From the beginning, the goal of the NAMP program has been to connect, strengthen, and advance our nation’s growing community of arts marketers. The new website provides arts marketers with an improved and dynamic digital space to grow and connect in their community, with four distinct spaces to get smarter, get together, get involved, and get inspired. 

Vans invites high school art students throughout the country to join in the eighth annual Vans Custom Culture art competition to embrace youth creativity and support arts education. Starting today, high school art teachers can register their classes to compete for the grand prize of $50,000 towards their art program by creating their most artistic and inventive designs using blank Vans shoes as their canvas.

As Congress and the Trump Administration prepare the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2018, Americans for the Arts is working to remind our elected officials about the economic importance of federal funding for the arts, specifically through the National Endowment for the Arts. This morning, ads appeared in the New York Post and The Hill newspapers with the bold headline “The Arts Put America to Work.”

On Tuesday, November 8, voters in California, Colorado, and Florida cast ballots in favor or against measures to improve access to and support for arts education. Read more information below on the results.

Arizona

Sahuarita Unified School District—Proposition 451 & 452

Today, at an event held at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE), part of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) announced the expansion of their partnership and military healing arts program into Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network. 

Americans for the Arts today announces six additions to its 38-member Board of Directors. The group collectively includes leaders in the areas of cultural policy, business, innovation, and the arts.

On Tuesday, November 15, 2016, First Lady Michelle Obama hosted a reception and performance at the White House to honor the 2016 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award recipients.

Americans for the Arts is proud to announce the seventh installment in The pARTnership Movement essay series, "Embrace Diversity and Team Building," featuring case studies from Travelers in Minneapolis and ShoreTel in Sunnyvale, CA.

In Greenville, Calif.—population 1,200—the local junior/senior high school has not been able to purchase new books since the 1990s. But all that is changing, thanks to an online campaign that's gone viral.

At a time when the number of pedestrian traffic deaths is increasing as urban residents are encouraged to walk and bike more, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is committing to creativity and innovation by hiring a sound artist to help fix the issue.

At the intersection of 60th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard in West Oakland, California, is a huge wall-length mural titled “Silence the Violence,” containing the names of every Oakland homicide victim from 2013. The mural, painted on the side of a screenprinting shop, shows owner Aswad Hayes screaming out in anguish as two guns are pointed at him, his arms outstretched to the side.

The City of Santa Monica Community and Cultural Services Department has hired Shannon Daut to lead its Cultural Affairs Division.

The California State Senate Education Committee heard testimony today on SB 916, the Theatre and Dance Act (which legislators have dubbed "TADA!") that would establish single-subject credentials for dance and theater. The committee members voted in unanimous support, 9-0, and one senator called it "absolute[ly] awesome."

In California State Senator Ben Allen (D – Santa Monica)—the chair of the Joint Committee on the Arts—introduced Senate Bill 916 on January 27 to establish single-subject teaching credentials for dance and theatre. Also known as the Theatre and Dance Act, the bill was proposed in response to concerns raised at a hearing of the Joint Committee on the Arts held last fall about the lack of stand-alone credentials for dance and theatre. Sen.

The Los Angeles Youth Orchestra will be included in the half-time show of this year’s Super Bowl.  Music Director, Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will conduct a group of students from this El Sistema inspired program.

Vans and Americans for the Arts envision a country where every child has access to—and takes part in—high quality learning experiences in the arts, both in school and in the community. As such, the two organizations partnered to create the Custom Culture Grant Program to promote awareness and support arts education in public schools. Today the partners announced that eight schools across the country that have been awarded a $2,500 grant for the 2015-2016 school year. 

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives formally agreed to form a conference committee to reauthorize the federal K-12 education law (Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA), which has been expired since 2007.

The rule in today’s House floor debate formally allowed the House to request a conference with the Senate.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the launch of the city’s new Creative Catalyst Artist in Residence Program, facilitated by Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA). The program will place artists to work within city departments to incorporate creative thinking in Los Angeles's approach to civic issues. 

Last night, at a ceremony and reception held at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC, The Ovation Foundation, the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and Americans for the Arts recognized eight schools as recipients of the innOVATION STEAM Grant Awards. The innOVATION STEAM Grant Awards acknowledged public K-12 model STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) programs in an effort to raise awareness about the importance of integrating the arts into educational curriculum.

Americans for the Arts wants you to elect art professionals from the field to serve on one of four network advisory councils: Arts Education, Emerging Leaders, Private Sector, and

On October 7, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 189 into law; the legislation will allow the California Arts Council (CAC) to designate areas cultural districts. The bill’s sponsor Assemblymember Richard Bloom said, “Designating areas with vibrant creative communities as Cultural Districts will not only celebrate California’s diverse cultural landscape, but will also help to draw economic development and tourism to local economies.”

Americans for the Arts invites all Americans to celebrate October as National Arts & Humanities Month (NAHM). Towns and communities across the country are hosting special events that capture the spirit that the arts and humanities bring to everyday life. 

The rising cost of housing and work spaces is a problem that is rapidly threatening arts professionals. In San Francisco, the San Francisco Arts Commission conducted a survey which polled nearly 600 sculptors, painters, musicians, writers, filmmakers and painters. The results showed that 70% said they had been displaced or were being displaced from their homes, workplaces, or both; 28% reported that they were at risk of being displaced imminently. 

Turnaround Arts and Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts announce a national partnership to support arts-integrated learning in early childhood classrooms across the country. Through in-class services for young children, ongoing training for educators, and resource development for the early childhood community at-large, the two organizations will work together to use the arts as a tool to improve student outcomes and school culture.

Blue Line Arts, a Roseville, CA-based gallery, arts education, and cultural facility recently announced its acquisition of select programs of the Arts & Business Council of Sacramento (SacABC).

The programs that Blue Line Arts will continue to operate, starting in 2016, include Prelude to the Season, an annual arts excellence awards show; and Flywheel, and incubator that trains artists to hone practical business skills.

When it opens in the fall of 2016, Sacramento’s new downtown arena Golden Center 1 will be home to five public art installations worth $9.3 million. While Sacramento City Council initially received praise for integrating public art in the new arena, they received much backlash in March 2015 when they first selected New York City artist Jeff Koons’s Coloring Book sculpture—with a price tag of $8 million. Local artists condemned the City Council’s lack of support of the city’s own talent pool.

A coalition of construction company firms in Oakland, Ca. is suing the city over its public art ordinance, which requires construction firms to spend between 0.5% and 1% of any construction project’s budget on public art. Called the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area (BIA), the coalition represents about 300 builders, contractors, suppliers, and others within the Bay Area housing sector.