An extensive new study from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada shows that students who took music lessons in high school performed better in subjects such as English, science, and math.
The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research released a report describing how arts experiences can help students further develop core competencies of SEL including self-management and self-discipline, interpersonal and relationship skills, and self-expression.
Opera is notably known for producing works that represent stories and experiences from White, Euro-centric, and Western perspectives. Recently, that narrative has begun to change. This summer, many new productions are premiering written by Black composers, featuring Black stories.
Arts in Corrections is a program at Pelican Bay State Prison, a Supermax State Prison in California, in which professional artists are brought into prisons to teach an art form to incarcerated individuals in support of their rehabilitation. The latest exhibit of the Arts in Corrections program was on display at the Del Norte County Courthouse in June 2019.
Research from The Boston Foundation and Barr Foundation has shown that Boston, MA, needs to further prioritize investment in an arts ecosystem in order to elevate new perspectives, encourage diversity, and make communities more inclusive and vibrant in an era of increasing demographic change.
Hundreds of high school students at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts staged a sit-in protest in favor of retaining LaGuardia’s historically arts focused curriculum rather than shifting towards stricter academic requirements.
THEM: “We can’t pay you, but you’ll get lots of exposure!”
ME: “I can’t eat or pay my bills with exposure!”
If I had a nickel for every time the sentiment of exposure as compensation was offered to me as an artist, I probably would not need to be writing this blog post about the importance of compensation for creatives. Too often artists are asked to provide their services in exchange for nothing or for compensation that is not comparable to the time and effort that is required to create and efficiently develop their artistry. Soul Artistry LLC’s goal is to push a new culture and narrative forward that begins to normalize the practice of artists being compensated for their work. Soul Artistry LLC is the company I started in 2012 when I began to understand the importance of artistry professional development and adopting business practices as an artistic entrepreneur. At the beginning of 2019, Soul Artistry LLC launched the pay artists. campaign. The idea for the campaign was birthed from many conversations and experiences that fellow creatives and I had been having very frequently.
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Americans for the Arts is pleased to announce that Director of Local Arts Services Ruby Lopez Harper was selected as one of seven Practices for Change Fellows at the National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation at Arizona State University. The fellowship is funded in part by an Our Town/Knowledge Building Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and supports individuals with experience using arts, culture, and design within other sectors such as health, transportation, planning, justice, and the environment in order to build stronger, more equitable communities.
The new ACLC Fellowship is a one-year professional development program for emerging and mid-career arts leaders of color that is advancing approaches to arts & culture management towards greater racial and cultural equity around the Great Lakes.
Americans for the Arts announces a new publication, the Teaching Artist Companion to Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change. The Companion supports artists who work with youth in K–12 programs in and out of school and the institutional leaders who support their work, but also informs funders, researchers, evaluators, and policy makers in the field of creative youth development.
Many people know that March is Women’s History Month, but how many arts organizations succeed in engaging their whole community in the celebration? Every March, two organizations in Albuquerque New Mexico, Harwood Art Center and Littleglobe, do just that.
Americans for the Arts and the Arts Action Fund were today awarded the Lobbying Strategy Innovation Award in recognition of their lobbying innovations. The Public Affairs Council presented the award at their annual advocacy conference, along with two other awards.
Public Art Bootcamp, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s award program, is the subject of the publication Capacity Building for Racial Equity in Public Art, which illustrates how public art administrators can shift the field to be more inclusive and effect change by intentionally serving artists from under-represented and under-invested communities.
Americans for the Arts today announced that the Community Arts Training Institute (CAT Institute) of St. Louis has been awarded the Robert E. Gard Award. The award recognizes and celebrates exemplary work at the intersection of the arts and community life, and was presented this morning at Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention in Denver.
As founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and an acclaimed public interest lawyer, Bryan Stevenson has dedicated his career to fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination. In addition to his work in the courtroom, Stevenson is helping shepherd powerful works of public art like the Memorial to Peace and Justice, which will feature the names of more than 4,000 victims of lynching.
The Ford Foundation president will speak March 20, 2017, at 6:30 p.m. at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are free, but seating is limited.
Detailed stories of the five collaborative projects provide an illuminating and instructive look at how collaboration between artists and municipal government can achieve more diverse participation and greater equity in public process.
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.
Intermedia Arts, in conjunction with Americans for the Arts / Animating Democracy commissioned this national study of local arts agencies to assess community arts activity and training opportunities.
In this interview, Creative Time Reports Editor-in-Chief Marisa Mazria Katz talks with Australian artist Grace McQuilten, founder of the
The New York Times recently profiled the rigorous four-year academic and arts program, The Center for Visual and Performing Arts, at Suitland High School in District Heights, MD. The program has survived budget cuts, neighborhood violence, a constant shortage of art supplies, and dwindling enrollment to be a crucible for emerging artists, many of them African-Americans, and some now rising to national prominence.
There is nothing like art to bring people together and heal, even in the face of human tragedy on a massive scale.
With more than 4 million Syrians having fled their country to build new lives, local St. Louis artist and muralist Chelsea Ritter-Soronen, wanted to build awareness about the struggles they are facing. "When we look at images of warfare through a screen, it’s very easy to become immune to those images," she says. "I wanted to take the images from the media, take them away from a screen and put them into a real world setting."
The New York City Council announced on October 11 that it would double its investment—now $3.2 million—for the city’s Cultural Immigrant Initiative. Established last year, the Initiative funds 77 groups that focus on the cultural history and traditions of immigrant communities throughout New York City’s five boroughs.
On the 10th anniversary of one of our country's worst natural disasters, New Orleans makes room to process the events of Hurricane Katrina, celebrate what has been accomplished so far, and highlight the rebuilding that still needs to be done.
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art is one of many cultural institutions hosting a special interactive exhibit for visitors and city residents. The basement walls of the museum are covered with neatly printed cards of stories from survivors.
Poet Laureate of San Antonio Laurie Ann Guerrero has added another title to her name: Literary Arts Director/Writer-in-Residence at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. The Center cultivates, promotes, and preserves traditional and contemporary Chicano, Latino, and Native American arts and culture through multidisciplinary programming, and is one of the largest community-based organizations in the US.
Americans for the Arts is pleased to be holding its 2015 Annual Convention in Chicago, a diverse city that embraces artists, creators, and innovators. The largest national gathering of arts leaders and their partners in creative business, education, and government, the convention is expected to draw upwards of 1,000 attendees.
A new medium of creating art is being developed in the United Kingdom with the support of Parliament. “Democracy Street” is a crowdsourced web app accessible by mobile phone that encourages users to visit places that hold important historical significance to Parliament. Through a collection of maps, users will be able to learn about the street or site of significance, and share a story or a photo. Those involved hope the project will result in an exhibition of original artwork and maps by November 2015.
