Readings

October 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

At the end of this year, Janet Brown will step down as president and CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts. She has led GIA for nine years, and under her leadership, membership in the organization has grown 34 percent, and its budget has nearly doubled. GIA’s influence has grown enormously in the field, and the organization has greatly expanded its programs, introducing webinars, research workshops, and forums on a wide variety of issues, including arts education, capitalization, cross-sector collaborations, racial equity, and support for individual artists.

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

For more than a decade, members of GIA have urged the Grantmakers for Education membership to better recognize the positive impact arts education classes and programs afford to good teaching, good learning, and an overall well-rounded education for students. Arts education advocates hoped to see more sessions at Grantmakers for Education conferences highlighting the value of arts education and more collaboration between arts education funders and education funders.

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

A society’s values are the basis upon which all else is built. These values and the ways they are expressed are a society’s culture. The way a society governs itself cannot be fully democratic without there being clear avenues for the expression of community values, and unless these expressions directly affect the directions society takes. These processes are culture at work.
— Jon Hawkes, The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

The primary thread in my professional life over the past thirty years has been an attempt to understand, engage, and foster innovation and creativity in professional practice, public service, and the arts. For fifteen years or so I worked with foundations as a teacher, trainer, and advisor, focusing on strategic grant making, innovation in philanthropy, portfolio development, and program evaluation.

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

Recently, Caroline served on the jury of a government arts council. Among the forms she had to fill out were the standard nondiscrimination forms required of any vendor doing business in this city. It gave her pause, as one individual, to agree that her “firm” would not discriminate against “its employees” on the basis of “Race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity (transgender status), domestic partner status, marital status, disability, AIDS/HIV status, height, weight.”

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

In many ways, it has been a heartening year for champions of the literary arts.

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June 9, 2017 by giarts-ts-admin

I pulled my car out of the driveway and parked in front of my neighbors’ house across the street. A few moments later, my friend, Marvin Morales, a thirty-one-year-old Guatemalan PhD student in biology at the University of Florida, opened the door. His right arm hung across his shirtless torso in a navy-blue sling. Across his collarbone there was a rectangular piece of gauze. I asked Marvin how he was feeling. Not good, he said. The pain in his shoulder had kept him up most of the night.

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