On Michael Kaiser and Citizen Critics

Michael Kaiser is so hit or miss. Last week he published this truly unfortunate commentary on the slow death of professional arts criticism, and the rise of citizen critics as a result: [T]he growing influence of blogs, chat rooms and message boards devoted to the arts has given the local professional critic a slew of competitors….Many artsRead More

Connecting El Sistema Programs in the US

Who knew little kids playing Tchaikovsky in Latin America could inspire national institutional partnerships in the United States? Last month, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced a new Masters of Arts in Teaching degree, in partnership with the Longy School of Music and Bard College, to position high-level musicians as socially-conscious, engaging teachers in El Sistema-inspiredRead More

Around the horn: European debt edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT: DOMESTIC AFTA’s Narric Rome shares the latest on how arts education has fared in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka No Child Left Behind) reauthorization, which Jennifer Kessler reported on earlier this year. Mostly good news, from what it sounds like. Looks like net neutrality advocates dodged a bullet when the Senate rejected anRead More

Dispatch from the Bay Area, Part II: Beyond Dynamic Adaptability

On October 24, I was invited to be one of three official bloggers for the one-day Beyond Dynamic Adaptability conference in San Francisco, along with Clay Lord and Adam Fong, whose contributions you can read at the links above. (Disclosure: that means I was paid to write this post, but no one associated with theRead More

Emerging Ideas: Classical Music’s New Entrepreneurs

With traditional careers becoming increasingly unattainable, classical musicians are branching out on their own.

Around the horn: Hallsnoween edition

MUSICAL CHAIRS Judilee Reed, formerly the executive director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, joins the Surdna Foundation as director of its Thriving Cultures program. With Reed’s departure, LINC – which was designed from its inception in 2003 as a ten-year program – begins the process of counting down the clock. I suspect it’s no accident that the funder collaborative thatRead More

Cool jobs of the month

Program Officer, Kresge Foundation The Kresge Foundation’s Arts and Culture program has an immediate opening for a program officer to assist in the design and implementation of the program’s national efforts to elevate the effective use of arts and culture in transforming and revitalizing communities. The program will focus on the themes of strengthening creativeRead More

Around the horn: grantmakers edition

Back recently from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in San Francisco. More on that soon! In the meantime: ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – FEDERAL Republican House members are back on the warpath to eliminating public broadcasting money (along with other government programs). The first 1:36 of this interview with Grammy-winning jazz musician Esperanza Spalding has the makings ofRead More

NAMP Blog Salon posts

Last week, I participated in the National Arts Marketing Project Blog Salon over at Americans for the Arts. My two entries focused on applying research and feedback-gathering principles to a marketing context. Not the typical Createquity fare, but if you find such things of interest, here’s some more information below. Is Your Arts Programming Usable?Read More

Around the horn: Occupy Wall Street edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – DOMESTIC Welcome Dan Lurie, the NEA’s new Senior Advisor and Director of Strategic Partnerships. Nice to see the National Conference of State Legislatures recognizing the value of arts and culture, especially with state arts agencies under such budget pressure this year and state houses having become quite an ideological battleground over theRead More