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| March 13, 2013 | A Cultural Policy Publication of Americans for the Arts | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Culture & Communities
Rhode Island: Theaters Partner to Share Resources Providence Business News, 3/5/13 "In an alliance of the state’s 'brightest theaters,' three performance venues plan to exchange their artistic, technical, and management resources in an effort to bolster long-term expansion with the creation of the Rhode Island Theater Alliance. The Mixed Magic Theatre, Contemporary Theater Co., and Epic Theatre Co. will collaborate within the Rhode Island Theater Alliance (RITA), a partnership deal that looks to facilitate the mutual growth of each company by encouraging technicians, administration and actors to work in the cross-theater network. Even audiences and marketing will be shared among the network, allowing RITA to offer group rates and discounts that will benefit subscribers and bring more people to the box office." http://bit.ly/Wo2BCY Missouri: Arts Commission Program Supports Individual Artists PRNewswire, 3/5/13 "Based on the results of Artists Count, the first comprehensive survey of regional artists and creatives, the Regional Arts Commission (RAC) will begin funding individual artists in 2013. The commitment to support artists is inherent in RAC's vision to transform St. Louis into a more vibrant, creative, and economically thriving community through elevating the vitality, value, and visibility of the arts...The Kresge Foundation funded the survey which was conducted and analyzed by William Cleveland, principal of the Center for the Study of Art and Community along with his research associate Dr. Patricia Shifferd. According to Cleveland, 'RAC's decision to fund artists establishes the organization as a leader among local arts agencies nationally. They are committed to developing a sustainable, creative community.'" http://bit.ly/XJtgv9 Arts Education Film Wins Academy Award Boston.com, 3/4/13 "Matt D’Arrigo came up with the idea for ARTS: A Reason To Survive when he was just 19-years-old, a concept that bubbled to the surface of his imagination while he was listening to music and drawing in the bedroom of his Scituate, MA home. The practice was a type of therapy for him to deal with both his mother and sister’s cancer diagnoses. Suddenly he realized that art was helping him through it all...Twenty years later, the concept of providing art outreach to kids that need it most has turned into a tangible dream, one that has been in the spotlight as of late with the Oscar win for 'Inocente', a documentary film following a teenage artist who has learned perseverance through the California-based arts program. The film, available on iTunes, documents the film’s 15-year-old namesake as she struggles through homelessness, and recounts the girl’s traumatic life." http://bo.st/X7TF1I
Arts in Education Wisconsin: Partnerships Filling Milwaukee's Arts Education Gap Journal Sentinel, 3/11/13 "Arts programming by nonprofit entities is becoming increasingly important in Milwaukee as the ranks of arts teachers shrink at Milwaukee Public Schools amid tight budgets. The district, with about 80,000 students enrolled, is down to 81 full-time visual and performing arts specialists, down from 135 in the 2008–09 school year. The district hopes to push the number to 106 by next school year. To fill the void, the district and other Milwaukee area schools are partnering with numerous art organizations in the city to broaden their reach and impact. MPS partners with 41 organizations through the district's Partnership for the Arts and Humanities, which has an allocation of $1.5 million...The partnership requires outside groups to match dollar for dollar Partnership for Arts and Humanities money, which allows the organizations to enter schools during the day and assist in the number of art related class opportunities." http://bit.ly/XJv2wc North Carolina: Using Arts to Help ESL Students Learn English AlianzaNews.com, 3/13 "A project in North Carolina seeks to get students in English as a Second Language programs to connect their culture with their new language though their own photos, videos, and stories. For more than 10 years, immigrants attending the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) have been taking part in the 'My Family, Our Stories' project, coordinated by The Light Factory, one of the most important independent visual arts museums in the state. According to Charles Thomas, education director at the museum, the goal is to have young people take photos, make videos, and write stories about their life in the United States while at the same time telling about their culture and learning English better...CMS is one of the most diverse educational systems in the state with 10,339 students in ESL." http://bit.ly/15Nertf
Public Investment in the Arts Missouri: State Arts Funding in Flux KSDK.com, 3/12/13 "Governor Jay Nixon wants to increase state funding for the Missouri Arts Council, while other legislators want to cut arts funding. State budgets are leaner than ever and some would say if arts organizations get less money, that's the new normal because there's less state money for everybody. If you're one of the 600-plus organizations that receive funding from the Missouri Arts Council, like Center of Creative Arts (COCA), you're getting nervous about the 2014 state budget...The Missouri Arts Council provides funds to the St. Louis Symphony, The Art Museum, and numerous other organizations. Statewide, 653 arts organizations depend on funding from the Missouri Arts Council. MAC executive director Beverly Strohmeyer says funding has been dwindling the past few years. 'Our highest budget was $9.7 million in 2009,' said Strohmeyer. 'This year our budget was only $5.3 million, which is a reduction of 45 percent.'" http://on.ksdk.com/13TILnD Nevada: Councilman Suggests Percent for Art Funding Cut Las Vegas Sun Joe Downtown blog, 3/7/13 "...it came as something of a shock to downtowners a few weeks ago when Las Vegas Councilman Bob Beers suggested eliminating the city’s Percent for the Arts program. Created in 2003, the program allows the city to collect 'not less than 1 percent' of the city’s annual capital improvements budget for the arts fund. Since collections began in 2005, the city has put $1.3 million into the fund, 96 percent of which came during the first three years. In the five years between 2008 and fiscal year 2012, the fund collected just $83,000. Out of that fund, the city spent $1.1 million on art projects, leaving a balance of about $200,000 as of June 30, 2011. Some of the projects funded with the money include the Arts District gateway, which has 45-foot-tall metal and colored light paint brushes visible on Charleston Boulevard at Casino Center Boulevard and Fourth Street; $350,000 went to that project." http://bit.ly/Z3c969 Oregon: Portland Begins Collecting Local Arts Tax Hyperallergic.com, 3/5/13 "In November of last year, Portland, OR, passed a new annual income tax of a flat $35 fee that goes directly to supporting local arts organizations. The tax will bring in an estimated $12.2 million a year from 350,000 people, money that will go to Portland elementary schools to hire 'certified arts or music education teachers' and the Regional Arts & Culture Council, which supports nonprofit arts organizations, explains the city’s website. The arts tax applies to everyone equally, unless you make no income or are below the poverty line. Rather than including it within the normal tax paperwork, Portland has made it possible to pay the tax online, in person, or by mail. If you pay the $35 before March 25, you won’t be sent any paper forms, but it sounds like some residents are getting confused by the flier that the city is sending out to remind Portlanders of their culture-supporting duties." http://bit.ly/XvjHlw Sequester Cuts Federal Cultural Agencies ARTSblog, 3/4/13 "As you have no doubt been following in the headlines, specific parts of the federal budget, including that of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), have been impacted by a budgetary control called “sequestration” beginning [March 1]. This sequester, totaling $85 billion, will reduce funding to almost all areas of domestic social programs by about 5 percent, which would mean about $7.3 million at the NEA. This cut has been expected ever since the congressional “supercommittee” of 2011 failed to find agreement on how to achieve $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, either through spending cuts, raising revenue, or by a combination of both...Because the sequester is an 'across-the-board' cut to federal agencies, it reaches indiscriminately into every identified program and activity." http://bit.ly/XP1z3s
Arts & Military District of Columbia: Marines Bring Music to Schools DVIDSHub.net, 3/7/13 "Each year throughout February and March, the Marine Band presents its Music in the High Schools educational program throughout the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. These presentations are designed to entertain and challenge high school level musicians participating in band, orchestra, or choral programs. The presentations by brass quintet, jazz combo, and vocalists, include the opportunity for students to perform for the Marine musicians and receive valuable guidance on chamber music performance. This year, the brass quintet features works by Samuel Scheidt, Michael Kamen, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney. According to French horn player Master Sgt. Amy Horn, the goal of their program is to have students commit to playing everything on the sheet of music at 100 percent." http://bit.ly/13WD0WD Virginia: Fallen Soldier Memorialized in Ballet by His Mother The Washington Post, 3/6/13 "A boy with a mess of brown hair leaps over a toy truck and metal bat, and for a moment, Colin Wolfe is alive. For a moment, he is seven years old again and spends his days playing baseball, comforting his little sister and sharing Sabbath dinner with his family. For a moment, there is no such thing as the Iraq war, and two Marines never showed up at his parents’ Manassas home early one morning to tell them that their 19-year-old son was gone. Amy Wolfe knows these moments are fleeting, but they are why, despite the advice of those closest to her and the painful memories it would conjure, she has created an unusual tribute to her son: a ballet that captures the life of a young man who was a dancer before he was a Marine. She describes working on the ballet, titled simply 'Colin,' as simultaneously 'cathartic' and 'extremely difficult.'" http://wapo.st/YbIGVq Pennsylvania: Air Force Veteran Turns to Arts Education PhillyBurbs.com, 3/5/13 "When James del RIO sees a smiling child flourishing a paintbrush, he counts himself lucky because he knows he helped put a smile on that child’s face through art. His business allows him to indulge his childhood love of painting and drawing while fulfilling his wish to educate children. An Air Force staff sergeant, the Buckingham resident is a veteran of 14 years and a current reservist. He has spent most of his life working in the aviation industry, both military and commercial, and was called to duty as a flight engineer during missions to Afghanistan and Iraq in 2005. But after being laid off from his last job, installing interiors for helicopters, del RIO said he 'foolishly' continued hunting for a new job for a year. Finally, the father of two children told himself enough was enough. He went back to college...Art, his other lifelong passion, proved to be just the right fit when he teamed up with KidzArt, a national arts education franchise." http://bit.ly/12QKLO3
Philanthropy & Fundraising New York: How Herb Alpert Saved Harlem Arts School The Hollywood Reporter, 3/8/13 "Two years ago, the Harlem School of the Arts was forced to close its doors for a month because of a budget crisis. Now, thanks to musician-turned-philanthropist Herb Alpert, its financial house is in order and its corridors are alive with the sound of dancers' swift feet and the echoing lines of great playwrights. In appreciation, on March 11 it will rename itself The Harlem School of the Arts—The Herb Alpert Center. The rebranding comes after Alpert helped rescue it with a lion's share of grants totaling $5.5 million from his foundation, established in 1988 with his wife...For nearly a half-century, the private school has provided free or low-cost visual and performing arts classes to 3,000 mainly African-American and Latino neighborhood children...Alpert read about the situation in The New York Times in 2010 and stepped in with half of the $1 million needed to resume classes and later with more than $5 million to replenish the endowment, pay off the school's mortgage and fund scholarships." http://bit.ly/XvoDGR Tennessee: CMA Foundation Awards $1.2M to Nashville Schools Associated Press, 3/7/13 "The Country Music Association Foundation recently donated $1.2 million to Nashville public schools. The money was raised at the 2012 CMA Music Festival, and it benefits the school system’s Keep the Music Playing campaign. The festival has raised more than $6.5 million for the music program since 2006. This money has been used to build music labs and purchase instruments and supplies for all 144 Metro schools through a partnership with the Nashville Public Education Foundation. According to a news release from the CMA, Metro’s performing arts students have a 96 percent graduation rate compared with 78 percent for the general population. Sixty percent of Metro students are involved in music education classes—including 100 percent of elementary school students." http://tnne.ws/Yah464
Announcements 2013 Public Art Year in Review Seeks Submissions Since 2000, the Public Art Network’s Year in Review, the only national program that specifically recognizes public art, has annually recognized outstanding projects through an open call submission and jury selection process. Projects completed and/or debuted in calendar year 2012 are now eligible for submission for the 2013 Year in Review. A jury will select up to 50 projects for final recognition that will be presented at the upcoming Public Art Preconference, June 13-14, 2013 in Pittsburgh. Either the project artist/designer or project art administrator/consultant may submit an application. Applying to Year in Review is free and applications can be submitted online through publicartist.org. Nominate Local Arts Leaders for National Recognition Join Americans for the Arts in recognizing the great work of individuals, organizations, or programs committed to enriching their communities through the arts with the 2013 Americans for the Arts Annual Leadership Awards on June 15 in Pittsburgh, PA. The six categories are the Alene Valkanas State Arts Advocacy Award; the Arts Education Leadership Award; the Emerging Leaders Network Award; the Michael Newton Award for Private Sector Leadership; the Public Art Network Award; and, the Selina Roberts Ottum for Local Arts Leadership Award. The deadline to nominate is March 22, 2013! Find out more about each of the awards and make a nomination at convention.artsusa.org. Featured Upcoming Americans for the Arts Webinar Business Speak - Can We Talk?: Building a Volunteer Program April 25, 2013 at 3:00 PM EST Businesses often promote volunteerism as one of the key elements of employee engagement and arts organizations are looking for ways to increase involvement with skilled volunteers. Learn practical strategies on how to build and fund a successful volunteer program in your community. This webinar is presented in partnership with the Arts & Business Council of New York and is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Remember that all webinars are free to members or they can be purchased by non-members for $35 per session. Visit our website to register and find out about more upcoming sessions. Arts Watch Info In addition to our newsletter, you can also receive news in between issues by following our Twitter account (@artswatch). We post news items via Twitter as they happen every day and then collect the most relevant news for our newsletter in hopes of serving all of our 10,000 subscribers and the field at-large.
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