501(c)(3) non profit grantmaker

November 2001, 24 pages. Working Group on International Collaboration in the Arts, Arts International, 251 Park Avenue South, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10010-7302, 212-674-9744, 212-674-9092 fax.

On November 12, 2000, a headline on the front page of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution read, "Study finds Atlanta arts community trailing peers." A full-page story in Section A followed. This one headline challenged the city's cherished self-assessment as "cultural jewel of the South" and quietly affirmed the suspicions of many of its artists and cultural workers.

This is the story about the headline, the study, and the volunteer efforts of an incorporated ad hoc group that calls itself the Atlanta Arts Think Tank and that commissioned the landmark study.

Meetings are big business. Or, in other words, talk is not cheap. An economic impact study by Deloitte & Touche LLP demonstrated that conventions, expositions, and meetings generated $82 billion in total direct spending in 1994, supporting 1.57 million jobs.1 Meetings of associations and membership organizations, as opposed to corporate-sponsored events, account for the lion's share of this spending (68 percent). Many of these associations serve the arts and culture.

The 2001 Summer Music and Art Institute for Teachers was presented through a collaboration among Cleveland State University, Young Audiences of Cleveland, Cleveland Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, and ICARE (the Initiative for Cultural Arts in Education, a program currently housed at the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture). The Institute was the first such collaboration by this diverse group of organizations and programs. The featured keynote speakers were Cleveland Municipal School District CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett and Elliot W.

At the Fund for Folk Culture (FFC), we have been working with Laurel Jones and Morrie Warshawski of the Bay Consulting Group (BCG) to survey the range of private support for the folk and traditional arts and investigate opportunities for increased private support in this cultural sector.

This article is based on a presentation to a gathering of grantees held in the fall 2000 and aimed at building arts participation. The meeting was sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

Last month I was signed up by a colleague to give a lecture to a class of graduate students at New York University studying arts management, all of whom were intending to pursue careers as managers and administrators in cultural institutions, and most of whom already had some experience in line management under their belts. My session was slotted into the finance elective.

David B. Pankratz, principal investigator and project manager, Celia O'Donnell, research assistant

2001, 80 pages. California Arts Council, 1300 I Street, Suite 930, Sacramento, CA 95814, 916-322-6555.

September 2001, 40 pages. Click here or contact Artist Trust, for a hard copy.