- Itching to design the next NEA logo? Rocco would like to have a talk with you.
- Arts peeps who run organizations (especially ones you founded): you need to know about the Pepsi Refresh Contest. They’re giving out $1.3 million every month ($20 million total) to “innovative ideas that move communities forward” this year in six categories, one of which is Arts & Culture. The ideas will be picked by popular vote a la the recent Chase Community Giving Initiative. Check out a guest post by Pepsi’s Bonin Bough here.
- I don’t understand why Michael Rushton doesn’t get like seven bajillion comments on every post he writes. Maybe it’s because he seems to delight in pointing out the uncomfortable truths that no one else wants to touch with a ten-foot pole. Here, he recaps most of the things I’ve said about Richard Florida and Arts & Economic Prosperity, although for the most part he (a) actually said them first and (b) does so with far less benefit of the doubt for the persons involved than I (A&EP is “dishonest at the core?” Ouch!). On the substance, though, we’re pretty much on the same page.
- Movin’ on up: Congratulations to Karen Gahl-Mills, new director of Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and Josephine Ramirez, now leading the Irvine Foundation’s arts program.
- New models galore!!!!
- August Schulenberg of Flux Theatre Ensemble proposes The Homing Project, in which one-tenth or one-half or maybe even all of the 4000 or so theatrical producing entities in the United States commits to producing one play a year by a specific playwright for three years. He’s already got step one articulated and ready to go and support from David Dower at Arena Stage, so if you like the idea, go look for it over at Pepsi Refresh.
- Over at the Innovative Theatre Foundation blog, Zachary Mannheimer tells us about the De Moines Social Club, a bar owned by Mannheimer that rents its space from the nonprofit theater company that owns the building and is also run by Mannheimer. The bar/restaurant is thus a separate LLC that essentially exists to support the theater’s operations.
- I’ve written before about Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant, and Connie is back with some more info about their unusual pricing and production strategies.
- Who knows if it’s too late for this, but Amoeba and Other Music are launching online download portals for the obscure indie-focused music available at their stores.
- Paul Hodgins of the Orange County Register covers the Sacramento Arts Visioning Retreat in much richer detail than I did. This is why professional journalists are nice to have around.
- Don’t miss the Field’s Resource Guide if you’re looking for tips on how to make it as an artist.
- Hmm, somehow this didn’t come as a shocker:
In a study published in the January 18 issue of PLoS One, subjects were able to accurately identify candidates from the 2004 and 2006 U.S. Senate elections as either Democrats or Republicans based on black-and-white photos of their faces. And subjects were even able to correctly identify college students as belonging to Democratic or Republican clubs based on their yearbook photos.
- So umm, why again is increasing state arts support during a recession good politics in seemingly every country except this one? Proposing cutting arts support in Quebec cost Stephen Harper his majority? What?
- Alex Shapiro coins a new term: the economy of exposure (similar to Doug McLennan’s attention economy–okay, looks like he didn’t coin that one). I do believe that attention and brand are becoming an increasingly valuable thing, if you have some means or strategy to make that attention meaningful to you (either financially or otherwise). It’s only a tool, though, not an end in itself.
- Numbers and graphs galore! Galore, I say!
