The arts and culture field continues to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Americans for the Arts expanded access to the Annual Convention through extended scholarship opportunities. Submit a request by Friday, June 4.
This week: Asian American artist-activists using their art to effect change against racism and stereotypes, the work of Newark Arts executive director Jeremy Johnson, the growing roster of speakers and sessions for the 2021 Annual Convention, and remembering Artists Committee member Jacques d’Amboise.
Just as local arts agencies act as voices and conveners for their arts and culture communities, so do local chambers of commerce for their business communities. Partnerships between the two are essential to community and economic development. But where to start? Register for our new 101-level, on-demand webinar series that aims to flip the conversation away from “business support for the arts” to “how and why the arts are an essential part of business and community development strategies.”
The ArtsU Support Program is a new initiative designed to increase equitable access to live and on-demand ArtsU digital activities. The program is open for anyone to participate in any public ArtsU webinar and other events.
Americans for the Arts and its partners, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Metro Arts: Nashville Office of Arts and Culture, are excited to announce the 25 interns selected to participate in the 2021 DIAL program, which matches undergraduate students from backgrounds underrepresented in arts leadership with dynamic communities, energetic host arts organizations, and committed mentors during a 10-week summer internship.
News about Beethoven’s unfinished Tenth Symphony being written by a computer; the debut of the robot-composer who writes in the style of Bach; and the computerized protégé of the Master of Light and Shadow “New Rembrandt.” The artificial intelligence revolution has entered the sphere of art and music, a creative domain. In 2018, when the AI-generated portrait Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy (Belamy Portrait) sold for $432,500, it attracted significant attention from the art community. Developers of the Belamy Portrait have created AI-art generation algorithms using Generative Adversarial Network framework in machine learning. Critics have taken issue with the originality of the AI generated artwork on grounds that the computer codes written to produce the images are borrowed. In fact, the creators of the Belamy Portrait—a French art collective called “Obvious”—acknowledged that the algorithm was a modified version of a code first developed by Robbie Barrat (a 19-year-old artist and programmer) who had openly shared his “modified DCGAN algorithm” on github. These concerns have raised questions about how copyright protection would apply in the context of AI-generated art.
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Americans for the Arts today announced its annual National Arts Marketing Project Conference, held virtually for the first time December 7–8. The largest gathering of arts marketers in the country, the conference will provide ideas and tactics, strategies and inspiration to set the groundwork for surviving and thriving in the next 18-24 months. From changes in consumer behavior, to pricing strategies in the COVID era, to addressing bias in content, to targeting audiences and accessibility planning, the National Arts Marketing Project Conference aims to equip and prepare arts marketers for 2021.
The 2020 economic collapse has been compared to the Great Depression by economists—and the arts and culture sector is not immune to the financial devastation impacting many sectors across the U.S. Since March, Americans for the Arts has continually tracked the financial impact across the arts sector. As of Nov. 16, 35% of nonprofit arts organizations have had to lay off or furlough staff, and 10% are not confident they will survive the pandemic. The Great Recession of the late 2000s had a direct impact on my employment as the public art coordinator for the City of San Jose, California. The public art funding was tied up with other municipal funds, including bond projects and general funding. By the 2011 budget cycle the city realized that to cover its financial needs, hundreds of their employees were going to have to be let go, and yours truly was swept up in that massive layoff. It took me over a year and a half to find full time work again. During that time, I learned some things that I hope can help some of you out there who may be facing the prospect of unemployment or have already lost a job.
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This week, we learned about MBA students who get a leg up on leadership skills by engaging with the arts, took a tour through a virtual music festival with strong community and business support, explored new ways to plan for an uncertain future, deepened our interest in promoting the importance of voting, and proudly shared a new set of guiding principles that would bring together design and public health professionals for equitable and positive health outcomes. If you missed anything, now's your chance to catch up!
Do you or someone you know want to support and advise Americans for the Arts on the services we provide to the field? If yes, we invite you to nominate yourself or a colleague for one of Americans for the Arts’ Advisory Councils! Nomination deadline is Sept. 21, 2020.
Americans for the Arts and its partners, The Joyce Foundation and American Express Foundation, welcome the second cohort in the Arts & Culture Leaders of Color Fellowship. The ACLC Fellowship program continues to invest in mid-career arts administrators of color across the Great Lakes region through a year-long professional development program. This year we selected 16 fellows to participate in creating systemic change in national arts leadership.
Soft skills such as creativity and collaboration—skills that benefit from participation in the arts and arts education—were found to be top priorities among managers and HR professionals surveyed for the 4th Annual Workplace Learning Report, conducted by LinkedIn Learning.
As we close out July and begin to round the corner toward the end of summer, things are heating up on the arts advocacy front. Congress is currently negotiating a new coronavirus relief bill, and two letters asking for relief for the arts went to Capitol Hill this week: one signed by one of our longest-standing strategic partners, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and another led by our Artists Committee and signed by more than 260 artist advocates.
This summer, 10 Diversity in Arts Leadership fellows from all over the country are convening to explore and build skills in arts administration and cultivate knowledge in cultural equity. For 28 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. This series features our DIAL cohort in two parts: five fellows are profiled here and in a previous post, five more! Read on to get to know Faith Lynn Diccion, Neaco Fox, Theresa-Xuan Bui, Faith Duncombe, and Elena Sánchez.
Read MoreThis summer, 10 Diversity in Arts Leadership fellows from all over the country are convening to explore and build skills in arts administration and cultivate knowledge in cultural equity. For 28 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. This series features our DIAL cohort in two parts: five fellows are profiled here and in a later post, five more! Read on to get to know Akilah Hartgrove, Ashley Betances, KeShawn Mellon, Cristal Seda Santiago, and Charis Shin.
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Cultural equity is at the heart of this week's roundup. Read on to learn more about Eddy Kwon, a musician whose work is centered in equitable community development; to meet this year's Diversity in Arts Leadership interns; to explore self advocacy and self care for artists and administrators of color; and to see how civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was true champion of the arts.
This summer, 12 Diversity in Arts Leadership interns from all over the country are working virtually with New York City-based arts nonprofits for ten weeks to explore and build skills in arts administration, and cultivate knowledge in cultural equity within the arts field. For 27 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. This series features our DIAL NYC cohort in two parts: six interns are profiled here and in a previous post, six more! Read on to get to know Isaiah Shaw, Nailah Williams, Noemi Mangual-Rosa, Rebekah Boggs, Kayla Colon, and Arlene Arevalo.
Read MoreThis summer, 12 Diversity in Arts Leadership interns from all over the country are working virtually with New York City-based arts nonprofits for ten weeks to explore and build skills in arts administration, and cultivate knowledge in cultural equity within the arts field. For 27 years, Americans for the Arts has been hosting the DIAL internship program as an investment in a more equitable arts management field. This series features our 2020 DIAL NYC cohort in two parts: six interns are profiled here and in a later post, six more! Read on to get to know Truth Murray Cole, Chayna Yoshida, Noa Weiss, Julia Lee, Carol Loja, and Allie Li.
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This week: read up on pay equity, community-focused public art, performance art as a catalyst for change, national partnerships that bring about local advocacy, and more. Plus, check out the brand-new Arts Education Action Kit, a free resource that provides tools so that anyone can become an arts education advocate.
Creative Forces®, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, presents “Advances in Creative Forces Clinical Research,” a virtual panel discussion and demonstration of the new online National Resource Center (NRC) on July 15, 2020, at 3:00 p.m. ET. This online resource will feature public materials for researchers and practitioners in the arts, health, and military and veteran care settings.
The theme of this week is the Annual Convention + Public Art & Civic Design Conference! More than 850 of you attended our first-ever virtual convening June 23-25, which featured 100 panelists speaking in 50 breakout sessions and four keynotes, plus presentations of our Annual Leadership Awards and the announcement of a brand-new public art prize.
Americans for the Arts will host its first-ever virtual Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design Conference, which will take place June 23-25, 2020. Through more than 40 sessions, participants will gather to better understand how the arts field is responding to the COVID-19 crisis, how the field can move toward recovery, and the role of the arts in healing during and after crises.
As the country continues to reckon with the murder of George Floyd, artists are responding and considering how to create lasting change across the sector and in their cities and towns. And as the COVID crisis continues, our newly launched Arts Agency Action Kit provides research and strategies for arts organizations to make the case for preserving their agency.
Americans for the Arts has developed the Arts Agency scholarship to support the professional development of arts agencies that are facing financial strain due to the COVID-19 crisis. This scholarship will provide one complimentary registration to the virtual convening of the Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design Conference. Apply by June 10, 2020.
This week: it's time to register for the 2020 Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design Conference! Plus, we're diving into COVID response and recovery from various angles, including PPP loan forgiveness, innovative audience engagement, planning for beneficial artist-municipal partnerships, and more.
Registration is now open for the 2020 Annual Convention and Public Art & Civic Design Conference! This newly virtual convening, happening June 23-25 from the comfort of your home, is the chance for arts leaders across the country to gather virtually and better understand the current health crisis, how we are responding to it, and how the arts field can move toward recovery.
This week, we hosted the latest in our Supporting Individual Artists monthly "coffee chat" series on ArtsU, a project supported in part by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation; explored the challenges of fundraising amid the COVID-19 pandemic; and extended two online engagement opportunities.
It's been a busy week! Catch up on the week's research news, including two survey results and a new one you can participate in. Plus: blogs reflecting on the COVID pandemic, a powerful story on cultural organizing, a webinar exploring how to navigate conversations on cultural equity, and much more.
Amid this COVID-19 pandemic, many arts organizations—as well as those outside the sector—have been working to determine how to offset financial impacts on their organizations. One type of program that finds its head on the chopping block is the internship program. For organizations that provide arts internships for an hourly wage or a seasonal stipend, the expenditure for an intern or an internship program may appear to be an added burden at a time when we must all make difficult choices. At Americans for the Arts, we too have unfortunately had to cut our own Summer and Fall internship program to save on expenditures.While that decision had to be made for the organization, the Equity in Arts Leadership team has been able to reimagine the organization’s 28-year-old Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) internship. We recognized the stress and collective trauma our country—and our world—is experiencing during this time, and determined it was important for our team to focus our internship restructure on a deliberate, community-centered approach. In deciding to move forward with our internship program, we had to ask ourselves many questions regarding the feasibility of continuing this program this year.
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This is an unprecedented time in our history—one I’m still processing and reacting to as things change every day. I’m reminded how grateful I am to still have a job I love and basic necessities such as food, electricity, and technology (especially to connect with loved ones). This experience also has taught me several important lessons and reminded me why I chose a career in the arts to begin with: creating is essential to mental health and provides an opportunity for human connection. People are rallying around the arts, donating money, collecting data, creating artwork, hosting live performances, and even collecting shared stories and histories around this experience to add to museum collections. It’s no coincidence that people are using the arts to stay connected to each other. The arts have always had a way of bringing people together, and this has been true even before we hit a global pandemic.
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