Preconferences

Three one-day pre-conferences will be offered on Sunday, October 18th, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, taking advantage of the wealth of resources in the New York area, and meeting in various locations near the conference hotel. Preconferences are part of the main conference, and examination of these topics will continue is sessions throughout the conference. To register for a preconference, you must register for the main conference.

Note: Transportation to all off-site events and sessions will be on foot or by Subway. Local guides will accompany all trips. (Alternate transportation will be available for those with limited mobility.)

Arts Education Preconference: The New Frontier For Arts Education


Opportunities in Arts Education: What’s Different Now?
We all know that the times they are changing for those involved in arts education. The new reality is that funders, nonprofits and schools are working with reduced budgets at the same time as education reform, stimulated by the new administration, is gaining traction nationally. Diane Mataraza will facilitate a discussion of the frontier issues in arts education, how funders can navigate new entry and exit points, and what opportunities we have to collaborate more effectively.

Sustaining Arts Education Advocacy at the Local Level: How do we organize our communities to engage in sustainable arts education advocacy?
This interactive session, led by Eric Zachary of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, will take participants through the paces of organizing an arts education community that not only makes change possible but sustains that change for the future.

Other sessions relating to Arts Education:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday

  1  sessions organized by the Arts Education Committee

Arts Education Committee
Julie Fry, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (co-chair)
Richard Kessler, Center for Arts Education (co-chair)
Arnold Aprill, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education
Jaime Bennett, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Moy Eng, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Carol Fineberg, NY Times Foundation
Stan Hutton, Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation
Susan McCalmont, Kirkpatrick Foundation
Frances Phillips, Walter and Elise Haas Foundation
Janice Pober, Sony Entertainment
Ellen Rudolph, Surdna Foundation
Sydney Sidwell, The Fry Foundation
Sarah Solotaroff, Urban Gateways
Lynn Stern, Surdna Foundation

Support For Individual Artists Preconference:
Optimism and Opportunities


This preconference—and the individual artist track that runs throughout the conference—will explore ways artists, artist-centered organizations, and arts funders are responding to a changing economy. This day of interactive dialogues among artists, organizations, and arts funders—facilitated by Holly Sidford—will be held at the Skylight Gallery, one of Brooklyn’s best-kept artistic secrets, in one of the country’s oldest and most significant community revitalization efforts, led by the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

Through panel presentations and small group discussions participants will examine opportunities for individual and collective actions to advance support for individual artists. Previous GIA artist-support themes such as developing strategic funding initiatives and supporting multiple options “other than money” will be included in the discussions.

Join colleagues at GIA’s longest-running pre-conference for always lively explorations, truth-telling, and discover ways the support system for artists is being reinvigorated and reimagined.

Preconference Schedule

Introduction to the Day:
    Holly Sidford, Helicon Collaborative
    Cindy Gehrig, Jerome Foundation
    Eric Wallner, City of Ventura Cultural Affairs
    GIA Individual Artist Committee

Brooklyn Artists Speak: Sustaining Practice
    Fidelma McGinn, Artist Trust: Moderator
        Xenobia Bailey, visual artist
        A.K. Burns, Working Artists and the Greater Economy
        Jeff Hnilicka, Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics
        Ernesto Pujol, multimedia artist
        Elizabeth Streb, STREB Lab for Action Mechanics

Funders, Other Organizations Speak: Sustaining Support
    Ruby Lerner, Creative Capital: Moderator
        Michael Bzdak, Ph.D., director, Corporate Contributions, Johnson and Johnson
        Cornelia Carey, Craft Emergency Relief Fund
        Linda Earle, Art Matters
        Judilee Reed, Leveraging Investments in Creativity
        Joe Smoke, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
        Carolyn Somers, Joan Mitchell Foundation

Breakout Sessions:
    Artist-led brainstorming groups
    Ways funders can respond to new ideas of artists‘ support

Panel: Report back from each group
Discussion: sharing and developing plans

Summary and Next Steps
    Holly Sidford, Helicon Collaborative
    Cindy Gehrig, Jerome Foundation
    Eric Wallner, City of Ventura Cultural Affairs

Other sessions relating to Support for Individual Artists:

Monday (off-site at the offices of the New York Foundation for the Arts)
Tuesday
Wednesday

  2  sessions organized by the Support for Individual Artists Committee

Support for Individual Artists Committee
Ted Berger, Joan Mitchell Foundation (chair)
Kerrie Buitrago, Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Cornelia Carey, Craft Emergency Relief Fund
Cindy Gehrig, Jerome Foundation
Gary Knecht, Artists’ Legacy Foundation
Ruby Lerner, Creative Capital Foundation
Janet Rodriguez, JPMorgan Chase Global Philanthropy
Joyce Robinson, Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation
Carolyn Somers, Joan Mitchell Foundation
Caitlin Strokosch, Alliance of Artists Communities
Eric Wallner, City of Ventura Cultural Affairs

Arts And Social Justice Preconference


The Art and Social Justice Funders Group preconference program was developed in direct response to the requests of its members at the 2008 planning meeting.  Members encouraged us to, establish outcomes for the work; engage in peer to peer dialogue; engage in collaborative projects that could expand and deepen the work; map the field of funders so that we can better understand the funding ecosystem and track the resources in the field; educate others about art as a tool for society; and engage in research about the positive impact of the work that places the work on a continuum.

Part 1. Making the Case for the Arts as a Strategy for Social Justice
and Civic Engagement

Organized by Barbara Schaffer Bacon and Pam Korza, co-directors, Animating Democracy, Americans for the Arts; Klare Shaw, senior associate, Barr Foundation.

Presented by Barbara Schaffer Bacon; Pam Korza; Klare Shaw; Suzanne Callahan, founder, Callahan Consulting for the Arts; Rha Goddess, artist, 1+1+1=ONE; Maria Rosario Jackson, Urban Institute; Christine Lamas Weinberg, Culture for Change project manager, Barr Foundation.

Initiatives are underway to measure the viability and impact of art and social justice programs. Along with other projects, the Barr Foundation recently evaluated the Culture for Change Project which trained out-of-school practitioners—youth workers, artists, and staff—in youth development, social justice and artistic expression with the belief that youth will find new means of empowerment through creative processes.

Animating Democracy is implementing the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative to advance understanding of and help make the case for the social efficacy of arts-based civic engagement work. It aims to better understand: How do we motivate evaluative thinking as a value held by arts organizations and artists and equip them to measure social change? What evidence really matters to practitioners, but also to funders and policymakers and what’s reasonable to ask of practitioners?

This session will share what these initiatives have learned as well as offer approaches and tools for evaluating what difference they make.

Related Links:

Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative
Shifting Expectations: An Urban Planner’s Reflections on Evaluating Community-based Arts
    by Maria Rosario Jackson, senior researcher, Urban Institute
Civic Engagement and the Arts: Issues of Conceptualization and Measurement
    by Mark J. Stern and Susan C. Seifert, Social Impact of the Arts Project,
    University of Pennsylvania
Arts and Civic Engagement: Briefing Paper for the Working Group of the Arts & Civic Engagement Impact Initiative
    by M. Christine Dwyer, RMC Research


Part 2. New Media and the Arts: A Force for Change

Organized by Roberta Uno, senior program officer, Ford Foundation; Claudine K. Brown, director, Arts and Culture Program, Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Presented by William Crow, associate museum educator, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Ken Ikeda, executive director, Bay Area Video Coalition; Barry Joseph, online leadership director, Global Kids, Inc.; Marlène Ramírez-Cancio, co-founder and co-director, Fulana; Leba Haber Rubinoff, co-founder, Mobile Movement.

Innovations in media are making it possible for artists to engage audiences in creative and unprecedented ways. Whether it is through the innovative use of interactive websites, games for change, or viral film shorts that educate the public; the media sector has provided readily-accessible tools that have changed how we work and whom we might work with.

This session will include 5-minute presentations that cover the following topics: Easy Access, New Platforms and Broad Impact.

In each category, three panelists will familiarize participants with innovations and new directions through their specific work. They will provide examples of easily accessible (mostly free) programs that can be used to structure information in unique and entertaining formats as they educate and inform constituents, build communities, and reach larger publics. They will explore and demonstrate the power of new platforms for delivering information; and share with us the impact of their work, i.e. who they have reached, in what manner, and the outcomes of their strategies.

Participants should come to the session prepared to share resources and successful media strategies with their peers.

Related Links:

Citizen Engagement Laboratory
Bay Area Video Coalition
The NOLA Project
Where My Ladies At?
Fulana Latino Video + Performance Collective
Global Kids
Metropolitan Museum of Art: Teacher Resources

Other sessions relating to Social Justice:

Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday

  3  sessions organized by the Art and Social Justice Committee

Art and Social Justice Committee
Claudine Brown, Nathan Cummings Foundation (chair)
Caron Atlas
Radha Blank, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Roberta Uno, Ford Foundation
Michelle Coffey, Lambent Foundation
Lorraine Marasigan, Cricket Island Foundation
Iris Morales, Union Square Awards
Barbara Schaffer Bacon, Americans for the Arts
Klare Shaw, Barr Foundation



Conference Hotel

Online registration at the Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge is now available. The conference rate is $252. Click here to book your room now.