Featured in the current Reader, an interview of Ruby Lerner, President & Executive Director of Creative Capital, by Melanie Beene.
Steve's Blog
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Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the nationwide expansion of the Arts Innovation and Management (AIM) program, formerly known as the Arts Advancement Initiative. The invitation-only program seeks to strengthen nearly 300 small- and mid-sized organizations within six cities: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Through the two-year initiative, Bloomberg Philanthropies will offer $30 million of unrestricted general operating support. It will also include arts management training in fundraising, audience development and board member engagement.
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Accelerate Culture, an initiative launched last year by Arts Alliance Illinois, interviews the two candidates for Mayor on their arts policy leanings:
The 2015 Chicago mayoral runoff election is Tuesday, April 7. While the debates might be over, there’s no debating that the next mayor will shape the future of arts policy in Chicago. We asked Mayor Rahm Emanuel and challenger Cook County Commissioner Jesús “Chuy” Garcia to respond to ten questions on a range of issues including their views on the role of culture and the arts in our neighborhoods, schools, economic development, tourism, civic life, and beyond.
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The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) today announced the 2015 class of Doris Duke Artists. Twenty performing artists will each receive $275,000 in flexible, multi-year funding as an investment in and celebration of their ongoing contributions to the fields of contemporary dance, theatre and jazz. With this year’s class, the foundation will have awarded $22 million among 80 Doris Duke Artists since the awards program’s inception.
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From Lee Chilcote, writing for Freshwater Cleveland:
The effort to strengthen Cleveland’s arts organizations and cultivate new audiences began in the 1990s. The Cleveland Foundation published an influential study that underscored the fragility of the city’s arts scene, and that helped set the stage. Two of the weaknesses that were identified were lack of professional development for arts managers and lack of public funding for the arts. In the late 1990s, the Cleveland Foundation and George Gund Foundation commissioned a strategic plan called the Northeast Ohio Arts and Culture Plan. An arts research, public policy and capacity building group called the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture was established to help carry it out.
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From Abby Ellin at The New York Times:
Conventional wisdom holds that if you do not write your “Farewell to Arms,” paint your “Starry Night,” start the next Twitter or climb Mount Everest by young adulthood, or at least middle age, then chances are you will never do it. But that idea is becoming increasingly outdated as people are not only having successes later in life, but blooming in areas they never expected. Maybe they are not making millions, or wielding a brush like Rembrandt. Still, many people are discovering that the latter part of their lives can be just as (or even more) rewarding creatively, emotionally and spiritually.
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From PBS Newshour:
As part of a growing national movement to revitalize the symphony experience for patrons, the San Francisco Symphony recently launched SoundBox, a show series meant to create new musical experiences and entice new audiences.
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The Regional Arts Commission (RAC), the largest annual funder of the arts in the St. Louis region, has announced the appointment of Felicia Shaw to the position of executive director. Shaw succeeds Jill McGuire, who served for 30 years as RAC’s founding executive director. A native St. Louisan, Shaw will assume the position of executive director effective May 11, 2015. A nationwide search had been conducted by Arts Consulting Group. Shaw, a current member of the GIA Board of Directors, was previously the director of arts and creative economy at The San Diego Foundation.
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Diane Ragsdale posts to Jumper:
This is the sixth post in a series of posts focused on the course on beauty that I am coordinating/teaching for business students at UW-Madison. In the fourth week of the Beauty Class I wanted to explore the notion, articulated by Jeanette Winterson, that “art can waken us to truths about ourselves and the world.”