GIA Blog

(7-15-10) From the Kentucky Arts Council:

With profound sorrow we announce the death of John Stoughton Benjamin. John was the director of arts education programs at the Kentucky Arts Council from April 1, 1990, until his retirement on April 1, 2008. Passionate about the arts, particularly theater and arts education, John shared his joy in the arts with everyone he met.

(7-15-10) "Thanks to a last-minute funding infusion from the Board of Supervisors, Los Angeles County's arts grants won't suffer a double-digit decrease in the fiscal year that began July 1," Mike Boehm reported in a July 14 Culture Monster post. The board approved a budget increase that has saved the grants program from the 10.6% cuts faced by many county operations, a result of revenue shortfalls. The grant budget, totaling $4.1 million, will fund museum and performance venues, arts groups, and the annual county-sponsored holiday concert.

(7-15-10) 21 grants totaling $3 million have been awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative (MICD 25). The announcement was made by NEA chairman Rocco Landesman from the base of the former Bethlehem Steel Plant known as SteelStacks Campus.

Among the cities receiving the largest grants from the program are Hartford, CT and Rochester, NY as well as Chicago, Il and San Francisco, CA.

(7-14-10) GIA is hosting a guest blog for John Kreidler, who is discussing Medici's Lever, an internet-based, interactive application co-designed by Kreidler and Steve Peterson.

Welcome to the hypothetical world of “Medici’s Lever”, an online suite consisting of two educational games and one simulation laboratory probing the subject of regional cultural policy. Within “Medici’s Lever”, you are in command of up to eight policy levers that can be deployed in infinite variety over a 40-year span.

Welcome to the hypothetical world of “Medici’s Lever”, an online suite consisting of two educational games and one simulation laboratory probing the subject of regional cultural policy. Within “Medici’s Lever”, you are in command of up to eight policy levers … Continue reading →

(7-13-10) A discussion has been underway this week at SocialEdge.org about Effective Disaster Response and hosted by Charles Maclean, founder of PhilanthropyNow. Many interesting questions are posed and discussed. Be sure to look over the Checklist for Effective Disaster Response, a pdf document authored by Mr. MacLean and G. Faruq Achikzad, CEO of the Raquim Foundation.

(7-13-10) Robert Hewison in The Art Newspaper:

To convince the public, and not just the government, an argument has to be made that shows that the arts are worth funding, in and for themselves. That calls for a more sophisticated form of cultural economics than is currently recognised at the Treasury. There is a market for culture, but culture does not depend on the market for its existence. The experiences the arts offer—pleasure, terror, insight, knowledge, release—are individual and hard to quantify, and these intrinsic aspects come before any attempt to translate them into economic terms.

John will be posting here for the next couple of weeks. Check in daily or subscribe to the RSS feed to keep the blog updates in your favorite news aggregator. This is the first in a series of guest blogs … Continue reading →

(7-9-10) This report, Native Arts and Cultures: Research, Growth and Opportunities for Philanthropic Support issued by the Ford Foundation, is “a guide to those interested in funding and supporting Native arts and cultures and in collaborating with Native communities.” It serves as a summary of the efforts by Elizabeth Theobald Richards to carry out the Indigenous Knowledge and Culture grant-making initiative from 2003-2009.

In much of what I’m involved with these days from discussions of improving arts education and the under-capitalization of the nonprofit world to increasing the value of the arts for average Americans, the word consensus keeps coming up. Mostly it comes up and then, like a hot potato, it gets thrown out. It’s a word that we’re hesitant to use as funders. Why is that? I have a couple of theories. Firstly, we in the arts want to be pretty open to all voices and respectful of one another’s uniqueness. This is a good thing.