Grantmakers in the Arts

November 1, 2014 by SuJ'n

During the months of November and December, GIA's photo banner features artists and projects supported by Rasmuson Foundation.

Established in 1955 as a private family foundation, Rasmuson Foundation has a proud history of grantmaking in Alaska, including a major focus on support of arts and culture throughout the State. The Foundation directs support in the cultural sector through several channels, including direct financial support of individual artists, arts in education, museum collections and conservation, arts and cultural organization sustainability, performing and visual arts exhibition touring, and capital project support. It is also committed to strong national partnerships, including United States Artists and ArtPlace America.

Story/Time: Bill T. Jones on John Cage

October 30, 2014 by Steve

Former GIA Board member John Killacky posts to The Green Room, a blog from Walker Art Center in Minneapolis:

Three decades ago, choreographer Bill T. Jones jolted the New York dance scene. Bucking the prevailing stripped-down postmodernism, he and his partner Arnie Zane created sensational dances collaborating with composers, fashion designers, and visual artists. A new queer aesthetic emerged that was anything but minimalistic.

October 30, 2014 by Steve

In 2009, The Wallace Foundation launched the Strengthening Financial Management (SFM) initiative, a comprehensive multi-year intervention to improve the financial stability and planning of 26 nonprofit Chicago organizations that were providing afterschool programming. A new report by the management consulting firm CFAR Differences a Day Can Make: Exploring the Effects of an Abbreviated Intervention on Improving Financial Management for Youth-Serving Organizations examines the effectiveness of a one-day workshop and series of webinars offered to nonprofits by the consulting firm FMA as part of the SFM initiative.

October 27, 2014 by Steve in Arts Education

Anthony Mazzocchi is former Director of Fine and Performing Arts for the South Orange/Maplewood School District, where he launched one of the first K-4 Suzuki Violin programs in New Jersey. During his stay, the district was designated “One of the Best Communities for Music Education” by the NAMM Association, and he was nominated for the first ever GRAMMY Music Educator Award by the GRAMMY Foundation. He posts here to The Village Green of Maplewood and South Orange:

October 24, 2014 by Steve

Gary Steuer, posting in Huffington Post Education:

Arts in Education Week took place last month, and since then arts education has been on my mind and in the air. A recent blog post by Alan Yaffe that contended arts education advocacy should be focused more on art-making than art-viewing got me thinking. It is true, much energy goes into trying to get K-12 students to attend arts events, and that's wonderful and much-needed. We try to organize class trips, and bemoan the increasing challenges of getting access to buses, to getting the OK to leave school for an arts experience when the pressures of sticking to curriculum and "teaching to the test" are ever-present. And arts groups do all they can to provide "enrichment", to facilitate those out-of-school experiences and to also bring teaching artists or arts education programs into schools.

October 23, 2014 by Steve

South Arts has received a grant of $450,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support their Dance Touring Initiative (DTI) through 2018. The initiative, launched in 2009, is building a network of performing arts presenters throughout the South that can bring modern dance and contemporary ballet companies as part of their season for public performances and artist residencies. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as stated in their mission, “endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies.”

October 23, 2014 by Steve

From James McQuaid at The Guardian:

At this year’s Arts Marketing Association conference, the National Arts Strategies president, Russell Willis Taylor, made some thought-provoking points through a case study on Ikea from which she believed arts and culture can learn. One of these was about knowing your value proposition: what are you uniquely placed to offer and how can this exude through an organisation? Willis Taylor encouraged us to be opportunistic, to build in space, energy and money in order to learn, keep our eyes open and be flexible and responsive. Her example to illustrate this in Ikea was the employee who started screwing off table legs to get the furniture into customers’ cars, which led to a revolution in the brand’s production and the flatpack we all know and (mostly) love today.

October 23, 2014 by Steve

From Shelly Gilbride, writing for California Arts Council Blog:

This isn’t a class in your average school. This is a class at the Juvenile Justice Center in Alameda and these boys are incarcerated. They live in tiny, sparse cells. The walled courtyard isn’t big enough for a real game of catch. These are tough kids who have had tough lives and are currently dealing with really tough circumstances. But when they are dancing, they are just kids, trying to get the moves right. I was privileged to witness that class as part of the Alameda County Office of Education’s bold initiative to address the “School to Prison Pipeline.”

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Future of the Field: Cross-Sector Creative Placemaking Series

Video from the GIA 2021 Conference are now available for streaming.

The Racial Equity Coding Project: Unpacking The “Why”

In this first of a three-part discussion, we are joined by Susan Feder, Adam Fong, and Maurine Knighton, as they discuss the Racial Equity Coding Project, why it was started, their experience with the earliest iterations of the coding measures, and how their reflections will inform steps forward.

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