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Setting the Stage
With a population of over 2.3 million and one-in-four residents being foreign-born, Houston is the most ethnically diverse metro area in the nation. The city’s arts programs and cultural offerings are robust in number and breadth, and its vibrancy unfolds along the numerous bayous and highways. Most years see 11 to 16 million visitors traveling to the city for arts and cultural events. Houston’s nonprofit arts and culture sector, a $1.1 billion industry, employs more than 25,000 people.
Appendix C: Committee Sound-bytes, Impetus
Deep Context: My approach to data is “deep context”; I see value in understanding what is beneath the data. I think context is what helps determine future courses of action, which result in systemic solutions.
The full transcript of this podcast is published below.
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“Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets.”
— W. Edwards Deming (possibly apocryphal)
Cultural equity is critical to the arts and culture sector’s long-term viability, as well as to the ability of the arts to contribute to healthy, vibrant, equitable communities for all. At the core of the challenges related to cultural equity are the historically inequitable distribution of resources and the value systems, biases, and systemic barriers associated with that distribution.
I am honored to have this opportunity to interview Gary Steuer, president and CEO of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. Gary is a respected colleague, a member of Grantmakers in the Arts’ board of directors, and co-chair of the GIA Denver Conference Planning Committee for the upcoming annual conference. I am pleased to note that Bonfils-Stanton has been embracing equity in their support of Denver’s nonprofit community, including its arts organizations.
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For the past decade, landmark research has begun proving what many creatives have long known: the arts have an equity problem. And it is widespread. Despite cultural phenomena like the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, asymmetries are ubiquitous in the production and consumption of the arts.