GIA Reader (2000-present)

2012, Theatre Bay Area, San Francisco. Clayton Lord, editor.

As the policy landscape changes, and dedicated federal funding streams become a thing of the past, Grantmakers in the Arts, through the Arts Education Funders Coalition, is looking toward the future to identify policy opportunities to promote equitable access to arts education in public schools. An essential question for this work is how to utilize and enhance existing federal education resources to include a systemic focus on arts education that benefits state and local programs.

The Problem and the Necessity of Action

Spurred on by technological advances, the number of aspiring professional artists in the United States has reached unprecedented levels. The arts’ current system of philanthropic support is woefully underequipped to evaluate this explosion of content — but we believe that the solution to the crisis is sitting right in front of us. Philanthropic institutions, in their efforts to provide stewardship to a thriving arts community, have largely overlooked perhaps the single most valuable resource at their disposal: audience members.

Funders, arts administrators, and other people trying their hand at creative placemaking (artists and more unlikely suspects) find their way to me. Because I coauthored Creative Placemaking, the 2010 white paper for the NEA’s Mayors’ Institute on City Design, I’m an authority, yet folks get through to me with a cold call or email, instead of waiting for an announced webinar from the National Endowment for the Arts or ArtPlace or trying to read between the lines of application guidelines.

Recently I served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. Forty-nine applicants wanted to be embedded in scientific research teams. They sought to explore the ethos, mythologies, and realities of this extraordinary continent.

Composers wanted to listen to the wind, water, animals, and shifting ice. Visual artists hoped to delve into infinite striations of whiteness: the effects of transparency on ice, the glitter of ice crystals, and light and shadow patterns on the surface and internal features of the frozen landscape.