Sparked.com is an online portal of volunteers that have signed up to offer small amounts of time to complete web-based projects requested by nonprofits. Known as micro-volunteers, these individuals offer one or two hours a week to complete "Challenges" in the areas of technology, design, research, etc. Free for nonprofits (including arts nonprofits), it's an easy way to tap into a skilled volunteer network without committing a lot of time to volunteer management.
GIA Blog
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by Steve
From Abraham Ritchie at Art Works:
Like a ship heading towards open ocean, progressive art is constantly moving away from us. Culture does not slow down or stop when visual art is cut from school curricula or when art critics are fired from major newspapers. Rather it is the community that suffers, as the public becomes distanced from its own culture. Unaware of the innovations that are going on and why, the community can become alienated from art. The artists can also suffer, though they are still fundamentally connected to culture in ways that the public is not. Without critics, artists can pursue unproductive or backwards paths.
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From Zoe Fox at Mashable:
New platforms are allowing museums to break free of the confines of the academic ivory tower and engage with their communities like never before.
Ian Padgham, former social media guru of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says museums started flocking to social media in 2009. Museums initially used social media just to advertise events and exhibits, but quickly jumped into a world of interactive education and user generated content.
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by Tommer
The Arts Education rock festival enters its final week on Barry's Blog with the question:
How does the recent report from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities help to inform the public debate on arts education? What other new research data is out there (FRSS, NEA, WESTAF etc).
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From Ariel Schwartz at Fast Company:
Burning Man—that once-a-year sojourn to the Nevada desert—is much more than a hedonistic experiment in self-reliance, art, the sharing economy, and psychotropic drugs. It's also an event that has spawned a tight-knit worldwide community that has created a number of Burning Man-related organizations, including Burners Without Borders, Black Rock Solar, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation (a group that brings public art installations to cities). It's only fitting that the Burning Man community's latest do-gooder venture—the Burning Man Project—will work on revitalizing a down-and-out area of San Francisco, Burning Man's home city.
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From Steve Lohr in The New York Times:
Shared value is an elaboration of the notion of corporate self-interest — greed, if you will. The idea that companies can do well by doing good is certainly not new. It is an appealing proposition that over the years has been called “triple bottom line” (people, planet, profit), “impact investing” and “sustainability” — all describing corporate initiatives that address social concerns including environmental pollution, natural-resource depletion, public health and the needs of the poor.
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From Azeem Azhar, founder and CEO of Peer Index, on gigaom.com:
Marketers have long believed that some customers have a disproportionate influence on others when it comes to purchase decisions, and they have tried different strategies to identify and target those customers. Indeed McKinsey & Co. reckons 20-50 percent of purchases involve a peer reference.
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by Tommer
Poet Philip Levine is to be named the next US Poet Laureate.
“He’s the laureate, if you like, of the industrial heartland,” said James Billington, librarian of Congress. “It’s a very, very American voice. I don’t know that in other countries you get poetry of that quality about the ordinary workingman.”
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Barry's second question for the policy panel:
Many contend that arts education advocacy has largely been a failure. Others disagree. Where are the successes? Where will funding come from in the future to implement policy?
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Full details of the GIA 2011 Conference Sessions are now available from the conference website. You can now see when individual session will occur and who the presenters will be, as well as any online resources associated with them.