2010 Conference

GIA’s 2010 Conference will be held October 17 – 20 at the Westin Michigan Avenue Hotel.

The 2010 conference co-chairs are GIA board members Peter Handler, program officer at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and Michelle Boone, program officer, culture, at The Joyce Foundation. A conference committee, now in formation, representing Chicago’s private, public and corporate funders and other members with a national perspective will oversee planning and implementation of the convening.

Chicago—with its rich cultural history and legacy steeped in the American entrepreneurial spirit—is the ideal location for the 2010 Grantmakers in the Arts annual conference, providing a wealth of artistic and philanthropic resources.

The process of discovery which infused and inspired the 2009 Brooklyn conference also laid the framework for the Chicago event. The GIA conference exists less as an isolated event than as a continuum. Each year, GIA builds on the lessons learned previously, while utilizing the backdrop and resources of its conference host city to give grantmakers from across the nation an opportunity to share knowledge around timely issues. The 2010 Chicago conference will provide a critically important opportunity for grantmakers to connect, reflect, and rededicate themselves to this important work.

The opportunity to begin the conference by bringing funders of comparable mission and scale together to articulate their needs and share best practices, and to conclude the conference with lessons learned during this process, was a highly successful innovation of the 2009 conference. The central issues identified during this process, and the interventions recommended, will infuse the sessions of the 2010 conference, as grantmakers dig deeper into the areas that have already been identified as priorities.

Interventions recommended as a result of this process include:

• Data gathering, tracking and evaluation
• Leadership development and mentoring
• Advocacy
• Innovation/experimentation
• Networks and collaborations
• Convenings
• Efforts to articulate and substantiate the value of the arts in and for communities

Collaborators identified to assist in this work include:

• Artists
• Other funders
• The media, including TV, radio and the press
• Youth groups
• Social service agencies
• Non-arts government agencies (transportation, education, economic development)
• Many “outliers” in different groups, including casinos, libraries and energy corporations
• Non-arts sectors, citing the value of other sectors to nurture and stimulate true innovation

Further information on the content and program of the 2010 conference will be on this page as it becomes available.