Demonstrators protest in front of the White House in support of Net Neutrality | Photo by Joseph Gruber via Creative Commons

Just days past his confirmation, Ajit Pai, the Trump administration’s pick for Federal Communications Commission chairman, is already rolling back regulations put in place by the Obama administration in 2015 to protect net neutrality and increase access to the Internet. Changes that have already been enacted include the removal of nine companies from the Lifeline subsidy program, former chairman Tom Wheeler’s initiative which reduced the cost of broadband access for low-income families; the FCC also put a stop to data-security rules enacted in October. These actions signal a rapid-fire change in the FCC’s direction and portend new battles over Internet access. Pai has yet to lay out a specific plan to reverse the FCC’s classification of broadband internet as a utility like electricity or water – one of the landmark decisions under Wheeler’s tenure – but he’s made clear that he sees that move as a “mistake” that has depressed growth in new broadband investment. Some critics consider the loss of a free, open, and affordable Internet one of the biggest potential threats to the arts, favoring corporate interests at best, with the looming possibility of censorship at worst.

Brits attempt to impose quality standards on art. Arts Council England has earmarked £2.7 million to implement Quality Metrics, a controversial process aimed at measuring the quality of art presented to the public by government grantees. Drawn from a series of evaluations by peers, audiences, and the grantees themselves, the system seeks to measure artistic quality across various art forms and types of arts organizations, and will be mandatory for all organizations receiving at least £250,000 per year in operating support from the Arts Council. The plan is set to roll out despite many concerns raised following an independent review of the pilot phase of the program, particularly regarding the use of a single set of metrics across a plethora of artistic disciplines and questions regarding feasibility, data ownership, and anonymity. Buy-in from artists has been equally lukewarm, with many expressing resistance to the very idea of quantifying the arts.

It’s getting even harder to make it in Hollywood. A recent episode of the NPR podcast Freakonomics examined America’s ailing visual effects industry, which has endured economic troubles as jobs continue to migrate out of Hollywood. Despite visual effects playing an increasingly large role in filmmaking (and obliterating trades like special effects in the process), multiple companies in the industry remain in dire economic straits. Their job attrition likely stems from producers and directors chasing tax rebates in neighboring states, and increasingly abroad, forcing many film jobs out of California and hastening the globalization of the industry. At least one Hollywood profession may be getting some help: the Los Angeles City Attorney brought charges last month against five casting workshops accused of using a pay-to-play scheme trading acting roles for cash. In announcing the charges following an investigation involving an undercover actor, the city cited the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act, which bars casting agents from requiring actors to pay fees for auditions.

Libraries grapple between access and ownership. In an era of inevitable change for public libraries, some are relaxing or even doing away entirely with overdue fines, questioning whether the penalties ultimately hurt Americans who need libraries the most. The decision stands in stark contrast to recent crackdowns on overdue books in Alabama and Texas, in which authorities threatened delinquent borrowers with jail time in an effort to recover hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in lost property. The US is not alone; in the UK, more than 25 million books are lost and unaccounted for in that country’s libraries according to industry sources. So, while releasing borrowers from fines may remove the economic barrier and increase libraries’ appeal for marginalized communities, it also inevitably means fewer titles to chose from.

Federal arts funding hangs in the balance. Arts organizations are gearing up for battle as the Trump administration continues to toy with the idea of cutting arts agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts in first drafts of the federal budget. While these cuts have not yet been formally instigated, their possibility has spurred activists to flood congressional offices in opposition. Much attention is focusing on the small but politically significant cadre of Republican arts champions, including New Jersey congressman Leonard Lance and senators Shelley Moore Capito and Susan Collins, both of whom signed a letter of support organized by fellow senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The ramifications of losing these agencies would be most deeply felt in rural areas, which receive less support from state and municipal arts funding. Despite a gradual uptick in appropriations to state agencies dating from the recession, the biggest gains of recent years have been concentrated in populous states like Florida and California, while it’s one step forward two steps back in places like Iowa. Bigger cities may have the best chance for surviving a wholesale cut to the arts: Atlanta and New York are among those plotting ways to increase support at the local level by proposing dedicated arts and culture taxes, providing incentives to artists who live in particular cities or states, and bolstering public art programming.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS:

• Director Craig Watson of the California Arts Council will step down from his role with the agency effective April 2017.
• Philadelphia’s William Penn Foundation has named Shawn McCaney as its new executive director. McCaney was previously director of Penn’s Creative Communities program.
• The Wallace Foundation named Giselle “Gigi” Antoni as its new director of learning and enrichment. Antoni had developed a national reputation as the leader of Dallas’s Big Thought arts education initiative.
• The Alaska-based Rasmuson Foundation has announced Alexandra McKay as its new vice president of programs.
• Seattle arts critic Jen Graves voluntarily resigned after more than a decade at The Stranger, stating that it’s “not a viable place for me to do the work I’ve always cared about.”
• Perhaps less voluntarily, the outspoken New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood is looking for work. Despite the implosion of jobs in arts criticism, the Times intends to fill the full-time position.
• DataArts is seeking a senior research manager to lead teams in study design, data analysis and interpretation and the delivery of the organization’s research services.
• The Boston-based Barr Foundation is hiring an arts & creativity program officer.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE:

• The National Endowment for the Arts shared its latest installment of data on economic trends in arts and culture, produced in collaboration with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Upshot: artists add value to the economy, but public funding for arts education is in a sharp decline.
• Out of 1,000 responses to a survey by the UK’s Guardian Teacher Network, 80% claimed their schools made or are planning to make cuts to the arts.
• New evidence suggests that formal artistic education (i.e. conservatory training) can have a positive impact on artists’ career sustainability, as can financial and business training. Of course, one must be able to afford such training; indeed, the Sutton Trust noted that British actors from wealthy backgrounds are more likely successful than those with modest upbringings. Meanwhile, college-educated white adults make more than college-educated black and Latino adults according to Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, challenging the assumption that higher education can neutralize racial wage gaps.
• Exponent Philanthropy reported that small foundations and individual donors are developing strategies to up their impact potential in grantmaking. But larger funders tend to rely on their peers as the most trusted source of knowledge, according to a Hewlett Foundation report.
• An evaluation of Arts Council England’s Catalyst program indicates it provided a significant kick-start needed to increase the fundraising capacity of grantees.
• Museums and other cultural attractions continue to face challenges. A new metric indicates that visitor confidence to US cultural organizations is experiencing a sharp decline. However, a recent review of the literature indicates that museums are developing new fundraising strategies by looking beyond wealthy socialites as sources of individual donor support. Meanwhile, the American Alliance of Museums, as it does each year, published its TrendsWatch report considering what the future might hold for the industry.
• A new Ipsos survey asked Canadians across the county to define their culture and its products in the digital age.
• A new study identified hip and arm movement as the mark of good dancing in women. A rebuttal from Slate’s Daniel Engber, however, questions the relevance of the study, deeming it science’s version of clickbait.
• Grantmakers in the Arts produced a review of the literature regarding the arts in medicine, with a specific focus on optimizing investments.
• Research from the University of Chicago indicates that it’s easier to have a negative attitude then to look on the bright side.
• New research suggests that, compared to other teens, ballet dancers experience greater rates of “psychological inflexibility,” leading to anxiety and depression. Dancing may contribute to a greater fear of failure and pressure to achieve a physical aesthetic, which may also lead to such symptoms.
• Violent video games are thought to be associated with negative behaviors. Could uplifting games elicit the opposite effect? A UNESCO-sponsored study indicates they could.
• The Kennedy Center has partnered with the National Institutes of Health to create Sound Health, an initiative that explores music’s effects on health and wellness. Fast Company interviewed author Daniel Levitin about his new book on a similar topic: the neuroscience of music, and how playing music at home impacts behavior, attention span and productivity. Levitin’s work indicates that music is no longer as prevalent in the home, perhaps due to increased screen time, and could be used to facilitate mental breaks from focused tasks. His findings contrast evidence that positions silence (differentiated from quiet, or ambient noise) as an underutilized productivity tool.
• An annual report on freedom of expression around the world released by Freemuse finds that violations of artists’ rights more than doubled in 2016.
• The University of Wisconsin found that people of color accounted for 22% of children’s books characters in 2016, a 13-percentage-point increase over the course of two decades.
• Despite the success of high-profile female artists like Adele and Beyoncé, women are, on the whole, seriously underrepresented on the top 40 charts.
• #OscarsSoYoung could be the latest hashtag criticizing the Academy Awards. A new report from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism indicates that there were only two characters over 60 nominated over the past three years…and both were played by Michael Keaton. USC researchers also found that women directors working on the top-grossing films were unlikely to have released more than one film in the last decade.

The UK government has been asking just this question. Drawing from the experience of the medical community’s National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) model, which systematically assesses and synthesizes the cost-effectiveness of medical interventions to help the UK National Health Service (NHS) prioritize its public spending, the UK Cabinet office has envisioned its What Works initiative as a “NICE for social policy.”

Launched in March 2013, the What Works Network set out to evaluate the performance of public policies and programs using evidence collected throughout their implementation. For every policy or program, What Works tracks which social benefits that program has achieved and how much money those benefits cost per participant. What Works evaluations aim to help policymakers and practitioners improve their decision-making process by providing evidence and advising on which interventions offered the best value for money.

Generally speaking, the What Works methodology rates a policy or program on its effectiveness according to indicators that are specific to the sector in question. For example, the success of an education policy might be rated according to how many additional months of progress a student makes in a classroom. This rating becomes even more useful to practitioners when complemented by an estimate of how much money it costs per student to implement the policy.

Now in the Network’s third year of operation, seven “What Works Centres” and two affiliate members – What Works Scotland and the Public Policy Institute for Wales – have been established thus far across the UK, each focused on a particular area of policy. They monitor and evaluate interventions according to a standardized methodology in seven categories: educational achievement, local economic growth, crime reduction, health and social care, wellbeing, improved quality of life for older people, and early intervention for at-risk children. And yes, the What Works initiative is evaluating arts interventions within the broader context of these public policy areas.

For example, the What Works Centre for Well-Being analyzes the impacts of culture and sports on wellbeing according to the same four dimensions – satisfaction with life, happiness, worthwhileness, and anxiety – used by the National Statistics of the UK to assess personal wellbeing and subjective wellbeing. Similarly, the Sutton Trust and Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit provides an easy-to-read ranking on the cost-effectiveness of arts participation for improving educational outcomes for students aged 5-16, relative to other interventions.

So what does What Works say about how the arts work? A report issued by the UK government in 2014 presented a selection of early findings from the six What Works Centres that had been active up to that date. Two projects relating to the arts were included. One project from the Centre for Local Economic Growth examined 36 evaluations covering the impact of major sport and culture projects on the local economy and found that the overall measurable impacts were rare, and small if they existed at all. Built facilities, however – with sporting facilities comprising the vast bulk of the evidence – might increase the value of properties in their immediate vicinity. The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit found that arts participation had a low positive impact on student education attainment (defined as “additional months progress you might expect pupils to make as a result of an approach being used in school, taking average pupil progress over a year as a benchmark”), but for much lower cost compared to some other learning interventions with similar impact, such as attending summer school or using teaching assistants. The Teaching & Learning Toolkit collects impact evidence from EEF projects covering 34 education topics, and impact results are regularly updated and summarized as they are collected.

What Works’s venture into evidence-based policy was still in its infancy at the time of the report’s publication. Since then, several new arts-related projects have been commissioned and evaluated. An “Act, Sing, Play” project sought to answer whether exposure to high quality music education was more cost-effective than drama participation for improving students’ literacy and math scores, and another “SHINE on Manchester” project assessed to what extent Saturday music education improved students’ literacy and math scores. While assessments of these two projects did not yield convincing evidence that participation in the arts helped achieve the designated outcomes of improved literacy and math scores, they also did not discount the possibility that arts participation might yield other positive outcomes.

Is evidence-based evaluation of public policy the wave of the future? In the United States, a loose alliance of several organizations would like to make it so. Results for America aims to spearhead smart policy changes at all government levels by encouraging the use of best available data, evidence and evaluation about what’s effective. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) is likewise active in this area, having recently absorbed the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a Washington think tank that had success in advocating for government reforms, into its grantmaking. At this very moment, LJAF is holding a $15 million competition to encourage government and nonprofit organizations to implement highly effective programs, and Results for America just launched a global initiative “identifying the policies, programs and systems that governments are using to support the production and use of data and evidence” called Results for All.

In theory, this approach of collecting, synthesizing, and ranking evidence from a diverse range of policy and program evaluations will help make that evidence accessible to a wide audience – and that is undoubtedly a good thing. At the same time, paring down the impacts of policies and programs to cost-effectiveness might be challenging when goals are less readily quantifiable, or where effectiveness needs to be assessed according to more innovative or perhaps even abstract criteria. In such cases, less relevant targets might become more appealing to policymakers because they are cheaper or easier to tag with numbers, resulting in an oversimplified framework for measuring impact that displaces a true understanding of effectiveness. Arts and cultural policies arguably are particularly vulnerable to this risk, particularly given that we are only beginning to understand the true nature of their value to individuals and society. At Createquity, we don’t think it is impossible for the benefits of the arts to be assessed under a What-Works-style evaluation framework, but we do have to be careful that we are attempting to measure the right things – the things that arts are actually good for.

The relatively small and weak body of information and data on the impacts of arts/culture policies and programs shows that there are significant gaps and limitations – but also much room to grow – for What Works’s assessments of arts interventions going forward. In the meantime, we can do our part to contribute evidence to What Works inquiries by submitting tips, research and assessments of public policies to the relevant Centres. As of publication, EEF is seeking new education interventions to fund and evaluate, and welcomes applications from “projects that show promising evidence of having a measurable impact on attainment or a directly related outcome” until December 9.

Cover image: “Mathematica” courtesy of the Ivan T. via Flickr Creative Commons license.

Blue and Yellow Round Star Print Textile. Photo from Pexels.

Britain stunned the world last month when it voted to leave the European Union, some forty-three years after first joining the now 27-nation bloc. The move sent shock waves throughout the world, sending global markets plummeting (media stocks in particular fared poorly), spurring concerns about trade, immigration, alliances, and security, and raising questions about freedom and identity in our interconnected times (not to mention destroying many a political career in the aftermath). Though the details of the “divorce” will take time to settle, its impact on the arts is sure to be significant. Many artists are angry and dismayed, especially given how the arts were firmly in the Remain camp prior to the vote. In May, some 300 British cultural luminaries across several creative industries signed a letter of support to keep Britain in the European Union. Damien Hirst deployed his signature butterflies against Brexit on Instagram. A survey of artists and arts leaders by The Guardian found an overwhelming majority were against the UK leaving Europe. Another survey, conducted by the Creative Industries Federation, found that 96% of its members backed Remain. Now, these same artists and arts leaders are calling for their institutions to continue to nurture relationships with their European colleagues, as concerns grow over the potential loss of free movement of labor (due to increased restrictions on artist and travel visas), loss of access to EU arts funding (which is currently quite significant), the real possibility funding cuts should Britain face a recession (and related, the loss of wealthy art collectors, with this week’s art auctions already feeling the chill), and less tangible but just as important, the spirit of collaboration and collective identity that informs much work across borders. It’s all hands on deck: the British Council released a statement saying it will continue to work with its EU colleagues to “create opportunities, build connections and engender trust,” and the Creative Industries Federation and the National Campaign for the Arts have pledged to support and safeguard the arts sector as the UK negotiates its exit from the European Union.

Gun Violence Sweeps Up the Arts. Two singers were assassinated last month for their art. On June 11, Christina Grimmie, the 22-year-old finalist on “The Voice,” was fatally shot at close range while signing autographs after performing at a concert in Orlando. Police say the killer’s motive stemmed from fan obsession. Ten days later, Amjad Sabri, one of Pakistan’s most famous and respected musicians, was shot and killed by by Taliban gunmen in Karachi. Sabri was considered one of the leading performers of Qawwalis, a Sufi tradition dating back to the 13th century criticized by religious conservatives who shun all forms of music. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility. And while the June 12 massacre that killed 49 and injured 53 at Pulse, a gay nightclub also in Orlando, might not immediately seem like an arts story, the victims had been at Pulse to dance together at its popular “Upscale Latin Saturdays” party. There have been other attacks in recent weeks–Baghdad, Istanbul, Bangladesh–all horrific. These three, however, coming on the heels of Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan, illustrate how the arts are increasingly becoming enmeshed in the broader debates about gun violence and terrorism around the world, with artists and audiences becoming explicit targets for killers.

The One Hundred Million Dollar Question. Last August, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s newly appointed president Julia Stasch announced a major overhaul of the foundation’s funding strategy, moving from small grants to “big bets” in an effort to better catalyze transformative change. This month, Stasch bet (really) big, announcing 100&Change, a competition for a single, $100 million dollar grant to a nonprofit or for-profit entity that offers the best idea for real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time. It’s a risky move for a foundation to invest so many resources into essentially an unknown quantity, and the strategy has spurred a hearty debate. Still, the two-year, three-stage application process is thoughtfully structured, and includes aid to ensure that nonprofits with big ideas but not enough resources to immediately absorb a $100 million grant can still participate. What’s more, the foundation is betting on others joining the charge: the application process will be transparent, in the hopes that proposals that do not win the MacArthur award might still attract backing or other forms of support.

Virtual Reality Gets Real. The arts have often turned to technology to enhance the experience of existing and new live performance (cue the Los Angeles Philharmonic virtual reality tour last October.) This month, London’s National Theatre upped the ante when it announced the launch of a new “Immersive Storytelling Studio” that will commission new work specifically to be experienced through virtual reality or 360 technologies. Its first project, HOME: AAMIR, tells the story of a refugee living at the Calais migrant camp and is set to premiere at the Sheffield Doc/Fest later this year. Commissioning is just the beginning: as part of the new initiative, the National Theatre will also partner with the National Film Board Canada, one of the world’s leading documentary, animation and interactive producers, on a research and development lab for non-fiction VR. Between new initiatives such as this, the New York Times experiments with Google Cardboard, and the buzz that VR experiences stole the show at Sundance this February, it’s looking more and more like virtual reality could radically change how stories are told, with significant implications for theater, Hollywood, journalism, and more.

Hamilton for a Hamilton. In February, the Rockefeller Foundation announced a $1.46 million grant to provide some 20,000 NYC public school 11th grade students with tickets to a certain award-winning Broadway musical for the price of a single Hamilton (ahem, $10), and to integrate the show into classroom studies. Last month, the foundation quadrupled this commitment, adding an addition $6 million to expand the program to LA, Chicago and other cities where the musical plans to tour. Rockefeller president Judith Rodin, who announced this month she will step down from her position once a replacement is identified, has called the Hamilton partnership “one of the foundation’s most impactful.” Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, our Hamilton-seeing prospects are looking slim. You’d need to add two zeros to that $10 price tag to get to the average price resellers have been able to command for tickets in recent months, even though creator Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for the end of ticket bots, the musical’s producers have taken measures to limit resellers, and the New York State Assembly passed legislation to criminalize companies that use the illegal automated ticketing software known as “ticket bots.” Hamilton producers themselves have raised 2017 ticket prices to as much as $849 a pop (some argue they’d be better off employing dynamic pricing instead). Still, there’s hope: the online video service BroadwayHD, billed the Netflix of Broadway, is testing out the idea of live streaming a Broadway show–for $10 a view.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• After nearly twelve years, Judith Rodin, the first female president of The Rockefeller Foundation, has announced her decision to depart the institution once a new president takes office.
• Robert Smith has been appointed chairman of Carnegie Hall. He is the first African-American to hold the position in the Hall’s history.
• The Alliance of Artists Communities has named Lisa Hoffman its next Executive Director. She succeeds former Caitlin Strokosch who led the Alliance for nearly a decade.
• Maurice Jones, Virginia’s commerce secretary & former HUD official, has been named president & CEO of LISC.
• Kyle Peterson has been appointed executive director of the Walton Family Foundation.
• Theresa Sweetland has been named executive director of Forecast Public Art.
• Jessica Solomon has assumed the role of Interim Director of Bromo Tower Arts & Entertainment District, Inc. in Downtown Baltimore.
• Two arts critics had their jobs eliminated this month: Timothy Mangan from the Orange County Register and Jeremy Gerard from Deadline.com.
• The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies is recruiting a Research Associate. No closing date, though it is recommended to apply by July 1.
• The Kresge Foundation is hiring a Senior Program Officer. Posted on June 15; closing date July 10.
• The Hauser Institute for Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School seeks a Program/Research Assistant, Global Philanthropy. Posted June 17; no closing date.
• The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is hiring a Cultural Plan Coordinator and a Special Projects Manager. Posted on June 1; closing date July 31.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Two studies from the UK this month looked to arts and accessibility. The first, on outdoor arts, finds that outdoor arts consistently attract an audience that is representative of the population as a whole. The second suggests that live cinema events can act as a gateway to arts performances with less populist appeal.
• Two reports this month looked at creativity. In the first, more than 800 individuals across eight countries were interviewed in an attempt to understand what creativity looks like across countries and cultures. The second, produced by a campaign group of 64 million artists with funding from Arts Council England, calls for the council to create a new small grants fund to ensure ‘everyday creativity’ is embedded across society. Related, a small scale study found that making art–even for just a few minutes each day–reduces stress levels.
• A report published by UK Music looks at the significant impact of live music and music tourism on the UK economy.
• A review of incoming college students in the UK finds a significant drop in those studying arts subjects, with design and technology the most affected.
• New research published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, suggests that art appreciation isn’t necessarily a matter of individual taste.
• A review of 686 institutional libraries across the world forecasts growth across the sector, with a particular increase in the use of electronic resources.
• A new paper looks at the role of the National Endowment for the Arts in shaping the arts and cultural sector.
• A report from Transparify finds that think tanks, advocacy groups, and foundations around the world are becoming more transparent about their funding sources.
• The US Department of Justice published a literature review this month of research on the impact of arts-based programs and arts therapies for at risk youth.
• The National Endowment for the Arts published a summary this month of their Arts Readiness and Resilience Convening.
• New research from the Luxembourg School of Finance of the University of Luxembourg finds returns of fine art have been significantly overestimated.
• Not just the 1%: research published this month by economist Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute finds that the upper middle class in the U.S. is larger and richer than it’s ever been.
• In a helpful move for further new research, ArtsWave launched Arts Atlas this month, an online tool that integrates data on arts organizations and their programming with community demographic data.
• And further afield, a report out of Morocco highlights the important role that the creative economy plays in that country.

The Office – photo by flickr user Nick Chapman

In 2013, unpaid interns everywhere won a major victory when Judge William H. Pauley III of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that plaintiffs who had worked without compensation on the Fox Searchlight movie Black Swan should have been classified as employees. The ruling resulted in a slew of lawsuits leveled by other unpaid interns, many settled out of court for large sums. This month, that decision was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which argued that the proper way to determine a worker’s status is to apply a “primary beneficiary test,” in which the worker can be considered an employee only if the employer benefits more from the relationship than the intern. Crucially, the decision also states that an internship can be legal even if it doesn’t meet the traditional six-factor checklist set in place in 1947, especially if it is tied to the receipt of school credit and helps the student fulfill academic commitments. As a result, a number of commentators have expressed concern that the decision encourages employers to  continue to exploit interns under the guise of education. 

The Beginning of the End of the No Child Left Behind Era: Speaking of education, thirteen years after the Bush Administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)–ushering in an age of highly criticized, high-stakes standardized testing–the Senate voted 81 to 17 to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The Senate bill, nicknamed “Every Child Achieves Act,” includes many welcome provisions, including doing away with the adequate yearly progress (read: serious standardized testing) mandate of NCLB. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed its own reauthorization, the Student Success Act, with no support from Democrats and under the threat of a White House veto. The House and Senate will now begin working on a final bill for approval. What that might ultimately look like, and when it might come to pass, is anyone’s guess. To start, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has stated that the Senate’s bill falls short, and there is still much work to be done.

Film Tax Credits Get the Axe: Last year, we reported on the growing disenchantment in some states with film tax credit programs due to their questionable track record of impact on employment and economic prosperity, at least when it comes to big Hollywood studio productions. This month, two more states decided such incentives were no longer worth it: Governor Bill Walker repealed Alaska’s film tax credit in its entirety, and Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation ending Michigan’s program (though he did keep the Film Office, for the time being.) More unsettling to the film industry was Louisiana’s capping of its film tax credit program at $180 million, with an additional stipulation that limits credits per film to $30 million. This new limit is almost $100 million less than what the state has spent on credits annually in the last few years. Louisiana’s move is notable, as it has long been one of the most important places to film outside of California. The film industry is working on proposed reforms to the legislation, but the clear trend for the time being is towards greater consolidation back in Hollywood’s home state.

Hard Times for the Arts in Britain: The UK saw some serious threats to its cultural climate this month. UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced that, in order to make the government’s goal of £20 billion in savings, it would “prioritize spending that achieves the best economic returns.” In literal terms, this means that “unprotected” departments (that’s everything other than health, schools, defense and foreign aid) would face significant budget cuts. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport will face the most significant of cuts: 40%. This will be the third time Arts Council England has suffered a significant budget reduction since 2010, and the impact will be felt throughout the country: on the local level, councils are looking at forecasted cuts averaging 12%, and many will be forced to reconsider their arts budgets. Meanwhile, facing financial pressure of a different sort, the BBC announced this month that it will cut 1,000 jobs as it struggles to close a $294 million budget gap projected for the coming fiscal year. The gap is only expected to widen as more individuals move from TV to the internet, costing the BBC its network licensing fees, which account for more than 70% of its revenues. The government has appointed a committee to review the BBC’s Royal Charter, which expires in 2016.

SESAC Buys the Harry Fox Agency: After a year more than a year of exploration and discussion, SESAC, one of the three performing rights societies operating in the US, has finalized a bid to buy the Harry Fox Agency, the US’s primary collecting agency for mechanical rights. SESAC collects royalties whenever a song in its catalog is played on the radio, streamed online or otherwise played in real time. The Harry Fox Agency, currently under the aegis of the National Music Publishing Association, handles the mechanical licenses that record companies need to sell CDs and downloads (which was, in the heyday of record sales, quite lucrative.) The acquisition gives SESAC the ability to issue both licenses, thus handling digital rights more efficiently. It also, according to the New York Times, will give SESAC “control of the valuable data that is generated from digital outlets like Apple, Spotify and Pandora, giving it an advantage over ASCAP and BMI, its much bigger rivals in the American performing-rights business.” The question on everyone’s mind: what’s next for ASCAP and BMI now that SESAC is stepping up its game? And perhaps more importantly, what’s next for the creators of all this music?

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

Lots of activity this month!

• Clifford Murphy has been named the National Endowment for the Arts’ new director of folk and traditional arts.
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced two new appointments this month: Ella Baff, until recently the executive and artistic director of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, was hired to a new position of senior program officer in the Arts and Cultural Heritage program, and Karen Brooks Hopkins, former president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, was named Senior Fellow in Residence.
• Erik Takeshita, currently Director of Creative Placemaking for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, will join the Bush Foundation as its new portfolio director for Community Creativity.
• After 23 years with the Henry Luce Foundation, Ellen Holtzman will retire from her position as program director for American art in September. She is to be succeeded by Teresa A. Carbone.
• Ruby Lerner, founder and executive director of Creative Capital, has announced she will step down at the end of 2015 after seventeen years.
• Colleen McDonough has been promoted to executive director of the ASCAP Foundation. She succeeds Karen Sherry, who retired after seventeen years in this role.
• The George Gund Foundation named Jennifer Coleman its new Senior Program Officer for the Arts, replacing the retiring Deena Epstein.
• Allyson Esposito has been appointed Director of Arts & Culture at the Boston Foundation.
• Jessica Booth was appointed Georgia Department of Education’s first-ever fine arts specialist.
• Dr. Sanjay Kabir Bavikatte has been named executive director of the Christensen Fund.
• Sarah Martínez-Helfman was appointed new president of the Samuel S. Fels Fund.
• Diana Aviv is stepping down as CEO of Independent Sector to become CEO at Feeding America.
• The David and Lura Lovell Foundation seeks an Executive Director. Posted July 31; no closing date.
• The Nonprofit Finance Fund is hiring for ten positions, including positions in business development, financial services, marketing and more.
• Philanthropy New York is hiring a Director of Learning Services. Posted July 15; no closing date.
• Vilcek Foundation seeks a Program Officer. Posted July 23; no closing date.
• Crown Family Philanthropies seeks a Program Analyst. Posted July 6; no closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Cultural Value and Inequality, a report commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Cultural Value Project, examines hard questions: who gets to make culture, who gets to consume it, and the impact of inequality.
• The National Endowment for the Arts published the first representative analysis of arts participation patterns among people with disabilities.
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in partnership with Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Alliance of Museums, released the results of a new survey gauging the ethnic and gender diversity of art museum staffs across the United States.
• In 2005, the Center for an Urban Future published “Creative New York,” the first comprehensive analysis of the economic impact of the city’s many nonprofit arts organizations and for-profit creative businesses. This month, the Center published a follow-up to this seminal study, which looks at what has changed in the past decade. Meanwhile, statistics released by the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport show that employment within UK’s creative industries is increasing twice as fast as the wider economy.
• A new study published in the American Economic Review looks at how behavioral tendencies can affect grant decisions.
• July was the month of music research. Researchers at Cambridge University released a study suggesting that one’s taste in music reflects the way one thinks. Across the pond, On the business end, Berklee College undertook to analyze the many disparate elements of the music industry in an effort to fix the aging, fractured business. Finally, a new study published in the journal Self and Identity shows that, despite the naysaying and hand-wringing around metal music in the 1980s, so-called “metal kids” turned out pretty well, reporting higher levels of youthful happiness and fewer regrets.

Jane Chu is inching towards nomination as the next NEA Chair, as the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to approve her candidacy with “no controversy.” Over the past few years, Republicans appear to be content to let the NEA languish in level-funding purgatory rather than continue to whip up the kind of culture-war controversy that proved so successful in handcuffing the agency in the ’90s. Let’s be grateful for small victories.

STATE AND LOCAL

This is the season for state arts council budget drama, and there are certainly a few stories worth reporting. First and foremost is the prospect of an incredible resurgence for the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, which had its budget cut an astonishing 94% over a three-year period and nearly zeroed out in the heady summer of 2009. Since then, arts advocates have slowly moved the needle towards more funding, but nothing compared to the 384% increase the agency would be in line to receive if Governor Rick Scott signs the budget recently passed by the Legislature, restoring funding to pre-recession levels. It’s not a done deal yet, though – Scott has line-item veto power and may be itching to use it.

In somewhat more bittersweet news, after all the brouhaha from last time, Maryland has agreed to increase tax incentives to Media Rights Capital, the producer of Netflix’s House of Cards, settling on $11.5 million to keep the show in the state. The figure does represent a decrease from the average amount the show had received in previous years, but as previously reported the state had to raid a fund intended for local arts organizations to make the deal happen.

On the local front, the Art Newspaper takes stock of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s arts agenda: whereas Bloomberg invested in large-scale projects designed to drive tourism and economic impact, de Blasio appears to be focused on the outer boroughs, access, and community engagement. Meanwhile, de Blasio’s first budget for New York City is out, and with a 6% overall increase in spending gives educators a lot to be happy about: steps toward universal pre-K, expanded after-school programs and a $20 million allocation for arts education.

Los Angeles may be on the verge of overhauling its public art ordinance, thanks to an audit that recommends the city relax the requirement that developers’ public art fees be spent within one block of the constructions that generated them. Paralyzed by the geographical restriction, the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs had been sitting  on $7.5 million in funds earmarked for public artwork.

Any cities or counties pondering local tax increases for arts and culture, take note: the ultraconservative Americans for Prosperity is wading into local politics with a campaign against a local tax increase in Franklin County, Ohio meant to benefit the Columbus Zoo.

INTERNATIONAL

The authors of last year’s report showing that the UK Arts Council gave London-based organizations five times as much money per capita as those in other parts of the country have released a new study showing that UK lottery arts funding is similarly concentrated in the capital. The Mayor of London and organizations in his city  support raises for others but not cuts for themselves. And Parliament may decriminalize non-payment of Britain’s $250 annual TV-licensing fee, the primary source of income for the BBC. Scofflaws, such as the 107 TV owners jailed in 2 years for failing to pony up, would still be subject to civil penalties. Meanwhile, the BBC is calling for payment even by those who don’t own televisions in an age when physical TVs are an afterthought.

Australia’s conservative government has taken aim at the arts, enacting more than $100 million in cuts to various national funding bodies. Since most of that amount is spread over a four-year period, the impact is not as drastic as it sounds, and the head of the Australia Council doesn’t seem too worried. Still, $100 million is $100 million…well, about $94 million in American dollars. On the other side of the ledger (and the world), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is investing $1.7 billion to build 230 new museums across the country, intended to show off the nation’s rich cultural history. Private-sector firms, including the oil giant Saudi Aramco, are getting in on the museum-building act as well.

Despite all the money that Russia pumps into the arts, there is mounting criticism—especially in the theater world—against its contents, with a new, envelope-pushing generation of artists facing political pressure from the government. Woolly Mammoth Theater’s Festival of New Radical Theater, which was set to include works from Russia, has become the most recent collateral damage in Moscow’s politicization of art. Meanwhile, on July 1, it will become illegal to curse in public performances in Russia – though the ban may cover only four very, very dirty words. Russia, of course, isn’t the only major world power wanting to shape artistic expression: China appears to be stepping up its campaign against Western media, banning four US television shows from streaming websites for violating a regulation aimed at shows that “harm the nation’s reputation, mislead young people to commit crimes, prostitution, gambling or terrorism.”

• The backlash against unpaid internships has spread beyond our borders: Ontario’s Ministry of Labour has ordered two high-profile Canadian magazines to immediately end their internship programs. The Ministry also announced it plans “an enforcement blitz this spring focused specifically on internships across a variety of sectors.” (NB: while nonprofits are generally exempt from the US Department of Labor requirements for unpaid internships, state laws, including New York’s, can be more stringent.)

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• After nearly 30 years as CEO of National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Jonathan Katz is set to make his exit soon.
• Margit Rankin has resigned as Executive Director of Washington State’s Artist Trust. The Trust plans to “focus on internal efficiencies and statewide reach before hiring [her] replacement.”
• Carolina Garcia Jayaram was recently appointed the new CEO of United States Artists, and will be taking the Los Angeles-based organization back with her to Chicago.
• Miguel M. Salinas, formerly Program Director at the Adobe Foundation, is moving into the newly-created position of Program Officer for Local Grantmaking at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. His portfolio will include arts funding for Northern California’s Monterey County and surrounding region.
• Ken Cole of the National Guild for Community Arts Education will be taking over the role of Vice President of Learning and Leadership Development with the League of American Orchestras.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Detroit Institute of Arts saga continues. Not to be outdone by the “grand bargain” that would offer the city (and its creditors) over $800 million in exchange for taking the art museum (and more importantly, its art) off the table in bankruptcy negotiations, one of those creditors, Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. (FGIC) is now soliciting bids for the DIA’s entire collection. So far, four bids have been received with a high of $2 billion, but they’ve drawn a cool reception from the city’s Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr. Curious why Wall Street types care so much about a bunch of old paintings? Well, one estimate puts the opportunity cost of displaying Breughel’s “The Wedding Dance” at $1,200 per viewer.
• The CEOs of the Hewlett, Ford, and McKnight Foundations got together to discuss the results of a report that suggests a kind of Lake Wobegon effect among foundation leaders: they tend to be pessimistic about their field’s overall progress toward achieving goals, but optimistic about the work of their own foundations. The three executives acknowledged their incentives to demonstrate individual leadership get in the way of the collaboration and coordination to which they aspire and promote to their grantees.
• Speaking of foundation strategy, Daniel Stid, senior fellow at the Hewlett Foundation, candidly asks on the foundation’s blog whether Hewlett’s nascent bid to advance democracy by supporting both political parties and campaign finance reform makes any sense. Score one for philanthropy transparency – and zero for the rest of us: several days after the post went up, there were exactly no responses.

IN THE FIELD

• In response to an uproar from patrons, the San Diego Opera formed a special committee of the board to explore ways to avert the closure it announced abruptly last month, and a board member has announced a $1-million gift. Also, and we’re not sure which way this cuts, PR doctor Mark Fabiani has volunteered his crisis-management services, putting the Opera in the august company of Whitewater-era Bill Clinton, doping-era Lance Armstrong, and kleptocracy-era Goldman Sachs. Alas, it all seems to have been for naught.
• Portland, Oregon is about to go on a Bard binge: more than fifteen local theater companies are collaborating to produce all of Shakespeare’s works across the city over the next two years.
• Scape Capital, a Russian management firm, has purchased ARTnews from long-time owners Milton and Judith Esterow.

BIG IDEAS

• One possible result of investing in a “STEAM” (science/technology/engineering/math + arts) approach to K-12 education: shifting to a framework of “deeper learning” as amusingly outlined in this recent Hewlett blog and pioneered by San Diego’s High Tech High. High Tech High, incidentally, scores extra awesome points for launching their own MOOCs (with the help of their students) on how to design and build schools using this approach.
• A simple point, but one not made often enough: nonprofits see growth in their costs in part because growth in their revenues makes it possible.
• Are think tanks doomed in the face of human irrationality?

RESEARCH CORNER

• The state of the nonprofit sector is pretty grim, according to the Nonprofit Finance Fund: more than half of surveyed organizations reported they were unable to meet demand for their services, and are operating with three months or less of cash on hand. You can dig into arts-specific data using this interactive tool. Some nuggets: only about a third of arts nonprofits reporting an inability to meet demand, and arts orgs are significantly less likely to regularly collect data long-term data on impact than the nonprofit sector as a whole.
• A new NEA analysis of monthly census data reveals that the unemployment rate for artists continued to drop slightly in 2013 (7.1% vs 7.3% in 2012) and has recovered considerably from its Great Recession peak of 9.5% – though it remains much higher than the 2006 low of 3.6%. Two interesting sidebars: 1) Some findings about those for whom the arts are a secondary job, including the fact that 20% are teachers in their day jobs – and 20% are artists in a different capacity. 2) Although artists are classed as professionals, their 2013 overall unemployment rate was much closer to the total population’s (6.6%) than to other professionals’ (3.6%).
• This handy infographic breaks down the differences between US and UK philanthropy. The gold for sheer size goes the US, where the average person gives almost three times as much and the non-profit sector represents almost seven times as large a share of GDP, but the authors caution their fellow Brits against imitation in the full paper.
• Nifty data crunching suggests that films passing the Bechdel Test — a standard, albeit depressing, measure of gender bias — are actually a much better return on investment than Hollywood execs claim.
• Think there’s no way to judge creativity? Think again: new research suggests that people can be trained to accurately identify “subcomponents” of creativity. Interestingly, the control group  didn’t deem the same works “creative” as the group that received the training. Control group members did, however, tend to identify the same works as other control group subjects, implying they were all reacting to another, unknown component of the art.
• Speaking of assessing creativity, education leaders who bemoan American students’ consistent “underperformance” relative to counterparts in other countries may have a glimmer of hope: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted its first test of creative problem solving and found that American students did much better than they did on standard reading, math, and science tests. The bad news? They still trailed students from several countries like Singapore and Australia, both of which happen to put heavy emphasis on arts education. Hint, hint…

In the recently released federal budget for fiscal year 2015, President Obama proposes a meager increase in allocations for the arts compared to last year. Federally-backed museums will enjoy the bulk of that increase, while funding for NEA and NEH is essentially unchanged after factoring in inflation. Speaking of those agencies, President Obama also announced his plan to appoint William “Bro” Adams as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Adams is currently President of Colby College; he is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Maine Film Center and the Maine Public Broadcasting Corporation.

Democratic Congressmen have introduced a revised version of a droit de suite bill that would require payment of royalties to the creators of visual art when it is resold at public auction. The bill, American Royalties Too (ART), is less generous than its stalled predecessor – reducing the rate from 7% to 5% and adding an overall cap of $35,000 – but may gain momentum from a December report from the Copyright Office supporting resale royalties. California’s royalties bill, recently declared unconstitutional in federal court, may offer useful lessons for how not to implement the policy.

STATE AND LOCAL

Tom Finkelpearl, head of the Queens Museum and former director of NYC’s Percent for Art program, will be the city’s next cultural-affairs commissioner. Among his innovations at Queens, Finkelpearl hired a community organizer to build ties between the museum and the borough. Mayor de Blasio used the announcement to wax lyrical about the importance of access and the power of the arts to strengthen neighborhoods; we’ll get a sense of how this translates into arts policy when his capital budget is released in a few weeks.

The city of Atlanta has proposed an ordinance that would make it much more difficult to display public art on private property- or “areas of private property which are visible from the public right of way or other public spaces.”

And how’s this for a nonprofit/for-profit smackdown? Maryland’s General Assembly, eager to keep production of Netflix’s political drama House of Cards in the state, tried to swipe $2.5 million from the state’s arts fund to secure additional tax credits for filming. Lawmakers argued the decision came down to simple economics, claiming the show “contributed $250 million to the economy and 6,000 jobs during the past two seasons.” (Too bad the research on the economic impact of tax incentives for film and TV suggests those benefits are less attractive than they seem.) In the end, the legislators held firm – or maybe they just didn’t have their act together – and now, we’re all waiting to see whether a change of venue is in the cards for House of Cards.

(Update: According to an email newsletter from Americans for the Arts, the $2.5 million did end up getting transferred from the arts fund after all. “Governor O’Malley originally allotted $7 million in his budget proposal, which then grew to $11 million.  The amount proved to not be enough….To raise more money, the General Assembly authorized applying the Special Fund for the Preservation of Cultural Arts, a fund of $2.5 million on reserve for supporting local arts organizations, toward film incentives. The Senate pushed for the amount to be raised to $18.5 million and requested $3 million from the general fund, which the House rejected. The final agreement stood at $15 million.”)

INTERNATIONAL

Lots of news from Britain this time around: Maria Miller, the UK Culture Secretary whom some accused of not being especially interested in culture, has resigned amid a scandal over her expenses. She will be replaced by Sajid Javid, the current Treasury Financial Secretary. As the EU eases copyright law to make it easier to transfer purchased music from one of your personal devices to another, most countries are simultaneously levying a tax on device manufacturers; the money would go to a fund to support young musicians. In Britain, the potential tax is being fought strenuously by manufacturers. Meanwhile, the UK has closed a tax loophole on domestic music, book, and app purchases; the move could raise as much as half a billion dollars, which retailers may pass on to consumers. In more local news, the Mayor of London has released a revised cultural strategy, which includes support for smaller arts organizations and your friendly neighborhood busker.

Italy has pledged to spend €135 million to restore 46 heritage sites in the southern portion of the country, following an earlier distribution of €222 million last September. On the other side of the Adriatic in Athens, the Greeks are not so lucky: their cash-poor government is thinking about selling off public landmarks near the Acropolis to private investors. Protestors have been staging angry demonstrations to tell the pols to leave their built heritage alone.

Good news for Dubai’s 137 million metro riders: now they can add a little culture to their wait.  Thanks to a new public art project launched by the Prime Minister of UAE, four metro stations throughout the city will be transformed into museums.

And the government of South Korea is digging a little deeper into cultural exchange through a new project set to introduce Korean culture into emerging markets around the world. The NEXT Project to Dispatch International Cultural Exchange Experts by Region sends staff abroad as both representatives and students of the host cultures and are responsible for managing each regional Culture Centre.

JUST ABOUT EVERYWHERE

Finally, the entire Anglophone world suddenly seems to be slashing taxes on live performance. New York State passed a theater tax credit to induce Broadway producers to prepare for touring shows upstate. (Producers and tour operators had lobbied for the incentives, which are already offered in states like Illinois, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.) Within days, Senator Charles Schumer proposed a more ambitious national tax rebate of up to $15 million per production – benefits already extended to film and TV. Both initiatives appear to be driven by the Broadway League. Meanwhile, the UK opened a consultation period for its own plan to provide generous credits for live performing arts; the exact policy objectives of the subsidy remain unclear. This last plan opens out into the world: as long as at least a quarter of the expenditures are in Europe, costs may be incurred in any country.

• Joan Mondale, wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale and known to many as “Joan of Art” for her arts advocacy efforts, passed away February 3.
• After April 6, cracking jokes in the UK will become a little easier. A new UK regulation allows for the use of parts of original copyrighted material if used for parody, caricature, or pastiche.
• Over at ARTSblog, Ciara McKeown argues municipalities are commissioning too many permanent public art pieces, and suggests public art programs “generate goals that are not defined as permanent or temporary, but that are about people and experiences.”
• Well, this is one way to make it as a DIY band: Canadian electro-industrial rockers Skinny Puppy have invoiced the Pentagon for $666,000 for the unauthorized use of their music during interrogations at Guantanamo.
• Confused about the ins and outs of all those visual art lawsuits of the past few years? Daniel Grant has a detailed overview over at Hyperallergic.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Geoffrey Canada, the charismatic face of one of the most ambitious and widely watched education and anti-poverty initiatives in the country, is leaving the Harlem Children’s Zone after two decades at its helm. He will be succeeded by Anne Williams-Isom, the organization’s current Chief Operating Officer.
• The William Penn Foundation has found its new leader: Peter J. Degnan, Vice Dean of Finance and Administration at the Wharton School. The foundation’s new structure (his title is “managing director”) will allow him to “focus on aligning interconnected organizational functions, including strategic grantmaking, knowledge-building, and community engagement.”
• Ron Ragin will jump coasts from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to become the first arts program officer for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
• The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University recently appointed Kate D. Levin, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as its first fellow. As part of role, Levin will be responsible for raising the center’s visibility and providing input on its research. Levin will continue in her new position with Bloomberg Associates, a consulting firm founded by the former Mayor that advises local governments around the world.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Artist Pension Trust controls some 40,000 works of contemporary art as part of a risk-pooling retirement plan for the artists themselves. As it begins to sell some of them off in its tenth year, dealers express concern about the effect on the market – and others question whether the plan can possibly make money.
• Arts funders, take note: the New York-based F.B. Heron Foundation has ceased requiring its grantees to submit reports, moving instead to a “outside, cooperative data warehouse” to provide real-time information. It’s also transformed its structure and operations to maximally integrate investing with grantmaking. President Clara Miller’s annual letter describes the nuts and bolts of the foundation’s ambition to maximize the social return from every dollar in its corpus.
• Foundation transparency is all the rage this month. It emerged as a major theme in a recent arts funders’ convening on failure hosted by NYC’s The Field. GrantCraft published a new guide with tips for funders interested increasing the transparency of their day to day work. And the new site Inside Philanthropy targets potential grantees with eye-catching headlines (“Find Out How You Can Get $10,000 From the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation”), and offers subscribers insight into individual program officers’ giving preferences. It also exposes staff email directories and allows anonymous Yelp-style reviews.

IN THE FIELD

• The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) has been hard at work drafting new national arts standards for K-12 classrooms. These standards are rad for a number of reasons, most importantly 1) because they are aligned to the Common Core, and 2) they bring us into the 21st century by including media arts as a distinct discipline. A final draft of the standards is up for final public review through February 28; get on over and check them out.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts has launched a new directory mapping artists, “creative businesses” and cultural nonprofits across six states.
• Following an encouraging trend started last year, issues of race and diversity continue to spur conversation, with HowlRound devoting a week of blog posts to asking whether or not “a white person can write, adapt, direct, or perform stories from a different culture or race.” Meanwhile, new studies on how perceptions of an individual’s race change over time underscore race as a social construct.
• Even better than talk, though, is action, and there’s good news on that front: Detroit’s Sphinx Organization and management agency IMG Artists have a budding partnership aimed at creating greater diversity among classical musicians while broadening audiences for classical music. Stay tuned for the first trial run at this summer’s Napa Valley Festival del Sole where the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra will perform.

BIG IDEAS

• We’ve mulled whether computers can generate art, but a related question is whether computer programmers are artists when they dabble in code. A novelist makes an eloquent case that they are.
• Been a while since your last nerdgasm? Read up on social physics, which explores how ideas flow, evolve, and (we hope!) improve within communities — and asks whether “our hyperconnected world may be moving toward a state in which there is too much idea flow.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• Following up on the first-ever official count of the arts’ contribution to the GDP, the NEA has released more detailed estimates for individual industries, including a breakout of performing arts groups by tax-exempt status. (Most of the $526 million added by dance comes from non-profits; most of $407 million from circuses is pure capitalism.)
• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released a study claiming that, contrary to the insinuations of Republican lawmakers, NEA doesn’t simply represent a “wealth transfer” from poorer to wealthier citizens. Michael Rushton, however, argues that the study doesn’t succeed in the argument because it looks at wealth at the level of the community, preventing firm conclusions about the wealth of individual attendees of NEA-sponsored arts. The comments on Rushton’s article contain a lively methodological debate if you like that sort of thing. In other news, NCAR officially launched its inaugural report (originally reported by Createquity back in December) on the health of U.S. arts and cultural organizations; the event was webcast by HowlRound TV.
• A new study from the College Art Association shows that visual arts professionals – scholars, curators, publishers – don’t understand fair use, and they avoid or abandon projects because of it. The CAA is working toward a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use to assuage the anxiety; such a code proved helpful to documentary filmmakers.
• Anyone who works with schools should carve out a few hours to play with this: DonorsChoose.org, which in 13 years has allowed teachers to raise more than $220 million in funding for their classrooms, is making its 20+ million project records on proposed and successful projects available via a free, interactive data analysis tool.
• Are too many of our research and evaluation efforts in the arts theoretical rather than directly applicable to practice? Nina Simon thinks so, and the comments from Peter Linett, Jay Greene, Carlos Manjarrez and others are worth checking out as well.

On Thursday, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Jane Chu for the position of Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Chu, the president and CEO of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO, brings big-institution arts industry experience and a middle-America background to the job. If confirmed, she will become the first Asian American permanent chair of the NEA, although Joan Shigekawa has served that role in an interim capacity for the past year and a half. Reaction from the field has been one of pleasant surprise, but she’s getting rave reviews from back home.

Meanwhile, two of Chu’s predecessors warn that her task will be all about money, money, money. Earlier, in yet another down-to-the-wire process, the United States Congress authorized a spending bill in January covering the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2014. The NEA and other federal cultural agencies were essentially level-funded compared to last year’s appropriations, which is effectively a (small) raise from the amounts each agency had to work with after the so-called sequester kicked in last year. However, the NEA’s budget is still down from its recent peak of $167.5 million from fiscal year 2010, and far below its inflation-adjusted peak from the Carter years.

The budget friction is affecting the arts in other ways, too: for example, the Department of Transportation has failed to meet a deadline to require airlines to accommodate musicians’ instruments on flights because it says Congress didn’t provide it with enough funding to hire the people necessary to write the guidelines. A group of Congressional representatives led by Jim Cooper (D-TN), for its part, is calling BS and asking the DOT to get its act together. Meanwhile, the European Union is moving toward a uniform policy for instruments brought on airplanes.

It’s been a rough 2014 so far for net neutrality. Last month’s ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals means that cable and telephone companies could privilege certain kinds of content, which could endanger the wealth of artistic innovation on the web. AT&T, for its part, says nothing is about to change – possibly because the decision leaves open other means of regulation that could be worse for internet service providers. In fact, Wired seems to think that the court order has given the FCC carte blanche to regulate the entire internet. Yet if you thought the invisible hand of the market would help secure net neutrality on its own, you might be concerned that America’s largest cable company is buying its second-largest. Time Warner Cable’s proposed merger with Comcast seems to bode ill for open Internet advocates, given that Comcast already has a monthly cap on bandwidth in place; if things continue down this road, a former FCC Commissioner warns of scenarios like cable companies bundling internet content the way that cable channels currently are, and censoring stories about their own terrible customer service. All eyes are on the FCC as it considers its next steps.

STATE AND LOCAL

While Los Angeles awaits the appointment of a head of its department of cultural affairs, new mayor Eric Garcetti met with arts leaders to drop hints on “a more cohesive arts policy” — which apparently does not include any increase in city funding. Meanwhile, alleging mismanagement, Fairfax County in Northern Virginia will pay $30 million to take control of the Lorton Arts Center and avoid foreclosure.

INTERNATIONAL

The UK’s Building a Creative Nation has been launched to create 50,000 creative sector jobs for young people ages 16 to 24 by 2016. Part of the initiative aims to combat unpaid internships in the arts industry by subsidizing 6,500 training positions. Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg claims the program is “paving the way for a new wave of young British talent,” who will contribute “billions to the economy” in the fastest-growing employment sector of the British economy in 2011-2012. Nearly 1.7 billion Britons (5.6% of the workforce) are employed in the creative industries, more than half of them in squarely cultural areas like the performing and visual arts, film, photography, and publishing.

Not all is rosy in the UK, though: Parliament is investigating the fairness of grants made by Arts Council England, which a report found gives five times as much per capita to London organizations vs. others. Philanthropic dollars are similarly concentrated. (By way of comparison, 82% of private UK arts giving went to London; in the US, according to the Foundation Center’s database, 20% of major grants go to New York State.) That might be part of the reason that space for art in London is now at such a premium. Meanwhile, the Council will require new grantees to capture, report, and share information about audience size and composition and has called on the BBC to collaborate with arts organizations.

Elsewhere in the British Isles, Creative Scotland has announced a new 10-year strategic plan; Wales’s capital city is trying to transfer responsibility for two arts venues to the private sector; Newcastle hasn’t been able to raise any money for a matching fund campaign aimed at private donors; and Irish arts funding is down 7% after having been cut for the sixth consecutive year.

In Spain, four years of funding cuts to the cultural infrastructure by that country’s right-wing and debt-ridden government have increasingly spurred protest, and now the Spanish film community is starting to fight back, claiming political conspiracy. Even Pedro Admodóvar is speaking out against what he calls Spain’s “awful cultural policy.” Elsewhere in Europe, Iceland’s state broadcaster has cut almost half its music staff. But in a bit of good news, regulators in France have decided to reverse a decision that would have raised the import tax on artworks from 7% to 10%, instead reducing it to 5.5%.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• The International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies concluded its sixth World Summit on Arts and Culture in Chile earlier this month. Nearly 400 arts leaders and policymakers from 67 countries gathered to address shared challenges facing the arts world.  The summit coincided with the launch of IFACCA’s report detailing arts advocacy campaigns and best practices.
• The NEA’s Director of Design, Jason Schupbach, talks about the agency’s next steps in creative placemaking “in the spirit of openness and oversharing,” and telegraphs a gradual shift in Our Town’s focus from local case studies to national initiatives.
• New Jersey is the first state in the country to include data on student enrollment in the visual and performing arts in its annual report on school performance. Slightly less than half of Garden State high school students are enrolled in a course in one of the four art forms.
• The New York Times provides a glimpse into the capricious process used by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs to review and approve applications from prospective residents seeking to live in lofts legally reserved for artists.
• A proposed noise ordinance in New Orleans drew a musical protest outside of city hall when musicians gathered to ensure their political voices, and their music, are not only heard, but heard at a proper volume.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Joan Finkelstein, formerly Director of 92^nd Street Y Harness Dance Center, is the new Director of the Harkness Foundation for Dance, replacing Theodore S. Bartwink.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• More good news for Gibney Dance: Director Gina Gibney’s dreams of turning their new space previously occupied by Dance New Amersterdam into a resource for emerging artists are $3 million closer to becoming a reality thanks to a  gift from the Agnes Varis Trust to make repairs to the facilities.
• Can an accounting change by SoundExchange impact the ability of middle-class performers and indie labels to create more music? The Future of Music Coalition thinks so.  A frequently disbursed stream of income that pays performers on a monthly, rather than quarterly, basis can help free up musicians to concentrate on their work rather than wonder how they’ll pay next month’s bills.
• Internet radio service Pandora pays nearly half its revenue to performing artists and labels, while only 4.3 percent goes to songwriters and publishers. Think that’s unfair? So does the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) which represents the latter. But it was Pandora that brought suit to lower the royalty rate paid to ASCAP members. At the heart of the issue is whether music publishers can remove their catalogs from digital transmissions, while still using professional recording organizations like ASCAP to represent their work on issues such as collecting money from terrestrial AM/FM radio stations.
• Meanwhile, back in the world of terrestrial radio, this is what happens when you leave cultural taste-making to the whims of the commercial marketplace. More than ever before, radio stations are playing the same damn songs over and over. The article is interesting throughout, including such tidbits as the fact that the top 10 songs last year were played twice as much as the top 10 songs a decade ago, the fact that this trend is an example of data-driven decision-making on the part of radio stations, and this quote:
  

  In the new intensely scrutinized world of radio, said Mr. Darden, “taking risks is not rewarded, so we have to be more careful than ever before.”

IN THE FIELD

• Ever admire the shelves of beautiful art books as you exit through the gift shop? Turns out they rarely turn a profit, so commercial publishers often avoid them. Enter the Artist Book Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to filling the gap.
• Norwegian readers are in for a treat: 135,000 titles, still protected by copyright, are going online for free in Norway thanks to an agreement arranged between the National Library of Norway and Kopinor, an umbrella organization of major authors and publishers.
• Sometimes, when you want a concerto, you really want a concerto: during the Minnesota Orchestra’s lock-out attendance at smaller community orchestras jumped noticeably. We won’t know the long-term effects until well after concerts at Orchestra Hall resume on February 7.
• Just as the musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra prepare to head back to the stage, the entire board of Minnesota Dance Theater abruptly resigned last week, with no explanation yet as to the reason.
• Confused about the difference between a “cultural cluster and a “cultural district”? Learn more in a podcast highlighting work in Cincinnati led by ArtsWave and the Kennedy Heights Arts Center.
• In a victory for Venn diagrams, Americans for the Arts and 12 other national arts and education organizations have endorsed “A Shared Endeavor: Arts Education for America’s Students,” which defines shared delivery of arts education and identifies advocacy priorities generalist teachers, art specialists and teaching artists can support together.
• Arts administrators take note: Americans for the Arts has announced its spring webinar series, which includes sessions on the NEA, rural and small communities, and assessing social impact.

BIG IDEAS

• American artists are taking note of an international movement to ensure a “basic income” for all as a way of ending poverty. In a model proposed by Swiss artist Benno Schmidt, every citizen would receive a modest monthly check, regardless of need or merit.
• Is a permanent facility an asset or a prison to the modern arts organization? Diane Ragsdale shares four steps to scrutinize and reframe organizational core beliefs, and applies them to commonly-held assumptions regarding building-based arts organizations.
• Founder and CEO of The Teaching Company Thomas Rollins, whose nerd-tastic “great lectures on world history” got an affectionate nod in Createquity’s article on MOOCs and arts education, wades into the MOOC debate himself and finds the idea that they can transform higher education to be “utter nonsense.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• What does the cultural data landscape look like? Get a bird’s eye view from the report New Data for the Cultural Landscape: Towards a Better Informed Stronger Future just published by the Cultural Data Project. Barry Hessenius pulls out key highlights and probes the persistent challenge of educating leaders in our field to make strategic decisions using data.
• AFTA’s Randy Cohen digs deep into the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s recent report on the contributions of the arts to GDP. Turns out, it omits a lot of architecture, design and creative writing at the college level, and many arts grantmakers. Fortunately, the BEA is open to suggestions for improving its strong first cut. Follow the link to contribute your thoughts.
• The University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center is out with the second issue of The Digest, which summarizes academic research on the cultural sector from the around the world, which is often inaccessible to a broad audience. The issue examines “creative cities in theory and practice.”
• A new Pew report finds that, although the typical American read five books last year, nearly a quarter of us read none at all. In related news, libraries continue to draw patrons in innovative ways, such as installing 3D printers, shifting collections from the academic to the popular, and offering hog-butchering seminars.
• Big Data may be a boon for marketers, but when does segmentation cross over the line into discrimination? A research fellow at MIT argues that this is the central ethical dilemma of today’s data analysts.