(crossposted from the GIA Conference Blog) Following the conclusion of the Sewing Sails in a Perfect Storm panel, we headed to the ballroom for a lunchtime plenary session with Kakuna Kerina, former executive director of Harlem School of the Arts. Grantmakers in the Arts executive director Janet Brown opened the session with a brief annualRead More
Archives for October 2009
Live from GIA: Day III – Sewing Sails in a Perfect Storm
(crossposted from the GIA Conference Blog) Moderated by Bill Cleveland of the Center for the Study of Art and Community, this session focused on two foundations that have made sweeping changes to their program strategy in the past year. The Boston Foundation, represented by Ann McQueen, recently announced a foundation-wide move toward a venture philanthropyRead More
Live from GIA: Day III – Not Asking Nonprofits to Do More with Less
(crossposted from the GIA Conference Blog) The third day of the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference opened with another set of breakfast roundtables. I attended “Not Asking Nonprofits to Do More with Less, Or the Uneasy Art of Communicating with Our Grantees During a Downturn,” facilitated by my former colleague Julie Fry of the WilliamRead More
Live from GIA: Day II – Arts, Culture, and Community Economic Development
(cross-posted at the GIA Conference Blog) On Monday, I attended an off-site session at chashama’s 126th Street artist studios, which provides workspace for 38 artists in a rapidly gentrifying area of Harlem. The subject of the meeting, appropriately, was the arts and economic development. Organized by GIA board member Janet Rodriguez, the session featured remarksRead More
Live from GIA: Day II – Resources for International Exchange and the Ballad of American Arts
(cross-posted at the GIA Conference Blog) The jam-packed days of the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference are now in full swing, and yesterday’s was especially full to the brim. Our morning started bright and early at 8:00 with a selection of “breakfast roundtables”: informal topical discussions over croissants, yogurts, and coffee. I attended theRead More
Generation Y and the Problem of “Entitlement”: A Bullet-Point Manifesto
(cross-posted on ARTSBlog for this week’s 20UNDER40 discussion on emerging leaders and intergenerational dialogue) (Note: I was inspired to experiment with this form by a guest post on Sean Stannard-Stockton’s Tactical Philanthropy blog by Nonprofit Finance Fund Capital Partners founder George Overholser. I hope you enjoy it.) An oft-heard complaint about Generation Y (and otherRead More
Live from GIA: Day I – Opening Plenary Dinner
(Cross-posted at the GIA 2009 Conference Blog) The 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference officially opened on Sunday night with a half-salmon-half-chicken dinner (something for everyone, I guess?), welcoming remarks, housekeeping notes, a performance, and a keynote by pollster and author John Zogby. The strange tensions of the times we live in were in fullRead More
Live from GIA: Day I – Arts and Social Justice Preconference
(Note to Createquity readers: I’m blogging the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference from Brooklyn, NY this week. This post was originally published at the GIA 2009 Conference Blog.) A strikingly diverse group of arts funders gathered at the Pratt Institute Sunday morning for the Arts and Social Justice Preconference. GIA’s Arts and Social JusticeRead More
Response to Arts Policy Library: Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement
Recently, I had the honor of posting my first contribution to Createquity’s Arts Policy Library, my response to the report “Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact.” In the comments section, one of the report’s authors Lalitha Vaidyanathan took the time to respond to two of the main points of my response. The first pointRead More
Achieving Consensus in a Pluralist Value System
image by jef safi (‘pictosophizing) – Creative Commons license In the course of my occasional blog discussion with Tony Wang about the nature of value (economic and otherwise), I’ve gotten us off on a bit of a philosophical tangent: namely, exploring the question of whether a pluralist value system–one in which we don’t assign anyRead More