Understanding Through Tangential Questioning: Art, Dance Your Ph.D., and the Large Hadron Collider

(Shane Crerar received a BSc. in chemistry in 2000, and a BFA in sculpture in 2010. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada and is employed by the city where he works as an arts administrator, dealing with public art, collections, film, and community arts organizations.) Dance and theater make no sense to me. I was formerly a chemist, and I cannotRead More

Around the horn: It Gets Better edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Weird, the very day that the Huffington Post published my “debate” with Carla Escoda about arts funding, the New York Times published a “Room for Debate” feature on a very similar topic. Something in the water? Anyway, Sean Bowie has a nice summary if you don’t have time to read all eight entries. TheRead More

Why Teaching Artists Will Lead the Charge in Audience Engagement

As a self-proclaimed enthusiast in audience engagement, I felt compelled to respond to Michael Kaiser’s Engaging Audiences article in the Huffington Post last month. Rather than debate point-by-point Kaiser’s position that audience engagement is possibly new window dressing for an old issue or that arts organizations are using this jargon to target selected audiences, I’dRead More

Creative Placemaking Has an Outcomes Problem

Federal policymakers and private philanthropists are spending millions of dollars on creative placemaking without having developed a clear and detailed theory of how it works.

Let Your Folk Flag Fly: Folklore Research and the Informal Arts

Over the last decade, you’ve probably known someone who took up dance or music classes, or maybe someone who joined a knitting or craft group, or started a novel. According to a 2008 NEA study, 74 percent of Americans participate in the arts through attendance, art creation, or media. Whether you call it the Pro-AmRead More

Around the horn: American Bandstand edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT The California Arts Council is in danger of losing its right to solicit voluntary contributions from California citizens through their state income tax returns. Though that wasn’t proving to be a very effective way of raising money anyway – the agency banked only $165,000 from CA’s nearly 40 million residents last year. ArtsRead More

Cool jobs of the month – UPDATED

(Reminder: the Fractured Atlas Research Fellows deadline is this Friday!) Executive Director, South Arts South Arts seeks a dynamic, multi-talented executive director to build on its exceptional 37-year track record of strengthening the south through advancing excellence in the arts, connecting the arts to key state and national policies, and nurturing a vibrant quality ofRead More

St. Louis

Any Createquity readers from the Show Me State? I’ll be in town for a brief visit to speak at the Rustbelt to Artist Belt: At the Crossroads conference on Friday. Organized by the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute of the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC) in partnership with Cleveland’s Community Partnership for Arts andRead More

Around the horn: Obamacare edition

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT Mike Boehm has more on the important role California’s soon-to-be-defunct community redevelopment agencies have had in shaping Los Angeles’s cultural development. Gene Takagi provides this extremely helpful dispatch from a session on new “hybrid” legal forms such as the Benefit Corporation and L3C. Culture360 has published a helpful two–part history and analysis of cultural policy in SouthRead More

Cool jobs of the month

(Yup, we’re hiring again, this time for the summer!) Research Fellows, Fractured Atlas Fractured Atlas is seeking Summer 2012 research fellows to play key roles in mission‐critical research initiatives. We’re seeking individuals with a background or interest in the arts who are prepared to bring hard‐nosed quantitative analysis skills to creative and strategic challenges in our field.Read More