Arts Intranet

During one hospital visit, Dylan mentioned that he had always wanted to film the beautiful view from UF Health’s adult oncology unit on the eighth floor. He asked me if I would like to collaborate on it. At first, I almost said no. Then, I reconsidered, since I had little else to occupy my time. Over the course of several weeks, I captured footage from five different hospital stays. Some days, I would get frustrated while struggling to set up the tripod and getting the white balance right. But, at least I was frustrated about something besides my chemo for an hour. 

This week, Americans for the Arts is sharing the diverse arts and health experiences of five Assistant Scholars and Lecturers at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine in Gainesville. You will read of the joint experience of both patient and artist, the benefits of storytelling among children engaged in a journey of treatment, and the challenge of shaping healthy lifestyles among teenagers with theater, as well as two stories of the arts and healing for Veterans.

In Nashville, baseball season just opened at First Tennessee Park, home of the Nashville Sounds. But baseball won’t be the only attraction at the park. The stadium is also home to a one-of-a-kind mini golf course that was designed entirely by artists. “Going to a gallery or museum can be intimidating especially for those that haven’t grown up with access to great art. This project was a great way to provide that access for people to experience outside of those parameters in their daily life.”

As artists and arts educators, we are keenly aware of what it feels like to be under siege. Our arts programs are interwoven into the fabric of our communities, and even in the face of challenges continue to thrive. We can’t imagine our communities without our arts programs, and thus we have become masters at articulating their profound reach. It’s ingrained in our role as arts educators to fight for the importance, continued relevance, and impact of what we do. And what makes me particularly proud is seeing the inherent drive that emerges in my students when they’re tasked with defending the powerful influence of the arts in their lives.

In his op-ed (“The case for cutting National Endowment of the Arts funding,” April 2), David D’Amato states that “Government-funded art is publicly-funded art only once government is lazily conflated with the public. It is not the public (whatever indeed that may mean) that decides which art projects are to be supported with taxpayer dollars.” That statement is simply inaccurate. Mr. D’Amato must be unaware that the public is embedded in the entire grantmaking process at the NEA. This in part is why the NEA has received wide support from both Republicans and Democrats for half a century. 

Louisville Arts Link features a continuous feed of every imaginable local arts event. Previously only available in a physical format, the Arts Card allows users to support Fund for the Arts directly and receive special offers like discounts and first opportunity to purchase tickets for events. There are endless possibilities for the future of the app and with the help of our skill-based volunteers and committed partners like Humana Inc., we’ll be able to achieve those goals. 

Decades ago, one thought arts and medicine mixed like water and vinegar. Today, more people recognize the power of the arts. Patients have claimed that doctors heal them through medicine, but the arts heal their souls. NOAH aims to honor the history and mission of former arts and health alliances: “To promote the incorporation of the arts as an appropriate, integral component of health care by 1) demonstrating the valuable role of the arts in enhancing the healing process, 2) integrating the arts in the planning, design, and operation of health care facilities, and 3) developing and managing arts programming for health care populations.” 

This first-of-its-kind skill-building initiative combines best practices with new trends to give you and your organization the confidence to compete within the state's diverse and exciting arts space.

Realizations about trends in our field like multiple hat syndrome helped inspire a new program to support, strengthen and advance arts marketing and audience engagement skills in Pennsylvania.

Allow me to set the scene: while attending the 2016 Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Boston, I received a text from a friend in my hometown stating that in a late-night meeting the day prior, the local Board of Education unexpectedly introduced and approved an unreasonably high new fee for all students wishing to participate in extracurricular drama programs. Today, after eight months of coordinating an aggressive advocacy campaign that succeeded in eliminating that same fee with the near-unanimous support of the same board members who introduced it, I aim to identify and share the 10 crucial steps and considerations that made this victory for the arts in Harford County, Maryland possible.

Since its inception, The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County has celebrated more than 65 years of milestones. Throughout the decades, we have provided proactive leadership, sparked cultural growth, and granted financial support to create a flourishing cultural environment. In recent years, we have embraced that our mission has broadened from serving the arts to serving the greater community through the arts. To that end, one of our primary objectives is promoting diversity and inclusion through our work and that of our partners.

Artists, we know you work hard, but are not always the most extroverted or business-savvy people. Yet you are expected to do it all.

In many tribal cultures, there is no word for ART. The creative act is in the shape of a context, the texture of relationships, the sounds of inquiry. It is how people are, not just what they make or do...creativity and connection, ceremony and ritual, the magic of the marketplace. ART is how we ARE.

I have written a book about arts-based community development that aspires to start conversation and support listening and learning from/about each other.  At that point, we bring in the action verbs: to think, fund, make, show, see, sell. Together, we consider the challenges of: reflection, documentation, and, finally, the evaluation of who and how WE are.

Whether you’re working in a swanky downtown office with 100 employees or if you’re an independent artist working out of your momma’s kitchen—Brand. Matters.

If we’re going to talk about diversity, we also have to talk about inclusion. Diversity acknowledges and celebrates the differences we all bring to the world. Inclusion is about picking up all of those differences and putting them to work together, and using them to drive designed and desired outcomes. Diversity and inclusion are critical at Aetna, particularly when we think about our consumers—they don’t all look and think the same way. Our employees must be diverse so that our strategies and services are diverse, leading to a practice of inclusion that allows our customers to receive the support that best suits them individually.

As a young theater artist, I could always be counted on to step up and make a passionate plea when arts funding was on the line. I shared stories about myself and my colleagues with my legislators about how the arts are fundamental to our humanity. I wrote about how the arts ennoble and inspire us, fostering goodness and beauty. While I have never abandoned these arts-for-arts-sake messages in my advocacy, I have learned that they are rarely stand-alone winners. Today, I augment these fundamental benefits of the arts with pragmatic ones—stories and research that connect the arts to what keeps our community leaders awake at night: jobs, economy, education, healthcare, and community development. The change in my approach has made me a more effective advocate.

Arts marketers, this is our call to stand up and to use our powers for good. If there’s not a higher purpose to communicating about the arts, what's the point in filling up a building with people?

Thank you to Patrick Courrielche (“Save the Arts by Ending the Endowment,” Jan. 25), who made an excellent case for protecting the National Endowment for the Arts and even increasing its appropriations. However, his letter needs to be read from the bottom up. Mr. Courrielche’s summary called for Congress and President Trump to create a robust, expanded national arts council, but that is in fact what the NEA is. 

Phoenix Community Alliance (PCA) surveyed its business membership and found more than 80 percent believe that a city’s creative culture—including arts and public spaces—is vital to recruiting and retaining a talented workforce.

While this is no surprise, we were shocked when this group of business leaders rated Phoenix as a “5” on a 10-point scale with respect to arts and creative vibrancy. We, the leaders of PCA’s “Arts, Culture & Public Life Committee” knew better.

Two years later, taking this dismal community self-assessment to heart, PCA launched ArtWORKS PHX, a novel arts and business advocacy campaign shaped to increase community awareness about, and advocate for, the economic impact of Phoenix businesses partnering with the arts.

We now know that some of President Trump’s transition team advisors are recommending elimination of federal arts and humanities funding along with many other non-arts related cuts. The arguments are old and tired and fly in the face of some of the very things our new President wants like building new infrastructure, jobs, a stronger economy—all areas where the arts are proven allies. As we wait for more clarity, Americans for the Arts will continue to celebrate those who are making a difference, and work with arts advocates across the country toward goals that could strengthen our country through the arts.

We listened to your needs and built a website that is simple to navigate, while providing the educational tools you need to market the arts in today’s competitive landscape.

We are truly in a new era in California Dance Education. With the passage of SB916, the Theatre & Dance Act of 2016, also known as TADA!, we as a community of educators and advocates have so much to celebrate. As I wrote here on ARTSblog last September, Dance Credentials had not been obtainable in the state of California since 1970—and now they’ve been reinstated again. Yet this hard-earned victory leaves our profession with a new set of questions. Here are answers to our most frequently received questions in the first month after the passage of the standalone credentials in dance and in theatre.

In 2016, the Los Angeles Poverty Department—a performance group now in its 30th year made up of members and former members of the city’s Skid Row community—created and performed multiple new works, put on an annual parade and festival, secured awards from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and continued to run the Skid Row History Museum and Archive. LAPD founder and director John Malpede and L.A.-based social practice artist Christina Sanchez Juarez recently sat down together to connect over their tireless work using art to empower L.A.’s homeless and working poor.

I was fortunate enough to be awarded Urban Gateways’ 2017 PROPS Award for my proposal “Claire’s Curious City Challenge.” Influenced by a phrase our organization often uses, “The City as a Classroom,” I am using the funds to embark on a yearlong mission to explore the exciting and diverse programming that makes Chicago a vibrant city. I see this challenge as an opportunity to learn more about the interesting work happening in the city, for both my own interest as an active member of the Chicago arts community and for the potential it has to inform future programming and partnerships at Urban Gateways.

Working in both arts and marketing/business, I've noticed a disconnect between the desire for artists to become successful and earn a living with their art and how they think about their craft as a business.

I’ve been an artist since my earliest childhood memories, falling in love with crayons, paint, paper, pastels, pencils—anything I could get my hands on. I would create with reckless abandon. Slowly, as I got older, I began to learn how to become a better artist. I learned how to control the medium, hone the skills and techniques needed to make my art look like it was supposed to, how to follow the rules. Although important, I fell into the trap of focusing too much on the technique and final product rather than the process of creativity. I was not exploring the potential for creative discovery by breaking the rules! Here are my top 5 reasons how coloring outside the lines has helped me in business today.

While the economy seems to be on the upswing, with jobs increasing and unemployment down, one group is still falling behind: children. The rate of children living in poverty has gradually increased since 2008; currently, 20% of children are living in poverty. That’s one in five American children. This means that the citizens most at risk to deficient health, emotional, and cognitive development, and the poorest citizens of our country, are also the youngest.

The most important reason to join or renew your membership with Americans for the Arts is because we can help connect you to our entire member network—more than 6,000 people who work for themselves or for our nearly 1,500 member organizations, covering the entire spectrum of Americans with an interest in advancing the arts. That’s not all we do, though. Here are seven benefits we offer our members that make us your best bet.

National Arts and Humanities Month was a perfect time to try new ways to engage with you, our members and stakeholders, as well as the general public through our ever-growing social networks including Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This year, we upped the stakes of our traditional social media sharing campaign, #ShowYourArt, by creating 31 arts-related themes—one for each day of the month—and challenging you to show us your art on Instagram each day in October. If I’m being completely honest, I was nervous as Oct. 1 approached. I wasn’t sure if anyone would hear our call and respond. Or if they did, would the enthusiasm last?

Creative Conversations started in 2004 as a program through the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leaders Network, bringing together individuals in their communities to talk about the arts & culture and creativity, with a goal to generate partnerships and increase energy and awareness around grassroots efforts. Meeting people where they are is a key focus of local work and of particular interest in fostering space for conversation and gathering. Knowing that organizational budgets and individual resources can be limited or non-existent makes in-person national dialogue difficult. So how could we easily meet people “where they are” on a national scale?