• With a rare, wide-open mayoral race underway, Boston’s arts community has come together to assert some political sway of its own. The new advocacy coalition MassCreative organized a nine-candidate forum that actually pushed back a televised debate. The primary is today.
• North Carolina’s Randolph County just banned Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries following a parent complaint that the novel is “too much for teenagers.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation welcomes Createquity’s own Daniel Reid as its new executive director and Courtney Hodell as director of the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
• The Ford Foundation announced Martin Abregú as its new vice president for the Democracy, Rights, and Justice program, and Hilary Pennington as the vice president of Education, Creativity, and Free Expression. Pennington, who previously led education initiatives at the Gates Foundation, will oversee all of Ford’s arts funding beginning October 1.
• Nearly a year after its prior president, Jeremy Nowak, resigned after eighteen months on the job, the William Penn Foundation has announced a search to fill its top leadership position, newly reframed as a “managing director.”
• John Palfrey, an expert on technology and civic engagement, is succeeding Robert Briggs as the new chair of the board of the Knight Foundation.
• G. Wayne Clough, who has served as the director of the Smithsonian Institution since 2008, will step down in October 2014.
• So long, Technology in the Arts blog; hello, Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The rebranded/reimagined service from Carnegie Mellon’s arts management program will serve as “a research outlet for those working and learning in the arts management and technology sector,” and features interviews, case studies, research summaries, and more.

IN THE FIELD

• Nathan Zebedeo reviews Sarah Durham’s Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications for the (ahem) brand-new Fractured Atlas Book Club.
• Last week, Americans for the Arts hosted a blog salon focusing on arts education and the “trifecta of education accountability—standards, assessment, and evaluation.” The salon included a perspective from Createquity’s own Talia Gibas and a nice summary from Kristen Engebretsen, and touched on testing, teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and more.
• Speaking of accountability, Tennessee is rolling out an ambitious evaluation system for visual and performing arts teachers that relies on portfolios of student work. Teachers select samples they feel show evidence of growth over time, and submit them electronically for peer review. Time-consuming and complicated? Yep. Worth following? You bet.
• Udacity, a popular provider of online college-level courses known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), has announced the launch of Open Education Alliance, bringing together leading tech companies and educators to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” Is there an Open Arts Education Alliance in the near future?
• The Detroit Free Press takes an in-depth look at the embattled Detroit Institute of Arts’s long and tangled relationship with its hometown, providing insight into the current threats of deaccessioning.
• Last Wednesday, September 18, #AskaCurator Day “connect[ed] experts in venues large and small directly to gallery and museum fans across the world, inviting both parties to take to their [Twitter] handles and ask each other anything they want.” You can catch up on the conversations here.

BIG IDEAS

• “Arts Dinnervention” participants Devon Smith and Laura Zabel each reflect on the recent WESTAF-supported discussion, which brought together twelve arts leaders to consider new solutions to old problems. While the convening did not result in a singular path forward, there was one notable consensus: “the arts are not in trouble, it’s the institutions that are failing.”
• The Dallas Morning News has taken a novel approach to hiring a new art critic to its staff, a position empty since 2006. The addition of Rick Brettell, an art history professor at the University of Texas, will strengthen the news org’s arts coverage and is the second time it has worked with UT to hire a local professor as a cultural critic.
• Is it ethical for arts funders to start what they cannot finish? Diane Ragsdale, one of the official bloggers at the upcoming Grantmakers in the Arts conference, has her doubts.
• How is an artist like a social entrepreneur? Laura Callanan explores the similarities at SOCAP13.
• If you’re looking for a dose of wisdom to go with your morning cup o’ joe, start here: an array of arts leaders including Roberto Bedoya, Janet Brown, Richard Kessler, Margot Knight, and Mara Walker reflect on what they have learned from their years in the field.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Break out the champagne – the arts have stagnated! Americans for the Arts’s new 2013 National Arts Index is practically identical to last year’s, following several years of steady decline. The study finds deeper reason for optimism in the wake of the Great Recession: over the last 10 years, total private giving to all charities and the total number of workers in all occupations have been strong predictors of the health of the arts sector, and both are up.
• Jon Silpayamanant digs into the WPA Federal Music Project with an annotated bibliographic timeline and argues the WPA, as well as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that preceded it, were crucial to classical music during the Great Depression.
• Data on the relationship between cities’ aesthetics and economic health may be soon within reach thanks to Place Pulse, a project out of MIT that asks users to rank  photos from cities as more or less “boring,” “safe,” “lively,” etc.
• A new survey conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy catalogs concerns about foundations from non-profits: nearly half of the respondents felt that foundations are not aware of the challenges the respondents face, and more than two-thirds believe foundations fail to use their various resources to help nonprofits with their challenges. Commentators blame power dynamics and the “inherently self-serving” structure of foundations.
• Connoisseurs of fine wines and classical music may be dismayed over recent studies examining the complexities involved in critical judgement. Turns out that experts and amateurs alike are susceptible to everything from presentation, environment, and even price (gasp!) when it comes to evaluating quality.
• When faith and evidence collide, sometimes it’s faith that wins – at least when it comes to politics. See also Margy Waller’s Uncomfortable Thoughts piece for Createquity from back in the day.

• 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.
• Arts Council England has published an evaluation of its ambitious program to give out half a million free tickets to the theatre (in actuality slightly less than 400,000 were distributed).

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Heather Pontonio has joined the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation as its new arts program officer.
• Welcome Ayanna Hudson, new director of the NEA’s Arts Education program.

IN THE FIELD

• Whew! The Los Angeles Times published a brutal exposé earlier this month of problems at Watts House Project, a darling of the fledgling creative placemaking movement that attracted nearly half a million dollars in grants last year from the NEA’s Our Town program and ArtPlace and others. (Update: the NEA wrote in to clarify that while Our Town has supported projects around Watts, the grant is not associated with Watts House Project specifically.) According to the article, the Project and its founder Edgar Arceneaux have alienated some of the residents the organization is supposed to be helping by failing to deliver on promises and succumbing to mission drift. I found  this little bit of gotcha journalism particularly cute:
  

  As for [Rocco] Landesman, reached by phone in Washington, D.C., he said he based his positive impressions on a slide show by Arceneaux as well as a tour of the block, “and it all looked good.” He also talked to one enthusiastic 107th Street resident, Rosa Gutierrez, whose home received a bright flower mural as part of the program. He said he was not told she was on staff at Watts House Project.

  Consequences were swift. Arceneaux didn’t last the weekend as executive director of the organization, though the announcement leaves the door open for him to remain involved in another capacity. However, another former board member disputes elements of the article, presenting a compelling case that it was unfair to WHP. Nevertheless, the problems don’t seem like they’re going away anytime soon. (Interestingly, I heard Arceneaux’s replacement, Will Sheffie, keynote the Rustbelt to Artist Belt conference in St. Louis just a week after all this went down. He got a warm welcome from the audience, but avoided addressing the controversy in any real depth.)

• The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is upping the ante again on its radical drive to democratize classical music. The latest move is to offer members tickets to every single one of its concerts for just $5 a month. The article is worth reading in full; essentially they’re saying they’re all but giving up on earned revenue as a serious income driver.
• Is there a future for cash mobs to support local arts organizations?
• RIP San Antonio Opera.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The NEA has a new literature review out on audience impact, conducted by WolfBrown as part of a larger project to study audiences at NEA-funded events.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund has released its 2012 State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey, which reports that nonprofits are still feeling the economic pinch of the recession even though we’ve officially been in recovery for almost three years. (As an aside, I always have this funny cognitive dissonance whenever I read about nonprofits having a hard time because they’re “unable to meet demand.” If only arts organizations had such problems!)
• Now conservatives are making a stink about the American Community Survey (the government’s annual replacement for what used to be the long-form Census) because of the nature of its questions. They want to make it optional to fill out, which of course would make it just another poll and destroy its statistical usefulness.
• Americans for the Arts’s Randy Cohen offers a 2012 update to his popular Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts post. AFTA also released the latest edition of the National Arts Index this month, and this time, there’s a new website–and a nifty new Local Arts Index–to go with it.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy finds no major differences between how grantees of color and others experience relationships with their funders.
• The Ford Foundation has made its internal records from the 1950s and ’60s available for review at the Rockefeller Archive Center in upstate NY. This was a fascinating time in Ford’s history during which it was largely responsible for the growth of symphony orchestras and the regional theater movement across the country.

• A professor’s quest to overturn a portion of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that placed certain foreign works back under copyright after they had already entered the public domain appears to have reached an end.
• The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is thinking about trying out social impact bonds.
• Looks like there were some shenanigans behind the construction of the High Line, NYC’s well-known elevated park. Reminiscent of James Gray’s The Yards, if anyone saw that movie.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – INTERNATIONAL

• The three museums of Abu Dhabi’s $27 billion cultural district have had their openings pushed back to 2015-17.
• The Danish government has merged three national agencies – the Danish Arts Agency, the Heritage Agency of Denmark, and the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media – into one Danish Agency for Culture.
• Good news: cultural funding survives intact in Toronto.

ALL ABOUT PHILANTHROPY

• GiveWell details how charity regulations in various countries make donating to top-rated international charities more difficult than it should be.
• The Craigslist Foundation is shutting down.
• Most foundation leaders have trouble converting evaluation results into “meaningful insights.”

IN THE FIELD

• More on Opera Boston’s sudden demise late last year.
• Bye bye Detroit Children’s Museum.
• Yikes! longtime conductor, author, and inspirational TED talker Benjamin Zander was let go by the New England Conservatory this month over a cover-up involving a videographer who was a convicted sex offender, as NEC clearly wanted no part of any Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky redux.
• LA Opera joins those trying out the dynamic pricing route.
• Interesting new curator time share model being pioneered by the Detroit Institute of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
• When the IRS dumped hundreds of thousands of organizations from the nonprofit rolls last year, people hardly batted an eye – mostly because they assumed those organizations (who had failed to file required forms for three years in a row) were either no longer active or not accomplishing any good if they were. Yet my cultural asset mapping work has suggested that at least some of those organizations who had their tax-exempt status stripped were real and continuing to provide public programs. Thomas A. Kelley provides one such example in this account of an African American community center that is fighting to get its nonprofit status back.
• Jerome Weeks notes the difficulty that Dallas-area arts organizations are having with recruiting top leadership talent, and correctly follows the breadcrumbs to the lack of attractive opportunities for earlier-stage arts professionals:
  

  Jose Bowen says one reason the pickings remain thin is that the starting jobs for arts management graduates generally don’t pay well. And the punishing costs of college don’t help, either. Bowen is dean of SMU’s Meadows School of the Arts. It’s one of the few that offers a double master’s degree in arts management – in the arts and business administration.

  Bowen: “Our students graduate and are immediately faced with a choice. Come work for Goldman and make more money or go work for a nonprofit and make less money. And when you have loans, right out of school? That’s a hard choice to make.”

  It’s really very simple, people. If senior leaders with demonstrated records of accomplishment don’t want the job, it’s time to consider either senior leaders without demonstrated records of accomplishment, or junior leaders who haven’t had a chance to demonstrate accomplishment yet. If arts professionals below the leadership ranks are never given an opportunity to take initiative, manage people, or own projects in their roles, they’re never going to be in a position to fill those positions effectively, after the person who did so for so long is gone. And that’s assuming they stick around on low salaries waiting for their big break. Something to think about.

BIG IDEAS

• I’ve been wondering for a while about the effect on the bottom line that election season must have for struggling traditional media companies – especially in the wake of the Citizens United decision. Well, Dave Copeland takes that thought further and notes how well-positioned online audience gatekeepers – such as Google – are to benefit from campaign ads.
• ArtsJournal hosted one of its blog debates last week called Lead or Follow, featuring Diane Ragsdale, Michael Kaiser, and others.  Doug McLennan continues to experiment with the form of these fora, and though I don’t think he’s quite nailed the perfect formula yet, the process is fascinating to watch. As background to this conversation, the Wallace Foundation published 54 stories of audience engagement arising from its Wallace Excellence Awards grant program from the previous decade, as well as four more in-depth case studies on its own site.
• Is your brain constantly bloated because it’s trying to take in too much information? Maybe you should go on an information diet! Beth Kanter reviews what looks to be an important book for folks like me who are constantly trying to drink from the fire hose.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Add a feather to Randy Cohen’s cap: the Americans for the Arts researcher’s National Arts Index project has inspired an imitator across the pond, the UK Arts Index. (h/t Mark Robinson)
• Kickstarter is out with its annual project stats. Kickstarter projects attracted nearly $100 million in pledges in 2011! Also of note, the number of high-volume donors (people who contribute to hundreds of projects a year and presumably seek them out as a kind of hobby) is growing.
• Nonprofit Finance Fund is conducting its fourth annual survey of nonprofits, analyzing how they are responding to and recovering from the financial crisis. The survey is anonymous and takes 10-15 minutes to fill out, and they’re looking for as many respondents as possible. They are taking responses through February 15 and you can participate here.
• Look out, American Red Cross! GiveWell is on the warpath to get you to release your evaluation of your own organization’s relief efforts in Haiti.

ETC.

• We haven’t had any silly links in Around the Horn for a while. Well, that’s about to change…

Big News

• The Nonprofit Finance Fund’s founder and CEO, Clara Miller, will be the new head of the F. B. Heron Foundation, one of the pioneers of using a foundation’s endowment investments for mission-related purposes.
• What would the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange be without Liz Lerman? Just the Dance Exchange, apparently.
• Lois Weisberg, longtime head of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, is out amid that agency’s continuing shakeup. Read an interview with her about it here.
• The Washington National Opera and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will merge. (h/t Jonas)

Big Intrigue

• Has the Pepsi Refresh contest been tainted by voters-for-hire from India for the past six to nine months? (Cf. Amazon’s Mechanical Turk being used for spam.)
• Thanks to a Fellowship applicant, I just discovered this year-old, incredibly detailed (and critical) examination of the Richard Florida phenomenon from the perspective of cities who paid for his advice over the past decade. The more I learn, the more I think of RF as a kind of complex and fascinating Rorschach test, someone who reveals more about ourselves by our reactions to him than by anything he says or writes. Hear a recent interview with him by Steve Dahlberg and Mary Alice Long.
• I’m starting to get increasingly freaked out about internet security, and this news that a researcher has developed wifi password hacking software using Amazon Web Services doesn’t help. Says the poster: “Cloud computing makes it easier for hackers to take advantage of weak security networks. There will be some huge and successful attacks this year. The level of preparedness is just not high enough to expect anything else except for some very high profile break-ins.” Uh oh.
• More state arts councils in states run by Republican governors are in trouble. Now it’s Kansas that may be the first to see its arts commission go. Janet Brown, as always, offers wisdom on the role and value of state arts agencies.

Big Projects

• Behold the British versions of Kickstarter and Indiegogo. While we’re on the subject of crowdfunding, Kickstarter’s “best of 2010” list is apparently “super inspiring,” and Brian Newman writes about a really-cool-sounding, Kickstarter-supported restaurant-cum-art-project called What Happens When.
• Awesome map of spoken dialects across North America (via CultureFuture).

Big Data

• The new National Arts Index has been unveiled by Americans for the Arts. You’ll hear a lot about the topline number (97.7, supposedly a 12-year low), but I feel the NAI’s real value is as a compendium for yearly data on 81 separate indicators in one place. I’ll be writing more on this later.
• More Richard Florida: a study on beauty and community satisfaction; the geography of gun deaths. (Curious finding in the latter: McCain vote share was the single variable associated most with gun deaths at the statewide level, more so than poverty, drug use, or possession of guns.)
• Speaking of beauty, here’s Christian Rudder with another stellar stat-porn post on internet dating, this time on female attractiveness and male attention. Marginal Revolution’s Alex Tabarrok responds.
• From Helicon Collaborative, a snapshot of arts funding in California. (Also see item at the end of this post.)
• Technology in the Arts surveys tech adoption and implementation among arts organizations.
• In a TEDx talk, Charles Limb describes two neuroscience studies he’s conducted using MRIs of jazz musicians and freestyle rappers improvising.
• Courtesy the Center for Effective Philanthropy, grantees report on their perceptions of foundation evaluation and reporting practices.
• The good news: a majority of Americans oppose cutting government funding for “the arts and sciences” (thanks for the help there, Gallup!). The bad news: Americans are more enthusiastic about cutting arts and science funding than all but one other category the poll asked about.

Big Ideas

• Amid all the hubbub about “emerging” this and that, Michael Kaiser stands up for the old farts. And so does Dan Pallotta (though in his case it’s because he’s about to become one).
• More on the grad school debt racket, this time focusing on law schools. “Solving the J.D. overabundance problem, according to Professor Henderson, will have to involve one very drastic measure: a bunch of lower-tier law schools will need to close.” Gabriel Rossman explains the strong incentives professors and institutions have to feed the unrealistic dreams of their graduate students. Meanwhile, Rosetta Thurman explains why you may not need to go to grad school to accomplish what you’re looking to do.
• Kyle MacMillan on how orchestras need to change in the 21st century, via David H. Thomas. Speaking of David H. and new orchestra practices, here he is, a professional orchestral clarinetist mind you, coming out and saying that he’d actually prefer to see an HD broadcast of a great orchestra rather than a live, local orchestral performance in person. Wow.
• And while we’re on the subject of orchestras, check out the news that Alarm Will Sound conductor Alan Pierson will lead the Brooklyn Philharmonic. For those of you who are not new music nerds, know that this represents a very radical hire by the struggling Brooklyn Phil. If it pays off, orchestral music may never be quite the same. (And if it doesn’t, I’d be pretty worried about what’s going to happen to orchestras.) No pressure, Alan.
• Nina Simon on Paul Light on innovation. Great read.
• How’s this for attracting new audiences? Playwrights Horizons is offering babysitting services to theater attendees. Worth a shot, I guess.
• Ciara Pressler has a very deep and provocative post at the Fractured Atlas blog on how we are all marketers. I would go even further than her examples: I think that potentially every action one takes professionally (and, arguably, personally) has repercussions for what one might call “reputation management.” The way in which we manifest ourselves to others both publicly and privately is always, ultimately, marketing, whether we choose to think of it as such or not.
• Amelia Northrup rounds up some arts technology trends to watch in 2011.
• At White Courtesy Telephone, Albert Ruesga offers 24 “theses” about foundations. And if Sean Stannard-Stockton tells me I should read this blog, I’m a-gonna read it.
• Are liberals just predisposed to compromise more than conservatives? And does that give conservatives a lasting competitive advantage?

Big Opportunity

• The California Arts Council is looking for a new director.

First, sounds like the NEA’s got a doozy of an announcement tomorrow:

NEA CHAIRMAN ROCCO LANDESMAN TO GIVE POLICY ADDRESS AT U. S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS ON JANUARY 21, 2010

Washington, D.C. – National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman will give a policy address at the annual meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) on Thursday, January 21, 2010. The chairman’s speech will take place at USCM’s breakfast plenary on the 21^st from 7:30 – 9:00 AM at the Capital Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC.

As part of his speech, Chairman Landesman will announce a funding opportunity [emphasis Ian’s] that reflects the tenets of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which celebrates its 25^th anniversary in 2010/11, including the role of artists and arts organizations as place-makers and the ways they can actively contribute toward a vibrant, sustainable community.

Chairman Landesman’s announcement follows four Art Works trips—to Peoria, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; Washington, DC; and Memphis, Tennessee—that afforded him a close up view of how art works in different communities. Each Art Works trip included meetings with arts, civic, business, and political leaders as well as tours of neighborhoods and arts and community organizations.

Next, from Margy Waller and the Fine Arts Fund:

Dear Friends,

We are writing today to share our new report on a communications strategy to build more collective responsibility for the arts. Many of us have spent years searching for the strongest possible message and the best case on which to build support for the arts. Yet the messages we have used, and successfully integrated in the dialogue across the country, have not yielded the broad sense of shared responsibility that we seek.

In late 2008, leaders of the Fine Arts Fund embarked on a year-long research initiative designed to develop an inclusive community dialogue leading to broadly shared public responsibility for arts and culture in the region.

We concluded that our work with the community through arts and culture must be based on a foundation that incorporates a deeper understanding of the best way to communicate with the public in order to achieve that shared sense of responsibility.

Indeed, while we know that many people in our region say they like and value the arts, this has not been enough in recent years to grow charitable giving or public funding for arts and culture.

We determined that we need more analysis and knowledge of public views and assumptions about arts and culture to develop the necessary foundation for a conversation that leads to increased shared responsibility and public support.

While most people feel positively toward the arts, we will have to change the conversation in order to motivate action by the public for the arts.

This report summarizes a year of work and important findings for widespread use by others. While leaders of business and other nonprofit sectors have conducted research using framing science methodology to develop communications strategies for change on other issues, this is a first-in-the-nation analysis on arts and culture.

We are pleased to share the findings of this research, conducted with us by the Topos Partnership. Click here to download your copy of The Arts Ripple Effect research report. It is our hope that many organizations and writers will begin utilizing this information as they write and speak about the value of the arts in our neighborhoods and nation. As more of us use this lens on the arts, we expect the public will to support arts and culture will increase. This echo chamber about the ripple effects will benefit everyone.

Next, from our friends at Americans for the Arts:

Washington, DC — January 20, 2010 — Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts, today announced the National Arts Index at a press conference held at the National Press Club and kicking-off its 50th anniversary year. The National Arts Index is the first study designed to measure the health and vitality of the arts industries in the United States. The National Arts Index is composed of 76 national-level research indicators produced by the federal government and private research organizations.

The National Arts Index fell 4 points in 2008 to a score of 98.4, reflecting losses in charitable giving and declining attendance at larger cultural institutions, even as the number of arts organizations grew. The 2008 downturn in the Index was not wholly unexpected. With 100,000 nonprofit arts organizations and 600,000 more arts-related businesses, 2.24 million artists in the workforce, and billions of dollars in consumer spending, the arts industries largely track the nation’s business cycle. A score of 105.5 would return the Index to its highest point, measured in 1999.

“We will make-up the lost ground, but it is going to take several years. Based on past patterns, Americans for the Arts estimates an arts rebound to begin in 2011,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “For our part, we will dedicate 2010, which is our 50th anniversary, to strengthening the arts field by developing new business models for arts delivery that better suit an evolving industry as well as strengthening audience demand.”

The Index is set to a base score of 100 in 2003. Every point difference represents one percent change. There is no uppermost Index score, though higher is better. For example, a score of 125 would convey that arts and culture are more highly valued as a fundamental component in American society—characterized by strong financial health, ample capacity, innovation, vigorous participation, and a vital competitive position.

The 2009 National Arts Index report, as well as one-pagers for all 76 indicators is available for download at www.AmericansForTheArts.org/go/ArtsIndex.

[snipping puff quotes]

Other key findings from the National Arts Index report include:

• Demand for the arts lags supply.  Between 1998 and 2008, there was a steady increase in the number of artists, arts organizations, and arts-related employment.  Nonprofit arts organizations alone grew in number from 73,000 to 104,000 during this span of time.  That one out of three failed to achieve a balanced budget even during the strongest economic years of this decade suggests that sustaining this capacity is a growing challenge, and these gains are at risk.
• How the public participates in and consumes the arts is expanding.  Tens of millions of people attend concerts, plays, opera, and museum exhibitions, yet the percentage of the U.S. population attending these arts events is shrinking, and the decline is noticeable. On the increase, however, is the percentage of the American public personally creating art (e.g., music making and drawing). Technology is changing how Americans experience the arts and consumption via technology and social media is also up.
• The competitiveness of the arts is slipping. While the nature of arts participation is changing, not all arts organizations are equally adept at meeting changes in demand. The arts, in many ways, are not “stacking up” well against other uses of audience members’ time, donor and funder commitment, or spending when compared to non-arts sectors.

[snipping puff quotes]

The Kresge Foundation has awarded Americans for the Arts a $1.2 million grant to use the findings from the National Arts Index to create a companion Local Arts Index, as well as the supporting workshops and materials necessary to assist communities in the effective application of the local data.

The Index researchers have incorporated the study’s 76 indicators into nine measurement categories that provide a decade-long view on trends in philanthropy, participation, and creativity as well as the relationship of the arts to other areas of American life, such as employment and education. These measures include: Capacity & Infrastructure, Participation, Contributed Support, Employment, Nonprofit, Creativity, Arts Education Demand, Arts Business, and Competitiveness.

The report also presents the 76 indicators as components of a comprehensive and interdependent system called the “Arts and Culture Balanced Scorecard.”  This model groups the 76 indicators into four components: financial flows, capacity, participation, and competitiveness.

From Nancy Duxbury (who gave a bang-up presentation at last year’s Americans for the Arts Convention on cultural activity in “edge,” or suburban/exurban cities):

Culture and Local Governance / Culture et Gouvernance Locale
Call For Papers for Special Issue on Culture and Sustainable Communities

Deadline for submission of papers: May 1, 2010

Guest Editors: Nancy Duxbury (Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal) and M. Sharon Jeannotte (Centre on Governance, University of Ottawa, Canada)

In the face of growing environmental and economic urgencies, issues of sustainability and resiliency are moving to the forefront of planning, policy, and programs in cities and communities of all sizes. City planning paradigms are mutating from a focus on building ‘creative cities’ to that of achieving ‘sustainable cities.’ Internationally, this shift is evident among local governments adopting sustainability goals for towns, cities, and regions; creating sustainable community plans; and implementing community projects related to ‘sustainable development.’ Yet cultural considerations, while recognized in urban and community planning contexts, are not integrated into sustainability planning in a widespread way.

Where are cultural considerations in this new paradigm/framework? How might culture be incorporated and situated within sustainability planning and related initiatives? How should cultural planning adapt to this increasingly dominant paradigm and context?

Potential contributors are invited to submit an article (maximum 5,000 words) by May 1, 2010 to Nancy Duxbury at duxbury@ces.uc.pt.

Details: www.ces.uc.pt/cesfct/nd/CFP_Culture_and_Local_Governance.pdf

And from the Illinois Arts Council:

The Association of American Cultures (TAAC) is accepting proposal submissions for its next symposium

Open Dialogue XII: Building the 21^st Century Agenda for Cultural Democracy.

TAAC Open Dialogue XII

Thursday, August 12 thru Saturday, August 14, 2010

Chicago, Illinois

What is Open Dialogue XII? A symposium of local and national leaders discussing policies and programs which individuals, organizations, foundations, and policy makers are encouraged to strategize and organize around in order to further advance cultural democracy and cultural equity platforms AND programs in today’s new era of change. Recognizing some quantitative progress in equity and diversity issues over the last three to four decades, it is most urgent at this historic time of change to evaluate and set forth action-agendas around TAAC’s foundational pillars for real, substantive, long-term change:

• Equal participation in policymaking,
• Equitable funding for all cultural institutions, and
• Equity in multicultural leadership.

200-300 people are expected to attend Open Dialogue. Arts administrators, individual and teaching artists, arts educators, board members and cultural policy advocates and more are welcome.  Participants come from communities across the country and abroad, from varied arts backgrounds and levels of experience.

Open Dialogue XII will begin on Thursday, August 12, 2010 with a networking event Thursday evening; Friday, August 13, 2010 will continue with presentations, sessions; and Saturday, August 14, 2010 will conclude with a keynote speaker and lunch.

Submitting a proposal

We are open to broad interpretations of the symposium theme and want to include facilitated interactive discussions, expert-led presentations and direct learning opportunities. We are seeking proposals with sharing, inclusiveness and opportunity at their core. We also appreciate innovation and the willingness to consider the refinement or abandonment of traditional models.  Above all, we seek proposals that illuminate the environments in which we all work and that set forth practical organizational and institutional strategies and plans to achieve in the short-term TAAC’s foundational pillars.

What we’re not looking for is talking head panels, mind-numbing lectures and sessions wherein presenters attempt to sell products or programs, or simply rehearse equity philosophies and general directions to achieve the foundational pillars.

TAAC is pleased to accept proposals from individuals, collectives, or organizations.  The symposium registration fee will be waived for all speakers. Small honoraria may be available for those traveling from out of the greater Chicago area.

5-page application form, session proposal document and resumes or curriculum vitae must be mailed to TAAC Open Dialogue XII CALL FOR SESSIONS, c/o Illinois Arts Council, 100 West Randolph Street, Suite 10-500, Chicago, IL  60601 or EMAIL proposals to TAACultures@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission: Friday, February 5, 2010 (postmark and email deadline). Incomplete or late applications will not be accepted.

Dear Friends,

We are writing today to share our new report on a communications strategy to build more collective responsibility for the arts.

Many of us have spent years searching for the strongest possible message and the best case on which to build support for the arts. Yet the messages we have used, and successfully integrated in the dialogue across the country, have not yielded the broad sense of shared responsibility that we seek.

In late 2008, leaders of the Fine Arts Fund embarked on a year-long research initiative designed to develop an inclusive community dialogue leading to broadly shared public responsibility for arts and culture in the region.

We concluded that our work with the community through arts and culture must be based on a foundation that incorporates a deeper understanding of the best way to communicate with the public in order to achieve that shared sense of responsibility.

Indeed, while we know that many people in our region say they like and value the arts, this has not been enough in recent years to grow charitable giving or public funding for arts and culture.

We determined that we need more analysis and knowledge of public views and assumptions about arts and culture to develop the necessary foundation for a conversation that leads to increased shared responsibility and public support.

While most people feel positively toward the arts, we will have to change the conversation in order to motivate action by the public for the arts.

This report summarizes a year of work and important findings for widespread use by others. While leaders of business and other nonprofit sectors have conducted research using framing science methodology to develop communications strategies for change on other issues, this is a first-in-the-nation analysis on arts and culture.

We are pleased to share the findings of this research, conducted with us by the Topos Partnership. Click here to download your copy of The Arts Ripple Effect research report.

It is our hope that many organizations and writers will begin utilizing this information as they write and speak about the value of the arts in our neighborhoods and nation.

As more of us use this lens on the arts, we expect the public will to support arts and culture will increase. This echo chamber about the ripple effects will benefit everyone.

Enjoy!