Conceptual Art

2007, 7 pages. The William Penn Foundation, Two Logan Square, 11th Floor, 100 North 18th St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, (215) 988-1830, www.williampenfoundation.org

2007, 11 Pages. Americans for the Arts, One East 53rd Street, Second Floor, NY, NY 10022, (212) 223-2787, www.americansforthearts.org

In June 2007, the Broward Cultural Division and the local arts incubator, ArtServe, Inc., implemented the first "The Artist as an Entrepreneur Institute" (AEI) in South Florida. Presented on four consecutive Saturdays, the AEI offered eighteen classes during three full-day sessions and an extra half-day Business Plan Clinic on the final Saturday.

Arts and education grantmakers at an historic gathering in Santa Fe in October of 2007 agreed on the need to forge a new vision for public education in the United States and to collectively explore how the arts can help shape and realize that vision.

Convened by Grantmakers in the Arts and Grantmakers for Education, more than 100 foundation representatives met formally for the first time under the aegis of their two affinity organizations to debate and discuss the role of the arts in education.

Crossing Borders and Boundaries was the theme of the GFE Conference in 2007, and shortly after the GFE and GIA conferences and the Arts and Education Weekend, I left for a trip to Asia including visits to Thailand, Cambodia, and Hong Kong. The GFE conference underscored the fact that one of the most important skills needed now is to be globally literate, which is pretty much being neglected in schools at the moment.

According to some, "the word twain has its origin in the Old English twegen, meaning two. The phrase never the twain shall meet was used by Rudyard Kipling, in his Barrack-room ballads, 1892: 'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.'" Kipling uses a colonial lens to bemoan the lack of commonality and accord between the British and the indigenous East Indian. Until my recent trip to New Mexico I often felt that same lack of accord between arts funders and education funders.

When funders move into indigenous communities they tread a very fine line. On one side of the line they have a duty to undertake sufficient investigation to ensure that they properly understand a funding request and their own role in relation to it. On the other side, obtaining the information may conflict with the ability to acknowledge and give appropriate respect to the applicant's indigenous culture and its bounds.

2007, 16 pages. Washington State Arts Commission, 711 Capitol Way, Suite 600, PO Box 42675, Olympia, WA 98504, 360-753-3860, www.arts.wa.gov

Download pdf: www.arts.wa.gov

The Washington State Arts Participation Initiative (API) was established in 2002, and provided fifteen model organizations around the state with modest multi-year grants designed to strengthen participation in the arts. Those chosen were all serving underserved communities