Grantmakers in the Arts

March 17, 2012 by Steve

From Patricia Cohen at The New York Times:

Online financial crowd-sourcing of artists still represents only a smidgen of the more than $8 billion that private individuals donate to the arts each year. Nonetheless, the speedy proliferation of such Web sites has attracted notice. “Everybody right now is looking for ways to exploit technology to maximize and customize the ways people engage with the arts,” said Sunil Iyengar, research director at the National Endowment for the Arts.

Dudley Cocke on Art and Political Power

March 16, 2012 by Steve

The Friday installment of the weeklong Clout: A Blogfest on Art and Political Power is penned by Dudley Cocke, artistic director of Roadside Theater and a former GIA Board member:

...So the question is: What would it take for a theater like Roadside to have real political clout? Part of the answer: For low income, working class, and middle class audience members like ours to have real political clout.

This raises the question of how, in our democracy, the majority of us have become subjugated to a wealthy minority of us. When we talk about the arts gaining political power, I think this is the bigger problem we need to address, and I’m worried that we’ve lost the democratic infrastructure to pursue a solution.

March 15, 2012 by Steve

Ariel Schwartz for Co.Exist:

Stick a bunch of artists, web designers, developers, and hackers in a room, and what do you get? A visual and acoustic representation of Bay Area earthquake data, a sound collage of randomly dialed phone numbers, and on-the-fly digital art created from MP3 files.

March 15, 2012 by Steve

The latest installment of the online discussion Clout: A Blogfest on Art and Political Power is Ra Joy, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois:

The best way to move the needle on arts policy issues (whether it’s Barry’s NEA budget or Arlene’s WPA 2.0 idea) is to create strong grassroots and grasstops networks that transcend age, race, ethnicity, geography, and other factors.

March 15, 2012 by Steve

Theatre Bay Area has published Counting New Beans: Intrinsic Impact and the Value of Art, a book that builds from “Measuring the Intrinsic Impact of Live Theatre,” the final report of a two-year national research study, prepared by research firm WolfBrown. Interviews with 20 prominent artistic directors, as well as essays by Diane Ragsdale, Arlene Goldbard, Rebecca Novick and others, are all available in the book.

Boston's Expansion of Arts Education

March 14, 2012 by Steve

From Marjorie Pritchard at Boston.com:

At a time of great stress on Boston’s school budget, private philanthropists and charitable foundations launched an initiative to raise $10 million to increase access, equity and quality of arts learning for all students. The city and its schools stepped up with increased public funding for arts teachers... This year, 14,000 more Boston students are experiencing the arts in schools than three years ago. Nine of 10 students in the elementary and middle grades now receive weekly, year-long arts instruction in school, up from two-thirds in 2009. In the same period, twice as many high school students are accessing arts learning during the school day.

Lisa Cremin Receives Nexus Award

March 13, 2012 by Steve

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (ACAC) announced that Lisa Cremin is the recipient of the third annual Nexus Award. Cremin is the founding director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund at The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. She will receive the Nexus Award at a celebration at ACAC on Thursday, May 24, 2012.

Read the full announcement.

Clout Observations from Roberto Bedoya

March 13, 2012 by Steve

First up to respond to the discussion points brought forth yesterday by Barry Hessenius and Arlene Goldbard is Roberto Bedoya, executive director of the Tucson Pima Arts Council:

So advocacy for me is not about arts advocacy, it advocating for and defending the very meaning of public—of the public good embedded in civil society. I believe strongly that my charge is to build and defend civil society through the tools at my disposal—the creative community that the arts council serves and our collective passionate belief in democracy. It also has to deal with how complicity is constructed through laws and policy that says you belong, you don’t belong. How the cultural sector plays into the politics of belong/dis-belonging is a charged topic that we must engage in with more rigor and vigor, if we want our advocacy efforts to have weight and soul.

Podcast #50: Black Arts Funding In 2023

Grantmakers in the Arts hosted the first GIA Black Arts Funding Summit in December of 2022. This virtual gathering of 113 artists, arts administrators, and funders allowed attendees to acknowledge and understand the long histories of exclusion, disenfranchisement, and disendowing in the philanthropic sector. One year later, we are continuing the conversation with two funders and elevating new considerations after one year. We are glad to have Rasu Jilani, executive director of Brooklyn Arts Council, and Anthony Simmons, senior director of Institutional Partnerships, Resilia, joining us to share their thoughts on what’s next for Black arts funding and what that means for equity and self-determination.

GIA · #50: Black Arts Funding In 2023

ALL PODCASTS

Black Arts Funding Summit

On December 13, the Black Arts Funding Summit featured experts across fields and industries who have directly shaped institutional policy and established new practices that support Black liberatory futures.

Explore the conference blog

Explore Solidarity Economy resources here

Videos from the GIA 2022 Conference are now available for streaming.