Public Policy & Advocacy

Grantmakers in the Arts holds public policy and advocacy as one of its core funding focus areas and believes one of the most important roles we can serve in benefitting our members and the arts grantmaking community – maximizing the impact our sector can have toward increasing access to the arts and realizing racial justice through the arts – comes by way of our public policy and advocacy work. In GIA’s vision for the future, foundations have shifted their foci to increasingly include advocacy and public sector policy and practice.

As part of realizing this vision, we provide programs to teach our members about advocacy and lobbying, the difference between the two, and how grantmakers can support both. GIA advocates for lifelong learning through the arts from early childhood through K-12 and into senior years. Knowing that the arts and arts education cannot be provided without artists, we necessarily advocate for economic justice for artists and other workers.

We are committed to invigorate funding and support for arts education within federal policy, and defend that every resident has access to the arts as part of well-rounded, life-long education. Over the past several years, raising the visibility of the arts in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in its legislative form. GIA and Penn Hill Group continue these advocacy efforts around the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), guiding GIA members and their grantees in advocating for new or expanded arts programs at their local schools and districts. Organized since 2012, GIA’s Arts Education Funders Coalition (AEFC) has worked to address identified needs in comprehensive arts education and to strengthen communication and networking among arts education funders.

The AEFC includes members from Americans for the Arts, Arts Education Partnership, Center for Cultural Innovation, The George Gund Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Wallace Foundation, among others. Advised by a committee of Coalition members, GIA engaged the services of Washington, D.C.-based Penn Hill Group, a firm with education policy expertise and experience working with diverse education groups to research, develop, and promote educational policy strategies.

Most recently, GIA worked with Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) on the development of the Arts Education for All Act, the broadest arts education policy bill ever introduced in Congress. In Spring 2021, GIA influenced the U.S. Department of Education to highlight the importance of equitable access to arts and culture when determining how to reopen schools. Additionally, GIA emphasized the need to make explicit how this access was racialized prior to the pandemic. Addressing this inequity was essential to effective reopening and remains essential to the adequate provision of comprehensive, well-rounded education.

GIA advocates and lobbies for lifelong learning. GIA is delighted that, in 2020, Congress passed the Supporting Older Americans Act including our recommendations that the Administration on Aging include the arts in the issues to be identified and addressed and be included among supportive services for older Americans.

GIA continues to advocate and lobby for economic justice for workers, including artists. GIA has successfully lobbied to include arts-related provisions in the Child Care for Working Families Act, which proposes to better help low-income families pay for childcare and expand high-quality state preschool options. GIA advocated for AmeriCorps to make national volunteer service more accessible by offering an increase in living allowances. We have also called for arts grantmakers to advocate for portable benefits for workers and has released a call for our stakeholders to endorse the Portable Benefits for Independent Workers Pilot Program Act. GIA advocates for changing public policies to allow people with disabilities, including artists, to secure greater resources for their work without being rendered ineligible for public supports and is endorsing the re-introduced SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act. The bill raises the limits on assets people with disabilities can hold before being disqualified from public benefits while also indexing those limits to inflation.

GIA is realizing our vision is through the GIA Cultural Policy Learning Series and Action Lab, which focuses on such issues as racial equity & transformational practice in the public sector, translating between sectors and planning toward action.

GIA is eager to continue informing the field’s support for advocacy, to advocate for national policies that enhance lifelong access to the transformative power of arts and culture that create economic justice for artists and other workers.

September 30, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

Background
The cultural sector does not exist in a vacuum. It is being challenged by major demographic, economic, technological, and social factors outside its immediate control. While the commercial arts and individual artists are also struggling to adapt to these changes, for a variety of reasons the nonprofit arts sector has been particularly slow to respond effectively.

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August 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

"I believe that if we can keep our values close, our imaginations open, and our stories fierce, we can and will win." - Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Introduction

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

2005, 158 pages. Arts Education Partnership , One Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20001-1431, 202-336-7016, aep@ccsso.org

The Arts Education Partnership's new book, Third Space: when learning matters, should be required reading for anyone involved in what promises to be a lively and contentious debate around the 2007 reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

2006, 114 pages. Published by the University of Minnesota, Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics (PRIE). Funded by the McKnight Foundation and the Fesler-Lampert Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs, University of Minnesota.

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

2005, 24 pages. Washington State Arts Commission, 711 Capitol Way S. Suite 600, PO Box 42675, Olympia, WA 98504-2675, 360-753-3860, info@arts.wa.gov

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

2006, 326 pages. United for a Fair Economy, 29 Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108, 617-423-2148, info@faireconomy.org

A thorough history outlining the ways US government policy has shaped the ways different racial groups have accumulated and maintained wealth with chapters devoted to Native Americans, Latinos, African-Americans, Asian Americans, and Europeans Americans. The concluding chapter offers policy recommendations on ways to share prosperity.

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

2004. Freepress, 100 Main St, P.O. Box 28, Northampton, MA 01061, 877-888-1533

Download PDF here

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts, 520 8th Avenue, Suite 302, New York, NY 10018, (212) 268-3337

This handbook outlines best practices that arose from the Partners in Excellence Initiative to promote arts education partnerships between community and public schools. The guide begins by defining a partnership, continues with how to build and sustain one, and concludes with a chapter on evaluation and assessment. PDF available for download at website.

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

Beginning in 1999, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched a global initiative to strengthen arts education. In 2003, Portuguese delegates to the United Nations called for a global conference to address this aim, resulting in the first-ever World Conference on Arts Education. The World Conference brought together 1,200 artists, educators, policy makers, and researchers from over ninety-seven countries in Lisbon, Portugal from March 6-9, 2006.

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July 31, 2006 by giarts-ts-admin

These thoughts were sparked by attending the Council on Foundations 57th Annual Conference, "Philanthropy: Investing in the Vision of Progress." I was especially engaged by the plenary remarks of George Soros and Newt Gingrich.

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