After a year’s hiatus, Grantmakers in the Arts has resumed its practice of retaining bloggers to provide official coverage of its annual conference, which this year takes place on October 6-9 in Philadelphia, PA. The official conference blogger role is an important transparency measure because the GIA Conference is a closed convening; only grantmakers and invited guests are eligible to attend. This policy is in place ostensibly to “preserve the capacity for open discussion,” which of course makes you wonder what they’re talking about even more. I had the incredible honor of serving as GIA’s inaugural conference blogger for the organization’s 2009 convening in Brooklyn, NY, and those entries are still available for reading here.
I’m happy to report that not only will I be reprising the official conference blogger role in 2013 along with esteemed writers Diane Ragsdale and Barry Hessenius, but we were able to work it out to have Createquity’s entire editorial staff – Talia Gibas, Daniel Reid, and me – together in Philly to provide full team coverage. We’ll be writing up our general impressions along with daily reports, and might even have a few tricks up our sleeve as well. This is exciting for us not just because of the opportunity to provide a window into GIA for the rest of the arts community, but also because it’s probably the only time for the foreseeable future that our bicoastal editorial team will be able to be and work together in person. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
That leads us to our second announcement, which is that we could hardly have all these great Createquity people in one place without hosting an Office Hours event to celebrate. The Philly Office Hours will be a post-dinner affair on Monday, October 7, and although it will be at the conference hotel bar, all are welcome to attend whether you’re part of the GIA conference or not. As a reminder, Createquity Office Hours is an informal gathering in which we turn a bar into Arts Nerd Central. Come with your questions, ideas, requests for career advice, whatever — it’s a great way for us to get to know some of you a little better and, more importantly, for you all to meet each other. We look forward to seeing some of Createquity’s readers from the City of Brotherly Love!
Createquity Office Hours: Philadelphia
Monday, October 7
9-11pm
SoleFood Bar & Lounge at Loews Philadelphia Hotel
1200 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA
RSVP here by October 5