GIA Blog

From the National Endowment for the Arts: "On Wednesday, January 11, 2023, from 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm ET, Arts Endowment staff will conduct a webinar on the Grants for Arts Projects guidelines. The webinar will include an overview of the funding category and tips for applicants, as well as a Q&A session."

"Grants for Arts Projects is the principal grants program of the National Endowment for the Arts for organizations based in the United States. Through project-based funding, the program supports public engagement with, and access to, various forms of art across the nation, the creation of art, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life."

From Creative Generation: "During this episode of Why Change? co-hosts Ashraf and Jeff reflect on disrupting the field of community foundations through Ashraf’s interview with Celeste Smith, Senior Program Manager for Arts and Culture at The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Jonathan Cunningham, Senior Program Officer at Seattle Foundation. In this episode, you’ll hear conversations about systemic change in the way community foundations fund projects and smaller, BIPOC-led organizations, as well as how some foundations are funding beyond trauma and instead focusing on joy." Listen to the episode here.

From The White House: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. The arts, the humanities, and museum and library services are essential to the well-being, health, vitality, and democracy of our Nation. They are the soul of America, reflecting our multicultural and democratic experience. They further help us strive to be the more perfect Union to which generation after generation of Americans have aspired. They inspire us; provide livelihoods; sustain, anchor, and bring cohesion within diverse communities across our Nation; stimulate creativity and innovation; help us understand and communicate our values as a people; compel us to wrestle with our history and enable us to imagine our future; invigorate and strengthen our democracy; and point the way toward progress."

"At the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, we know that strong leadership is necessary to create a more equitable and vibrant New York City."

"We also know that many of the practices, systems, and structures, which sustain inequality in our communities, also show up in our organizations and our sector, limiting our view of who a leader is and what impactful leadership looks like. As such, while many organizations are eager to transition from white leaders to leaders of color, they often do not have the experience, expertise, commitment, or supports in place to fully embrace new leadership and make these transitions successful or joyful. Too often, it is the new leaders of color who pay the price for under-prepared organizations."

"As we continue to understand and move resources to directly support leaders of color during these transitions, we wanted to take a closer look at ourselves and our grantee community. Making (or Taking) Space seeks to inform our question: What, specifically, is the responsibility of organizations with white leaders transitioning out of these roles to support incoming leaders of color?"

From the Alliance for California Traditional Arts: "Every cultural community in the United States is rooted in a sense of belonging, shared by members, and anchored by collective wisdom and aesthetics. These roots of cultural heritage are maintained, strengthened, and expanded through the practice of folk and traditional arts. The realities of slavery, displacement, structural racism, systemic poverty, and cultural appropriation have tested the strength of these cultural roots. The stresses are even more apparent, viewed against our present-day national reckoning with these harms amidst a global pandemic. In this context, traditional arts practices are potent political acts of social belonging, power, and justice. From this field have emerged works and artists of beauty, technical prowess, and meaning."

Forecast Public Art has released Issue 5 of FORWARD, "a digital publication and conversation series from Forecast, a nonprofit that activates, inspires, and advocates for public art that advances justice, health, and human dignity." "FORWARD highlights how artists are partnering with cities, institutions, and communities to courageously tackle the vital issues of our time. This fifth issue, made in collaboration with NeighborWorks America, focuses on housing.

From the Toronto Arts Council: "As the newest wave of protests by Black bodies sets the world ablaze in 2020 once again, loudly demanding the right to live, work, play and in the case of this report, make art, organizations both public and private seem to be taking yet another step towards equity for Black bodies. Toronto Arts Council (TAC) is no exception and is showing leadership as it steps up to acknowledge its own shortcomings in support of Black Artists by designing a new grant program stream specifically for Black artists/arts organizations, which according to 90% of participants in the consultations that inform this report, is very much needed."

"The movement for reparations in the United States—a Black-led movement that began even before slavery’s end—is making unprecedented strides forward, and governments across the country are beginning to act. In October 2020, California became the first state to initiate an official task force to study and develop a reparations plan for Black Americans harmed by slavery and its legacies," said Aria Florant and Venneikia Williams for Nonprofit Quarterly. "In March 2021, the city council in Evanston, Illinois, approved the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program to address racial discrimination in housing. In April 2021, HR 40 was voted out of committee for the first time in its 32-year history. If passed, the bill would establish a commission to study the negative effects of slavery."

From the New York Times: "Maricruz Rivera Clemente’s community was among those hit hard by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017."

"She and her neighbors in Piñones, a neighborhood in Loíza on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, about 15 miles east of San Juan, were without power for months."

"And after seeing ecological damage she likened to an atomic bomb, Ms. Rivera Clemente, a social worker and sociologist, made a plan for her community organization to try to keep her neighbors safe in the future."

From the National Endowment for the Arts: "This profile features U.S. and state-level estimates of arts participation rates from the 2020 Arts Basic Survey. The Arts Basic Survey (ABS) is a short-form edition of the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA), which typically has been conducted on a five-year basis. The ABS and the SPPA are designed by the National Endowment for the Arts and fielded by the U.S. Census Bureau as a supplement to the Current Population Survey."