The National Endowment for the Arts has published guidelines and application materials for two funding categories. The 2015 Art Works and Challenge America programs support projects anticipated to take place beginning in 2016. Any nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, unit of state or local government, or federally recognized tribal community with at least a three year programming history is eligible to apply for project-based support through these two programs. Webinars are scheduled for January 21 and March 11, 2015 to provide technical assistance in the application process.
Steve's Blog
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Measuring Cultural Engagement: A Quest for New Terms, Tools, and Techniques is a new report from the National Endowment for the Arts that summarizes a convening held at the Gallup Headquarters in Washington, DC, in June of 2014. The NEA and the Cultural Value Project (CVP) of the United Kingdom’s Arts & Humanities Research Council convened leading researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from a handful of countries to challenge assumptions about how and why public involvement in arts and culture is measured and to identify research needs and opportunities to promote more meaningful measurement.
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Kathleen Masterson and Suzanne Leigh look at Art for Recovery, a pioneering program at the University of California San Francisco:
It’s hard to empirically measure that impact because so many of art’s benefits are indirect, said Theresa Allison, MD, PhD, an associate professor in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics who has a background in musical anthropology. But, she said, therapies that benefit a patient’s emotional wellbeing can have real impact on overall health. “We are finally at a tipping point, where the health sciences recognize the impact of loneliness and depression on health care outcomes, and we recognize the positive impact of visual and performing arts on symptoms management,” Allison said.
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Since 2012, Sharnita Johnson has managed a $25 million grantmaking portfolio in education, health and family economic security at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Prior to that, she was a senior program officer at the Skillman Foundation, where she developed strategic partnerships and oversaw neighborhood development, arts and culture, and youth development grantmaking. In her role at Dodge, Johnson will direct the Foundation’s Arts grants, which foster a diverse and vibrant arts ecosystem, create broad-based public support of the arts, and support communities engaged in creative placemaking in New Jersey.
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Barry Hessenius posted to Barry’s Blog:
The James Irvine Foundation released a report last week entitled Why "Where"? Because "Who", authored by Brent Reidy of AEA Consulting, addressing the issue of alternate venues for the presentation of art, examining "why place has become an important variable for arts practitioners to consider as they chart a course for the future." This is an outstanding contribution; well researched, well written. The tendency for most of us is to read the Executive Summary of these kinds of reports and often skip the rest. That would be a mistake with this offering; there is a lot of meat here.
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From Richard Florida at Citylab:
A recent study published in the journal Urban Studies takes a close look at the connection between the arts and city building. The study, by Carl Grodach of the Queensland University of Technology, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett of the University of Southern California, and Nicole Foster and James Murdoch III of the University Texas at Arlington examines the economic and demographic factors most closely associated with arts clusters and the kinds of metros where arts hubs are found. The researchers scrutinize the concentration of arts clusters (using the standard location quotient measure) across all 366 U.S. metros areas and nearly 14,000 ZIP codes, which account for nearly 90 percent of all arts employment.
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From Eileen Cunniffe, writing for Nonprofit Quarterly:
After many months of rancor, which NPQ has followed with attention to the governance, management, and community relations implications of a messy nonprofit meltdown, the dust appears to be settling around the reconfigured Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) North Miami and the newly established Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami. The public mud-slinging began last spring, but trouble had been simmering for some time between the City of North Miami — which owns the building MOCA North Miami has long occupied — and the trustees of the institution, who wanted to expand the facility or move its collection to another location.
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From Kerry Lengel, writing for the Arizona Republic:
San Antonio Artpace executive director Amada Cruz was named Monday to guide the Phoenix Art Museum, a $9 million-a-year non-profit, which brings 200,000 visitors a year to Phoenix. Cruz, 53, who was born in Havana, has extensive experience in both the arts and non-profit worlds and starts work February 1. First on her to-do list, Cruz said, is a "crash course" on Phoenix's culture and history.
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From the editorial page of The Boston Globe:
Despite the boilerplate campaign rhetoric of “I support the arts!,” when hard times hit, and austerity is called for, arts are the first thing to go. Nowhere is that more evident than in the budget for the Massachusetts Cultural Council — the state agency charged with supporting artists and arts organizations — where the funding dropped by more than half, from $27 million in 1988 to $12 million in 2014. Recently, the dial has begun to move in the other direction. The Legislature opposed further cuts to the council’s budget in 2014 by actually giving it a slight increase. And Governor Deval Patrick tripled the Cultural Facilities Fund — which supports the maintenance and repair of arts venues — from $5 million to $15 million. Meanwhile, it would be nice to get the council’s budget up to at least what it was 10 years ago.
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Aroha Philanthropies prepared this video to advocate for the arts as a means for a more fulfilling and vital aging process.