The arts and culture sector continues to have conversations on multiple levels about how to advance the causes of equity, inclusion, and diversity. The discussion is not new, but the momentum toward implementing clear action steps is building. A new level of understanding of the ways in which racial and social inequities are the result of complex systemic issues has given rise to a realization that the path to truly effective solutions will require deep, and deeply challenging, institutional change.
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The GIA Library is an information hub that includes articles, research reports, and other materials covering a wide variety of topics relevant to the arts and arts funding. These resources are made available free to members and non-members of GIA. Users can search by keyword or browse by category for materials to use in research and self-directed learning. Current arts philanthropy news items are available separately in our news feed - News from the Field.
Social movements need the arts. Should we ask tougher questions to optimize their influence?
Creative voices, widely and rightfully credited as moving “hearts and mind,” are increasingly understood as playing a core role in speaking to, supporting, or even triggering broader social change. Talented storytellers are disrupting the status quo, fostering new connections, challenging dominant narratives, sharing bold visions for equitable and joyful futures, and creating vehicles for action.
“Is the stadium we passed going up or coming down?” asked Kristen Calhoun, ArtChangeUS founding program director. Suddenly the previously strained community meeting we were attending came alive. Kristen and I were in Detroit in July 2016 to plan ArtChangeUS REMAP: Detroit, and we had repeatedly driven by the mass of steel girders, not knowing if it represented Detroit’s past or future. Artist and activist Invincible ill Weaver had organized a series of gatherings for us to meet with grassroots cultural change makers.
As a new administration enters our nation’s White House, it is timely to reflect on the way that private philanthropy and public foundations joined forces to step into the gap when federal funding for the arts was dramatically reduced in the early 1990s.
Enriching our culture and engaging diverse and underserved communities, small arts organizations pop up, flourish, and sometimes flounder, mostly under the philanthropic radar. They often foster artistic expressions not adequately served by larger organizations.