Program Officer, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation The Program Officer will work in collaboration with the Performing Arts team and under the guidance of the Program Director to provide professional, operational, and programmatic support. Responsibilities fall into three categories: 1) research, identification, and analysis of potential grantees; 2) ongoing support and assessment of currentRead More
Archives for June 2011
South Carolina Legislature overwhelms, overrides Governor’s veto of Arts Commission budget
Deja vu all over again. In the fiscal 2011 budget process, South Carolina’s former Governor Mark Sanford vetoed line item funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission, only to have his veto overridden by wide margins. History has just repeated itself. Governor Nikki Haley issued a similar line item veto yesterday, zeroing out $1.9 million in fundingRead More
South Carolina Arts Commission budget vetoed
For the second time in a month, a Republican governor has issued a line-item veto for the entire budget of a state arts agency. This time it is Nikki Haley of South Carolina doing the honors. Haley, like Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, has made no secret of her desire to eliminate the Arts Commission,Read More
‘Tis the Season (of Conferences)
It used to be that I would write about every conference I went to, which was an exhausting experience. One of the nice things about the proliferation of blogs as a medium is that there are now plenty of recaps available, and I don’t need to be the sole source of such information anymore. SoRead More
Help WolfBrown with a White Paper on Active Participation
WolfBrown, which is one of the best arts consulting outfits out there, approached me this week with a request for examples of “excellent, new, or unusual” arts participation programs offered by nonprofits that involve adults creating or performing. Thinking that this could be a useful exercise in crowdsourcing, I offered to post the request hereRead More
It Don’t Mean a Thing (If There’s No Audience to Swing): Jazz Audience Development in 2011
My earliest memories of attending live jazz events as a child include my father taking me to hear alto horn player Dick Carey at a club in LA, and an outdoor jazz festival with hundreds of Hawaiian-shirt clad middle-aged people swaying to the grooves on stage. For the past 3 years, I’ve spent a goodRead More
Around the horn: heat wave edition
First Things First EMCArts’s Director: Activating Innovation position, which we first posted about in March, is open again. Details here. Cool Projects You simply MUST watch the entirety of this video produced by the fine citizens of Grand Rapids. Organized after an article published on Newsweek’s website named Grand Rapids one of “America’s Top 10Read More
Reactions to the demise of the Kansas Arts Commission
Everyone is talking about Governor Sam Brownback’s (R-Kansas) decision over the Memorial Day holiday weekend to veto funding for the Kansas Arts Commission. After an unexpected attempt to override the veto on Wednesday failed, this action officially leaves Kansas as the first US state — I believe ever — to completely withdraw its public fundingRead More
El Sistema: The Movement
One man’s vision to create an after-school orchestral music education program in Venezuela back in 1975 has inspired cultural organizations and artists across the United States to take action and innovate in music education for social change.
Federal arts funding: a trace ingredient in the sausage factory of government spending
In this post from June 2011, Createquity Fellow Aaron Andersen breaks down how the arts fit into the federal budget and puts them in context with tax breaks offered to other special interests, including private industry.