Public Agency

January 7, 2005. Hosted by the Ford Foundation and organized by Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media's (www.gfem.org) Working Group on Electronic Media Policy. Co-sponsored with Grantmakers in the Arts, the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (www.fntg.org), and the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers (www.nyrag.org).

The lines between arts and environmental grantmaking often are sharply drawn. However, in the life of thriving communities, the two are integrally linked. As part of a roundtable discussion at last October's GIA conference, it was heartening to share vivid examples of how GIA members are exploring the intersections of environment and art.

The following remarks were presented at a symposium that was part of the 2004 Ars Electronica Festival: TIMESHIFT—The World in Twenty-Five Years. This festival for art, technology, and society was founded in 1979 and is held annually in Linz, Austria. Joan Shigekawa, associate director of Creativity and Culture at the Rockefeller Foundation, spoke on the final panel of the symposium, “TOPIA,” which was designed to “present scenarios around a wide variety of topics relating to art, technology, and society.

I believe it is time to begin a conversation about a new model for building a vibrant arts landscape. Since I left federal service in the fall of 2001, I have had an opportunity rare for former chairmen of the National Endowment for the Arts—the chance to create a research center engaging the very issues that fascinated me during my tenure with the endowment.

It was April 1968: I was out for lunch break with Jim and Mary, co-workers from the general accounting office where we worked in the University District. They were old hands in the office. I was new on staff and excited. This was my first real job out of high school after a string of just so-so jobs. There had been the eyeglass factory where I stood, eight hours a day for three months in a windowless basement knocking lead weights off newly polished eyeglass lenses with a mallet. A friend of my mother's had gotten me that job.

July 2004, 76 pages. The Community Arts Network

Download: The State of the Field of Community Cultural Development: Something New Emerges from the Community Arts Network.

Description and review is here.

2004. Centre for Creative Communities, 118 Commercial St., London E16NF, UK.

2004, 51 pages. Published by Pew Internet & American Life Project, 1100 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20036, 202-296-0019, www.pewinternet.org

Download Report: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2004/Artists-Musicians-and-the-Internet.aspx

2004, 88 pages, IBSN 0-8330-3650-5. Published by the RAND Corporation, 1700 Main Street, PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA, 90407-2138, 310-451-7002, www.rand.org

Download Report: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9058/

2004, 32 pages. Published by the Center for Arts and Culture, Suite 505, 819 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001-3772, 202-783-5277, www.culturalpolicy.org

This succinct booklet makes the case for the value of cultural diplomacy at this time when foreign opinion of the United States is extremely low, offers recommendations for improving cultural diplomacy, and summarizes other Center research on the topic.