Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

A new study has just been issued by the National Endowment for the Arts called Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation . There are a few things of special note about this research: 1) The findings: People who participate in the arts through electronic media are nearly THREE times more likely to attend live arts events as non media participants (59% vs. 21%). They also attend TWICE as many live arts events on average  - 6/year vs. 3/year. In other words, active participation in the digital media world does not compete with attendance at live arts activities, it may encourage it. I say "may" because this study once again raises the issue of causation vs. correlation. Certainly there seems to be a correlation between high consumption of art in digital form, and higher consumption of live arts. It could be that people that are passionate about art now seek it out in all formats, NOT that their digital consumption is somehow driving them to participate in live...

So as many of my readers will now, I spent the last few days at the Americans for the Arts convention in Baltimore (along with many of you!). I spoke at a session on arts blogging, along with Graham Dunstan who oversees the Americans for the Arts ArtsBlog , Barry Hessenius of Barry's Blog , and Chad Bauman of Arts-Marketing . The session was also attended by such widely-read arts bloggers as Andrew Taylo r and Ian David Moss . [That's Graham, Chad, me and Barry in the photo - "the arts bloggers posse". I added the photo to this entry after I first posted it, when I discovered this photo on the Americans for the Arts Flicker site.] I also attended a session on utilizing new social media (like Twitter, blogs and Facebook) that featured Brian Reich , whose company is little m media . His mother, an Americans for the Arts board member who I am friendly with calls him "the next Dan Pink."  Now while this may be to some extent parental bias, I wouldn't rule ...

Going back to my childhood as an aspiring (at the time) artist, but also someone who was a bit of a jock/gym rat, there always seem to be a disconnect between the two worlds - the artist and the jock. This was the stereotype, that for the most part seemed to hold true in practice. I went to LaGuardia High School of the Arts in New York, and even though we had school teams, athletics was never really celebrated or encouraged. I played on the tennis team and don't think we ever had a single spectator from our school. Even though I was an avid basketball player, I am not even sure if we had a basketball team - if we did I certainly never heard about it or attended a game. When I got to college - the State University of New York at Purchase, which was primarily an arts conservatory with music, dance, theatre, film and visual arts programs - there were NO intercollegiate sports programs. The school was just getting started, so perhaps we can cut them some slack, but aside from buildin...

Philadelphia has traditionally (at least for the last couple of decades) provided all its grant funding of the arts through the Philadelphia Cultural Fund - an independent 501c3 funded by the City - as general operating support. This year, the Cultural Fund's Board agreed to allocate a portion of its grant funds - $350,000 out of $3.2 million - to for the first time make project support grants, specifically grants for arts programming targeted to Philadelphia's youth. Today we announced the first recipients of this new project grants program – the Youth Arts Enrichment Grants – created to support projects that use the arts to enrich the lives of young people both in and outside of school. The inaugural round of grants, totaling $357,700, was awarded to nine youth-focused organizations. [Photo at left from a ceramics class at West Park Cultural Center, one of the grantees] The extra $7,700 available for grant-making was made possible by City employees who made payro...

In 2005 a special issue of the Journal of Business Strategy was published on arts-based learning for business (Vol. 26, No.5), co-edited by Ted Buswick and Harvey Seifter. Ted is head of the BCG History program at Boston Consulting Group , and also Executive-in-Residence for Leadership and the Arts in the Graduate School of Management at Clark University. Harvey is CEO of Seifter Associates and has done extensive work in the area of arts-based learning for business. Now, about five years later, a second special arts-themed issue of JBS has been released, with the same co-editors. The Journal normally is available only by subscription, but now for a limited time this issue is available for free. Click on this link to the issue. When you enter the site use the following log-in information to get your free download of the content:  Username: JBS2010; Password: emerald In their "Editor's Note" Buswick and Seifter comment on how the past few years have seem a dramatic ri...

The City of Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy has been challenged since its (re)establishment in late 2008 with the fact that it was (re)built by bringing together some of the programs and staff that had been housed in the Office of Arts and Culture when in last existed before being closed. This meant we ended up with staff in four different offices spread over two different buildings. We have also been addressing  how to enliven City Hall itself with more cultural activity. Two ideas emerged: 1) create a new office space large enough to accommodate all current staff and some interns and maybe a little bit of growth (a guy can dream can't he?) and put it right on the first floor of City Hall where it can be visible and accessible to the public. 2) create a new art gallery space in City Hall, ideally on the first floor where it can be accessed without having to clear security. One of the issues the Art in City Hall program has always had to address is t...