Grantmakers in the Arts has been sponsoring an Online Forum on Equity in Arts Funding, inspired by The National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy’s (NCRP) recent report, authored by Holly Sidford, Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change: High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy. Nearly two dozen contributors involved in arts funding as researchers, foundation officers, public agency …
Tempers are running high in San Francisco, where the powers-that-be have unleashed yet another full-on demonstration of the cluelessness of U.S. cultural policymaking. This essay is in four sections: I will first describe what has happened; then discuss the context; the response; and finally, explore the reasons why San Francisco and every other U.S. city …
Have you been spending time in an Occupy encampment lately? It’s getting chilly out there. I’m making a big pot of stuffed cabbage, more or less my grandmother’s recipe. Come on over for a bowlful. It’ll warm you right up. Let’s schmooze a bit while it’s cooking. Class warfare: the locution of the month here …
Deracination is a great word: it means to pull something up by the roots, to sever or isolate someone (or something) from its native culture. All week, I have been chewing on an example I encountered at last week’s arts conference, and still, I just can’t swallow it. The meeting was convened by arts funders, …
I took part in an arts conference on Monday (more about that in my next blog). In a discussion I moderated on art and civic engagement, speakers had a lot to say about pursuing social change by engaging people in community life and democratic discourse via music, media, dance, drama, and other types of art. …
I woke up in the middle of a dream this morning. Side-by-side with a young woman (I can see her earnest face so clearly, the tumble of dark curls that nearly covered it), I strolled through an encampment occuping a city square. We stepped over bodies, threading our way through a maze of conversations. “Before …
The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, beginning, once again, to stage the vast (and vastly repetitive) drama that periodically mesmerizes the body politic. Like a huge pod out of Invasion of The Body-Snatchers, it replaces actual democracy with an expensive similacrum. From time to time, I’m going to focus on the culture of …
Public policy should be driven by a few essential questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? How do we want to be remembered; what is our legacy to the future? These foundational questions underpin this second essay on the jobs plan we need. Before you dismiss this out of hand as absurdly idealistic, …
After seeing the economy bleed jobs for so long, it was hard to watch without ambivalence as President Obama finally rose on Thursday to call for a transfusion of public funds for job creation. I felt some measure of relief: at last, our national leaders are paying attention to the suffering caused by economic policies …
The east is awash in Irene and earthquakes, and commentators everywhere are noticing how utterly shook up the world order also seems to be. Here’s Tom Friedman in the New York Times: [T]he European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model …