Between 2006 and 2008, the Social Impact of the Arts Project, a research group at the University of Pennsylvania (SIAP), collaborated with The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a community development financial institution, on an investigation of the creative sector's potential contribution to neighborhood economic and community development.
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Classical musics are comparatively rare; they seem to need for their existence not only a leisured class able to command a quantity of surplus resources but also a situation where that class is to some degree isolated from the majority of the people and possesses the social power to represent its own tastes as superior.
"I believe that if we can keep our values close, our imaginations open, and our stories fierce, we can and will win." - Thenmozhi Soundararajan
Introduction
America is on the threshold of a significant transformation in cultural life. There have been many cultural shifts in recorded history: Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and the rise of the reading public; the growth of a mercantile class and the birth of private art markets independent of the church and the king; the invention of gas streetlights and the beginning of urban nighttime entertainment. The most recent cultural transformation, still with us today, was set in motion on the threshold of the twentieth century.
As Tia Oros Peters so eloquently states in her essay that follows, there is no particular word for art in the thousands of Indigenous languages of the world. While there are hundreds of Native American languages, the same holds true; Native Americans do not and cannot separate the importance of art and culture from everyday life. It is one goal of GIA's Indigenous People's Network to bring this important way of life to the fore of grantmakers' thinking.
This essay is based on a key note address given on Tuesday, October 29, 2002. The talk was preceded by a short media presentation that told the story of Angels in America in Charlotte through sound and images.
The following essay was jointly commissioned by Grantmakers in the Arts for its 2002 annual conference and by the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities as one in its series of Translation Papers.
Introduction
On November 12, 2000, a headline on the front page of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution read, "Study finds Atlanta arts community trailing peers." A full-page story in Section A followed. This one headline challenged the city's cherished self-assessment as "cultural jewel of the South" and quietly affirmed the suspicions of many of its artists and cultural workers.
This is the story about the headline, the study, and the volunteer efforts of an incorporated ad hoc group that calls itself the Atlanta Arts Think Tank and that commissioned the landmark study.