Arts and Community Development

I. Me, You, and Us: The Rise of Something New

The following essay was jointly commissioned by Grantmakers in the Arts for its 2002 annual conference and by the Funders' Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities as one in its series of Translation Papers.

Introduction

Background

2002, 30 pages, Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley. To order a copy, contact Brendan Rawson, brendan@ci-sv.org or 408-283-8506

Sitting across the broad desk from David Bergholz, in an office that is clearly being packed up as he pre-pares to retire after fifteen years as president and CEO of the George Gund Foundation, there is a poignant juxtaposition that is very hard to miss. Just outside his office's large, eighteenth floor windows is a magnificent view of the industrial might that made Cleveland a player in years past; huge barges moving under steel bridges that cross an impossibly crooked river. The pewter river flanked by smoking chimneys and orderly cones of slag and salt and iron ore.

2002, 376 pages, free. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation Creativity & Culture Division.

Recently, several studies of arts funding have been conducted in specific cities and regions. We report on a few of these here. In the winter 2002 issue of the GIA Reader Vol. 13, No. 1, Lisa Cremin and Kathie de Nobriga reported on a comparative study of arts funding in Atlanta and nineteen other cities. The report was both an inspiring and a cautionary tale for Ann McQueen and others in Boston as they planned the study that Cindy Gehrig reviews below.