Readings

Creative expression is a basic human right. It is, in fact, the trait that makes us human. This philosophy motivated everything Professor Robert E. Gard did. The concept is so profound and innately logical that when I came to work with him in 1963 I adopted it without question.

The 1960s was a time of ferment and creation on so many fronts. In the arts, we note explosive growth in the number of significant professional arts institutions as well as countless locally based arts organizations, from chamber orchestras to theater companies; the birth and growth of culturally specific arts groups and arts centers; the creation of arts groups in support of, and arising from, the civil rights movement; the rapid increase in the number of community arts councils, especially in small cities; the birth of Community Arts Councils, Inc.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase cultural policy? Given the GIA Reader’s audience, I imagine answers that run the gamut from dry-as-dust studies to brilliant proposals for weaving new cultural fabric.

But in my role as Chief Policy Wonk for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC), when I set out to write about our new generative cultural policy proposals in An Act of Collective Imagination: The First Two Years of the USDAC’s Action Research, I had a whole different audience in mind: people who may never have heard the phrase before.

At October’s GIA preconference “Measuring Impact and Translating Value: Support for Individual Artists,” more than six dozen funders convened to share their experiences supporting individual artists and to ponder how to gauge and communicate the results. The Jerome Foundation’s Eleanor Savage and Tucson Pima Arts Council’s Roberto Bedoya shepherded an agenda that included five artists speaking about their work and careers.

Those who can, do…and teach the arts.

Bring Your Art. Bring Your Heart. Teach.

I am a teaching artist. That’s why there is so much crap in my car.

The following is an abridged report prepared for Grantmakers in the Arts from The Summit on Creativity and Aging in America, held in collaboration with the 2015 White House Conference on Aging on May 18, 2015, at the National Endowment for the Arts. The summit was co-presented by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Center for Creative Aging.