GIA Blog

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Steve

From a Lawrence Journal-World editorial:

The Kansas Arts Commission still exists, but it has no money and no staff to administer its program. Judging from last week’s meeting, it also appears that commission members have little idea how they will move forward.
Posted on August 8, 2011 by Steve

Barry Hessenius's blog at Westaf has spent the past two weeks focused on Arts Education in the context of Practice and Fieldbuilding. This week the discussion turns to Policy with a new panel of respondents:

  • Janet Brown, Executive Director, Grantmakers in the Arts
  • Cyrus Driver, Program Learning and Innovation, Ford Foundation
  • Bob Lynch, President and CEO, Americans for the Arts
  • Narric Rome, Senior Director for Federal Affairs and Arts Education, Americans for the Arts
  • Laurie Schell, outgoing Executive Director, California Alliance for Arts Education
Posted on August 5, 2011 by Steve

The latest addition to the National Endowment for the Arts web site is a full section devoted to the Our Town Communities where you will find photos and more information about the 51 creative placemaking projects recently awarded NEA grants to support community development through the arts and design.

http://www.arts.gov/national/ourtown/

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Steve

Nonprofit arts organizations are invited to attend two webcasts—on Thursday, August 11 and Friday, August 12—about funding opportunities through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC). OSHC recently issued two Notices of Funding Availability (NOFA) for their FY 2011 Community Challenge Grants Program ($95 million in grants available) and FY 2011 Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program ($28 million available).

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Steve

This week's beat is Fieldbuilding, and the second question posed to the participants is this:

How is the field addressing barriers to arts education beyond budget decreases – the need for relevant assessment and accountability methods, lack of equity and access, high turnover of education and arts leadership, the unspoken territorial divide between arts education people and the general nonprofit arts sector, and the history of the arts education segment’s ability to organize itself? How do we get to innovation in the field?
Posted on August 3, 2011 by Steve

From Lisa Chiu and Suzanne Perry at The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

A new law to increase the debt-ceiling limit does not make any changes in the tax deduction that donors receive for making charitable gifts...

“We assume that the new committee will certainly consider the cap on deductions,” said Jason Lee, a lawyer for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, a trade group that is opposed to reducing the value of the charitable deduction. “So we’re working under the premise that we still have our work cut out for us.”

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Steve

From Robin Pogebrin in The New York Times:

Who knew that government funding for the arts would represent the kind of common ground where Republicans and Democrats could meet?

But when Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina tried to zero out money for the arts in her state budget last month, both parties said no. The House and the Senate, both controlled by Republicans, voted to override the Republican governor’s veto of $1.9 million in funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission. The House vote was 105-8; the Senate 32-6.

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Tommer

Enjoy the first cut "Overture" on this awesome album.

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Janet

Sometimes the very ingredients that offered success in one political and economic climate become liabilities or less successful when politics and economics change. That’s what’s happened in the arts at the federal policy level. Fifty years ago, America was feeling pretty damn good about itself, post WWII boom had occurred, industry was skyrocketing and we were going to the moon. If we could do that, we, as a society, could do anything. This was the political outlook on American life in the early 60s.

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Tommer

Here's an amazing site that provides a great deal of information on cultural policy and cultural funding for 43 European countries.