Advocacy and Public Policy

From National Endowment for the Arts:
"We invite you to join us in sending the below letter to the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in support of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)."

"Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts joined more than 90 federal agencies in releasing its Equity Action Plan to the public, and shared the plan with stakeholders and partners."

“When we fight pipelines, when we fight oil projects, when we fight all of the extractive development that harms our mother, we don’t do that just for ourselves,” Krystal Two Bulls says, director of the LANDBACK Campaign within the Indigenous advocacy organization NDN Collective in Grist. Elaborating, “We do that so we can all actually have an earth to live on in the future. So that future generations that aren’t even born yet have an earth to come to.”

A new bipartisan bill in Congress proposes a $300 million federal grants and commissions program for art workers. The Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA) is "a joint effort between hundreds of cultural organizations to stimulate the creative economy through public art projects across the United States,” pens Billy Anania in Hyperallergic.

This week’s NEA podcast is featuring NEA Chair Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson. Chair Jackson is no stranger to the Arts Endowment having had a great deal of first-hand experience with the agency as she has served on the National Council on the Arts since 2013. She comes to the position of chair with years of experience in comprehensive community building that focuses on the centrality of the arts. Chair Jackson shares her thoughts about the arts, an artful life, and the Arts Endowment at this time of reopening, rethinking, and reimagining the arts landscape.

"Federal arts funding in the United States is something of a sore subject: in comparison to other places around the world, creatives in this country function in near-perpetual states of uncertainty, striving endlessly to be afforded the security of a grant or gallery representation," writes Helen Holmes in the Observer.

Hyperallergic writes about the Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA), a new bipartisan bill in Congress that proposes a $300 million federal grants and commissions program for art workers. "The act is a joint effort between hundreds of cultural organizations to stimulate the creative economy through public art projects across the United States," states the article.

The Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture announced artist and community organizer Patrisse Cullors has joined its Arts Commission, the LA County Board of Supervisors’ longstanding advisory body for the arts.

A blog post published by the Wallace Foundation explains "Five Things State and District Leaders Need to Know Now" about the American Rescue Plan, the federal government’s third major COVID-19 relief bill that "provides nearly $2 trillion to support the nation’s efforts to reopen and recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Included is more than $126 billion for K-12 schools and additional funding for early childhood and higher education."

The Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA), a bill to authorize and appropriate a $300 million modern WPA/CETA program for creative workers, was recently submitted to the clerk in the House.