S. "war on terror" and its attendant pol-icies, but includes many of our former allies and fellow democracies. A friend who just returned from a year in Spain reports that she spent a significant amount of time and energy convincing people she met there that the U.S.

Artists and arts institutions rely on the free flow of information to create and distribute their work. The converging digital environment presents many new options for the delivery of specialized information to targeted audiences, and the cultural community is becoming increasingly sophisticated in deploying these tools. However, the United States is only sixteenth in the world in broadband Internet penetration, and the growing digital divide presents a challenge to the vision of ubiquitous access to high-quality images, sound, and text.

2005, 48 pages. Published by American Public Media, 45 East 7th Street, Saint Paul, MN, 55101, 651-290-1225, www.classicalmusicinitiative.org

The second in a series of Working Papers, this report contains ideas and tips for partnering with local public radio stations and national distributors, information on funding resources, rights and clearances, Web initiatives, and audience research.

2004, 58 pages. Free Expression Policy Project, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law, 161 Avenue of the Americas, 12th floor, New York, NY, 10013, 212-998-6730, http://www.fepproject.org

Download pdf: http://www.fepproject.org/policyreports/InformationCommons.pdf

The full text of this article is not yet available on this site. Below is a brief excerpt.

Three briefings for funders on electronic media policy were held January—March 2005, organized by Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media, hosted by the Ford Foundation, and co-sponsored by other interested parties, including Grantmakers in the Arts. The first session, “Securing Our Rights to Public Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom of Expression,” was reported on by Helen Brunner in the spring 2005 Reader. (Please note that web addresses for most of the organizations mentioned are listed at the end of this article.)

“What the FCC Is Going On?”

Lawrence Lessig sees Big Media waging war against culture in America. And he, for one, is fighting the battle. A professor at Stanford Law School, Lessig achieved notoriety when he represented web site operator Eric Eldred in the ground-breaking case Eldred v. Ashcroft, a challenge to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Eric Eldred was a man who wanted to build a library of derivative versions of public domain books (e.g., Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter) and make them available for free on the Internet.