Co-Chair Transitions:
After serving three years as the co-chair of our committee, Michael Royce of the New York Foundation for the Arts, stepped down at the end of 2012. We thanked Michael for his leadership and his unswerving commitment to supporting artists. We then welcomed Rose Parisi of the Illinois Arts Council as the new co-chair who will serve along with Esther Grimm from 3Arts. Later in 2013, several new members will be announced, along with a new name for the committee.
GIA’s Individual Artists Research Project:
After receiving a great deal of feedback from funders at the GIA 2012 Conference and the Support for Individual Artists Preconference, this project will be honed to reflect both the process of data collection and the desired results. The next steps in 2013 will be to draft a proposed standard taxonomy for individual artist support, as well as proposed demographic data fields, and to solicit input from a broad range of individual artist funders on these standards. Our committee will hear more about the final direction of the research project at our next meeting in January, including a demonstration of what some of the possible end results of this work could be.
Other Conferences:
Our committee continues to seek opportunities to present at conferences across all sectors and we discussed upcoming deadlines for session proposals. Three committee members have submitted artist-centric proposals for the Americans for the Arts conference and will alert the committee when they have been notified of the results of their applications.
Open Dialogue on 2013 Activities:
The committee ended the year with an open conversation to generate ideas for advancing the field in 2013. The discussion began with a review of the input we received during our committee’s breakfast roundtable session at GIA’s 2012 Conference, when several members requested further information about, for example, award selection processes (open application vs. nomination-jury)—and other funding-101 topics that constitute the “classic conundrums” of the field. It was agreed that the committee would explore ideas for using GIA’s interest area webpage to post information in a user-friendly format.