DOMESTIC The big news last month was the campaign for and passage of a millage (property tax) in Detroit to support the beleaguered Detroit Institute of the Arts. Hyperallergic’s Jillian Steinhauer and ARTSBlog’s Kim Kober are celebrating the new legislation, which passed easily in Wayne and Oakland counties but only by a hair in suburban Macomb. The DIA took the campaign very seriously, spending anRead More
Brownback Caves: Kansas Gets Its Arts Funding Back
Well, ain’t this a nice turn of events: Today, a great victory has been won by everyone in the state of Kansas who loves the arts. The Governor this morning signed the budget, which includes $700,000 for the newly-created Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission. Advocates from all corners of the state spoke – and spoke loudly.Read More
Public arts funding update: April
FEDERAL Breaking news: the government is cutting its funding to PBS! Wait – sorry – hold that. It turns out the NEA is cutting its funding to PBS – to the tune of more than $1 million, to be exact. Talk about irony! The money had been earmarked to support organizations that produce arts-oriented programming on public television throughRead More
Public arts funding update: March
It was a fairly quiet month, all told, and no news is good news after some of the horrible stories we’ve been treated to in previous years. It looks like we actually have a chance of seeing an increase in state arts appropriations this year for the first time since before the recession, though we’llRead More
Public arts funding update: February
For whatever reason, this is about the time of year when things start to heat up in budget land, for the federal government and states alike. From February through May, we’ll find out a lot about where the NEA and state arts council budgets stand for fiscal year 2013, and what the corresponding ramifications mightRead More
The Top 10 Arts Policy Stories of 2011
Each year, Createquity offers a list of the top ten arts policy stories of the past 12 months. You can read the 2009 and 2010 editions here and here, respectively. In addition to the main list, I also identify my favorite new arts blogs that started within the past year. The list, like the blog,Read 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
Uncomfortable Thoughts: Is Shouting About Arts Funding Bad for the Arts?
(I’ve had the pleasure of working with Margy Waller for almost a year now helping her organization, ArtsWave, with its Measuring the Impact Initiative. Margy focuses on strategic communications and creative connections to promote broad support of the arts at ArtsWave and Topos Partnership. Previously she was Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, with a joint appointment in theRead More
Around the horn: Rock me like a hurricane edition
First, two personal items of note: I’m honored to be listed once again as one of the top 25 (really, 40ish) arts leaders on Barry Hessenius’s annual list of such things; and the video of my talk at TEDxMichiganAve given many months ago is now available for viewing. CLOSURES, OPENINGS, MERGERS, AND PAY CUTS Gentrification claims anotherRead More
Around the horn: heat wave edition
First Things First EMCArts’s Director: Activating Innovation position, which we first posted about in March, is open again. Details here. Cool Projects You simply MUST watch the entirety of this video produced by the fine citizens of Grand Rapids. Organized after an article published on Newsweek’s website named Grand Rapids one of “America’s Top 10Read More