Lara Davis is an artist, arts administrator, and creative strategist working at the intersection of culture, public education, and social justice. She is the arts education manager for Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture, and is part of the Visionary Justice StoryLab. Lara co-chairs A.R.E. (Artists for Racial Equity) Network, a National Guild for Community Arts Education network for artists and administrators of color and serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Teaching Artists Guild. She is a 2017-2018 Marshall Memorial Fellow, received the Guild’s 2017 Service Award, and is a 2015 recipient of the Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader Award.
GIA Blog
Grantmakers in the Arts is pleased to have three bloggers covering the 2018 Conference in Oakland. Lara Davis (Seattle Office of Arts & Culture), Tram Nguyen (author, editor, and advocate for just and equitable policy), and Nia King (author, producer, cartoonist, podcaster, and public speaker), will be posting their comments and reactions beginning Sunday, October 21. We hope you enjoy their observations and that you join this conversation.
The leadership of America’s nonprofit sector isn’t very diverse, as American Nonprofit Academy emphasizes, but among other organizations working to change that reality is the African American Board Leadership Institute (AABLI).
An interesting and critical eye on philanthropy can come from different perspectives and that is what “Liberate Philanthropy,” a blog series, published on Medium, precisely does.
Americans continue to be highly engaged in the arts and believe the arts promote personal well-being, that they help us understand other cultures, that they are essential to a well-rounded education, and that government has an important role in funding the arts, according to Americans Speak Out About the Arts in 2018, a research Americans for the Arts recently released.
Artist Titus Kaphar; Wu Tsang, filmmaker and performance artist; Becca Heller, human rights lawyer; William Barber Jr., pastor and activist, and Vijay Gupta, violinist and social-justice advocate, are among the 2018 MacArthur Foundation's 'Genius' fellows.
After a yearlong process of introspection and conversations with grantee partners, the Surdna Foundation recently announced its refined program strategy, "Radical Imagination for Racial Justice."
The Rockefeller Foundation views impact investing as a core aspect of its strategy. Describing the concept as "investments made with the intention of generating both financial return and social and/or environmental impact," Saadia Madsbjerg, managing director of The Rockefeller Foundation, wrote: "We see traditional asset managers as bringing to the table something the traditional impact investing community has thus far lacked: scale."
A discussion tool to encourage racial equity in the review and selection process of artists and arts organizations was recently launched to interrogate and apply a racial equity lens to every step of the grantmaking process.
For the month of October, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by Akonadi Foundation.
Founded in 2000, Akonadi Foundation is an Oakland based family foundation that invests in place-based organizing, racial equity policy advocacy, and culture shift to dismantle structural racism and build community power. A large part of Akonadi Foundation’s work focuses on the intersection of culture and racial justice.