Grantmakers in the Arts

(7-15-10) 21 grants totaling $3 million have been awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative (MICD 25). The announcement was made by NEA chairman Rocco Landesman from the base of the former Bethlehem Steel Plant known as SteelStacks Campus.

Among the cities receiving the largest grants from the program are Hartford, CT and Rochester, NY as well as Chicago, Il and San Francisco, CA.

(7-14-10) GIA is hosting a guest blog for John Kreidler, who is discussing Medici's Lever, an internet-based, interactive application co-designed by Kreidler and Steve Peterson.

Welcome to the hypothetical world of “Medici’s Lever”, an online suite consisting of two educational games and one simulation laboratory probing the subject of regional cultural policy. Within “Medici’s Lever”, you are in command of up to eight policy levers that can be deployed in infinite variety over a 40-year span.

(7-13-10) A discussion has been underway this week at SocialEdge.org about Effective Disaster Response and hosted by Charles Maclean, founder of PhilanthropyNow. Many interesting questions are posed and discussed. Be sure to look over the Checklist for Effective Disaster Response, a pdf document authored by Mr. MacLean and G. Faruq Achikzad, CEO of the Raquim Foundation.

(7-13-10) Robert Hewison in The Art Newspaper:

To convince the public, and not just the government, an argument has to be made that shows that the arts are worth funding, in and for themselves. That calls for a more sophisticated form of cultural economics than is currently recognised at the Treasury. There is a market for culture, but culture does not depend on the market for its existence. The experiences the arts offer—pleasure, terror, insight, knowledge, release—are individual and hard to quantify, and these intrinsic aspects come before any attempt to translate them into economic terms.

(7-9-10) This report, Native Arts and Cultures: Research, Growth and Opportunities for Philanthropic Support issued by the Ford Foundation, is “a guide to those interested in funding and supporting Native arts and cultures and in collaborating with Native communities.” It serves as a summary of the efforts by Elizabeth Theobald Richards to carry out the Indigenous Knowledge and Culture grant-making initiative from 2003-2009.

In much of what I’m involved with these days from discussions of improving arts education and the under-capitalization of the nonprofit world to increasing the value of the arts for average Americans, the word consensus keeps coming up. Mostly it comes up and then, like a hot potato, it gets thrown out. It’s a word that we’re hesitant to use as funders. Why is that? I have a couple of theories. Firstly, we in the arts want to be pretty open to all voices and respectful of one another’s uniqueness. This is a good thing.

(7-6-10) On June 30, the Kresge Foundation announced $450,000 in fellowships to Detroit-area literary and performing artists. The fellowships were awarded through the Kresge Artist Fellowships program. From the foundation's press release:

(7-2-10) A June 2010 report on dramatic declines in arts education funding in New York public schools prompted a July 1 story in The NY Daily News that begins: "It is not a pretty picture."