Lia O'Donnell

While the need for something bright and eye-catching to bring energy to an office environment might be obvious, many corporations are looking to do even more than just put art on their walls—they want to support the creative economy. At the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston (A&BC), we’ve created a program that not only brings art into offices, but supports the professional aims of local artists.

Launched in 2012, the A&BC’s Corporate Art Partnerships Program seeks to forge greater connections among business and arts communities by bringing extraordinary, original artwork by local artists into Boston’s workplaces. This program is grounded in our philosophy of investing in artists and is an outgrowth of our now ten-year commitment to the professional development of artists through programs like the Artist’s Professional Toolbox. True to our mission—and unlike many other lending programs—we share program revenue with the lending artists. The loan of artworks also provides opportunities for works to be purchased outright by our clients. This Corporate Art Partnerships Program is part of our strategic plan to develop deeper and richer relationships with businesses and to invest in the local arts community.

Michael O'Brien

Printing Partners, a 2011 BCA 10 honoree, believes that arts organizations not only provide entertainment, but also enhance the quality of life in our community, educate children and broaden minds. We support the arts for these reasons, but reap many additional benefits in our partnerships with these organizations.

Printing Partners has long-standing collaborations with theatres, performing arts venues, dance schools and companies, arts festivals, symphony orchestras, choir groups, and operas. We believe that these collaborations not only benefit the arts organizations through sponsorship, but also benefit Printing Partners, our employees, and our families.

Actors rehearsing for the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

 

I’m so happy you’ve been spending time this week reading the contributions to our blog salon on arts and business partnerships! We’ve seen a lot of really great posts from hardworking people around the country, and I hope to hear from more of you in the future about the interesting and exciting pARTnerships you’ve been forming. If the thought of missing out on your daily dose of arts and biz news after the salon’s conclusion is just too much to handle, never fear! The pARTnership Movement, an initiative from Americans for the Arts designed to reach business leaders with the message that partnering with the arts can build their competitive advantage, is constantly posting success stories and information about the latest and greatest pARTnerships. Below is our list of 8 ways to partner with the arts, and each is paired with a real-life example we’ve seen and featured through the pARTnership Movement in the past few months:

Past BCA 10 honoree Travelers has been a long-time advocate of the arts. In 2013 alone, 17 percent of Travelers’ overall corporate giving went to arts and culture organizations. The company’s belief in the power of arts is also held by its employees.

Marlene Ibsen, President and CEO of the Travelers Foundation and Vice President of Community Relations at Travelers, recently talked to Americans for the Arts about the Travelers Arts & Diversity Committee, a group of Travelers employees who are out in the community and use the arts to encourage diversity.

Patrick O’Herron, Business Committee for the Arts Coordinator, Americans for the Arts: Can you start by giving me a quick overview of the Arts & Diversity Committee?

Marlene Ibsen: The Travelers Arts & Diversity Committee is comprised of employees in our St. Paul, Minnesota office who are looking to provide first-hand support to the region’s arts scene. They allocate funds to various arts organizations that are committed to supporting diversity.

Though funding is a substantial portion of what they do, their work doesn’t end there. Some committee members have prior experience in the arts, and they use that background to occasionally help produce local live performances. Their passion for both the arts and their neighborhoods’ appeal makes this group a strong–and highly visible–component of our involvement in our communities.

Linda O'Dell

Many people aren’t surprised that Hallmark is a supporter and beneficiary of the arts. Our business is built around creativity. We have a clear interest in maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the arts, if for no other reason than to attract and nurture the people who make up Hallmark’s huge, and hugely talented, in-house creative staff.

But there also are Hallmarkers whose jobs aren’t usually viewed in a creative context.

I’m one of them. And from my vantage point as a corporate spokesperson, there’s great benefit to me, with similar potential to a business of any type, in investing in what Hallmark’s chairman, Donald J. Hall, has described as “the highest expression of the human spirit.”

So let me share a few examples of what Hallmark’s support of the arts means for “non-creative” me, for the company I represent, and for the community I call home.

Toni Tabora-Roberts

When I joined Business for Culture & the Arts (BCA) in Portland, Oregan in March, one of my first tasks was to organize and produce the day-long extravaganza, Skills Day for the Arts, which took place May 28 at Northwest Natural. I use the word extravaganza because it felt like a big, juicy, diving-off-the-deep-end kind of undertaking in my first days on the job.

Skills Day grew out of BCA’s highly-regarded Business Volunteers for the Arts (BVA) program, one of a number of BVA programs around the country. The BVA programs are beloved, but from what I've gleaned talking with current and former BVA managers, times they are a-changing.

Thor Urness

Progressive employers want workers with high levels of what David Kelley calls, in his recent book of the same title, “Creative Confidence.” Kelley, the head of Stanford’s d.school and founder of the design firm IDEO, defines creative confidence as “the natural human ability to come up with breakthrough ideas and the courage to act on them.” As a partner in the Nashville office of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, that is certainly what we want from our lawyers and staff.

However, the 2012 “State of Create” study by software maker Adobe identified a workplace creativity gap, where 75% of respondents said they are under growing pressure to be productive rather than creative, despite the fact that they are increasingly expected to think creatively at work. The study showed that 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth, yet only 1 in 4 respondents believe they are living up to their own creative potential, with respondents across all of the countries surveyed saying they spend only 25% of their time at work creating.

Caleb Way

As the Arts & Business Council of New York Program Coordinator for Americans for the Arts, I’m always on the lookout for great examples of partnerships between the arts and business. If you have found yourself on Fifth Avenue recently, you may not have had to look very far. You probably noticed a large “SPRZ NY” advertisement accenting the window of UNIQLO’s flagship store on the corner of 53rd Street. You may have also turned that corner and continued on to the Museum of Modern Art. This close proximity is just the start of a dynamic partnership between the two. SPRZ NY, UNIQLO’s latest collaboration with MoMA, its midtown neighbor, merges the worlds of visual art and fashion. The now global project, unveiled this past spring, celebrates innovative artists like Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. The result is a line of clothing and accessories featuring art work from MoMA-approved artists originally and exclusively produced and sold in New York.

Mark Shugoll

A little Broadway trivia: What "role" have Broadway superstars Patti LuPone, Kristin Chenoweth, Audra McDonald, Sutton Foster and Kelli O'Hara all played? Answer: they've all played the "role" of guest actors through ArtSpeak!, a program created, produced, and underwritten by Shugoll Research to bring Broadway stars into public schools.

ArtSpeak! will be starting its 18th year in Washington, D.C. area schools this September when Patti LuPone appears at Blake High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. Ms LuPone will be interviewed about her career on stage in Blake's high school auditorium, answer student questions, sign autographs and, best of all, sing three songs. Can you imagine if multi-Tony Award winner Patti LuPone performed in your high school?

Raymond Tymas-Jones

Each day the need for continuous engagement in higher learning is evident.  All sectors of society depend on the advanced new knowledge and full development of all human talent.  To that end, every citizen’s capacity to expand and acquire increased global learning for the express purpose of addressing the world’s urgent challenges and problems—economic, ethical, political, intercultural, and environmental—becomes more and more paramount.  Recently, there has been enormous emphasis placed on the need for greater exploration in areas such as the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). While the need for advanced new knowledge in the STEM fields is unquestionable, the development of all human talent requires equal emphasis in the arts and humanities.  Nevertheless, the key is not found in a silo approach but in an integrative or collaborative model.

Robb Hankins

As part of ArtsinStark’s 20/20 Vision planning process, an Innovation Committee made up of ten community leaders created a strategy for positioning Canton and Stark County, Ohio as one of the 10 most innovative communities our size in America. One of the first initiatives we called the “Genius Awards.” In 2013 we began inviting companies to form 8-person teams to solve a challenge and come to the first Genius Awards, which were held on March 18 of 2014.

Here were our goals:

1) To have all kinds of companies to participate: high tech, manufacturing, law firms, banks, and newspapers.

2) To find a $5,000 sponsor, charge companies a $500 entry fee, and sell $25 tickets to the event.

3) To establish a “county innovation index” for improving the level of innovation in our county over time.

The Invite: We host one of the 60 united arts fund drives in America, so during our annual visit with company CEOs we planted the seeds for the “Genius Awards.” As soon as we got one of the biggest companies in the county to sign up and then banks and law firms, it got easier to sign up the rest. In the end, 13 companies agreed to send a team for year one. Here’s a link to the contract each company signed.

Megan Stewart

Only Make Believe (OMB) is a non-profit that creates and performs interactive theatre for children in hospitals and care facilities in New York and Washington DC. OMB is dedicated to the principle that freeing the imagination is a valuable part of the healing process. We send a team of three professional actors into a hospital once a week for six weeks and the actors engage the children in a performance where each child becomes an integral part of each show. The children get to dress in a costume, take on different roles, and really just take an hour to laugh, play, and enjoy being a child rather than thinking about their treatment or being a patient. We want them to just have fun with “laughter being the best medicine” through the joy and escape that the theatre can provide.

My role at OMB is to manage our corporate relations efforts through volunteerism and sponsorship, and to coordinate OMB events including the annual gala on Broadway, young professionals and networking events, cocktail parties, and other various events. The majority of my job is spent running our corporate volunteer program which has grown steadily over the past six years.