The NEA gets into urban revitalization

Well, it turns out that Rocco did have a doozy of an announcement this morning: a new funding program called the NEA Mayors’ Institute on City Design 25th Anniversary Initiative. (The name is a doozy too, and makes me wonder whether there’s some kind of joint funding relationship going on – the 25th anniversary isRead More

I get letters

I guess one of the privileges that comes along with the subscriber count passing 500 is that people send me press releases now. I’ve gotten a whole bunch of them in the past couple of weeks, and they all seem pretty relevant, so I’ll do my journalistic duty and pass them along. (Note: some ofRead More

Around the horn: MLK edition

The excellent commentary on Outrageous Fortune is so plentiful that I won’t pretend to try to link to all of it. Two bloggers not part of Isaac’s group caught my eye with their posts, however. First, Guy Yedwab makes an important point about individual incentives (and inertia) getting in the way of systematic change. Second,Read More

Playwrights’ Outrageous (Mis)Fortune

As mentioned yesterday, a group of blogfolk are making their way through the new book/study Outrageous Fortune that looks at the state of the new American play in the early 21st century. My first post on the subject was here; today, I’ll be discussing chapter two along with playwright Matt Freeman. Other writers will (thankfully)Read More

Outrageous Fortune: a composer’s perspective

Around a year ago, Createquity got discovered, if you will, by a certain Isaac Butler of the Parabasis blog. Isaac is a writer and director active in the theater field, and since Parabasis is one of the central pillars in the “theatrosphere,” as its participants call it, he ended up sending me a lot ofRead More

Called out

So, um, hi Ethan. (Hey, love your albums!) The pianist for the way-cool Bad Plus jazz trio, writing a typically lengthy response to the David Byrne piece on arts funding linked last week, asks, Aren’t education budgets the easiest things for government planners to cut corners with — especially arts education budgets? If you tookRead More

Around the horn: palindrome edition

Happy 01-11-10, folks. First time we’ve seen a palindrome date in that format since October 22, 2001, if I have my math right. Ain’t numbers fun? Here’s this week’s news: Isaac’s done (with directing for a living, that is). In related news, Newsweek notices the burgeoning pro-am movement. Stop me if you’ve heard this oneRead More

The Top 10 (U.S.) Arts Policy Stories of 2009

OK, so I know I’m a little late to the party with the year/decade-in-review lists, but since no one other than me apparently cares enough about arts policy to make a top 10 list about it, I’m happy to be the doofus who takes the plunge. 2009 featured no shortage of tumultuous and game-changing eventsRead More

Around the horn: Arthur C. Clarke edition

It seems this is the week in which I realize I have been under a rock on a number of fronts. I don’t know what happened, but all of the sudden Crain’s New York is an essential source for creative economy news in the five boroughs. Here, Amanda Fung sews together a story about artsRead More

What We’ve Learned So Far

Image by macwagen, Creative Commons license I’ve been blogging for a little over two years now, and in that time a lot has changed. I’ve gone through a complete graduate business program, worked for a summer at one of the largest private grantmaking organizations in the world, expanded my blog reading list by about 2000%Read More