When elected officials don’t hear from their constituents about the arts and culture, they could easily assume that arts issues aren’t important to their voters. That is why it is imperative that arts advocates speak up regularly by letting key decision makers know their positions. To help you get ready, the Americans for the Arts’ Government Affairs team along with the Arts Action Fund will host this timely webinar entitled Advocacy 101 on March 29 at 3 p.m. ET. Learn how you can advocate for the arts on the local, state, and federal levels both as an individual and organization. Hear from arts advocacy veterans on tips and tools to make your work as effective as possible.

The Americans for the Arts’ Government Affairs team will host this timely advocacy webinar on Congressionally Directed Spending Requests (Earmarks) on March 2 at 3 p.m. ET. Learn about the earmark process; best practices for securing an earmark; and examples of how nonprofit arts, governmental arts, and arts education groups secured millions of dollars last year. The application period for earmarks is short, so please attend to learn how to navigate the process quickly and efficiently.

Listen to Vanessa Cruz and Beth Prevor discuss how organizations can be proactive in addressing accessibility and disability justice in their budgets. Vanessa and Beth push the audience to see how local art agencies can make things accessible that look like art in their 30 minutes pre-recorded conversation.

Listen to Dominic Bradley and Lily Lipman discuss the complexity of accountability within Disability Justice as a topic area that is still being discovered. Dominic and Lily work to inspire the audience to dig deeper in their 30 minutes pre-recorded conversation.

Listen to Joselia Hughes and Kayla Hamilton discuss deeply how disability justice is uniquely positioned to break down systematic oppressions. Disability justice as an ethos and a practice - gives shape to a day and how you perceive an experience. How can your local art agency or organization bring forward a consciousness of changing siloed or monolithic perceptions to inclusive ideology.

Further building on Parts 1 and 2 of the How to Partner with Your Chamber of Commerce Series, participants will look to rural communities and consider how innovative partnerships can be used as inspiration or scaled to suburban and urban areas for long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships. This module will explore practical ways of orienting local economies around "Quality of Place" and of rethinking the individual roles of arts and business in a local economy. It will demonstrate how navigating public/private partnerships can strengthen the relationship between the business and arts sectors. This module will explore, in varying depth, case studies in multiple rural communities, and highlight how these arts and chamber entities have worked together to build community wealth, deepen alliances, and expand opportunity for artists and businesses alike. This Part will ask the questions: When the LAA is seen as a respected and equal partner to their chamber and economic development entities, what are you advocating for together? What can you do together that you can’t do alone? Participants are encouraged to use the toolkit as complimentary learning, and participate in a live discussion with presenters once completing the 3-part on-demand webinar series.

Just as local arts agencies act as voices and conveners for their arts and culture communities, so do local chambers of commerce for their business communities. This three-part curriculum will guide local arts leaders on how to build strong and lasting partnerships with their local chambers of commerce to achieve shared community and economic development goals. The collection and accompanying toolkits will focus attention on how local arts leaders can build business-to-business (B2B) relationships, shift thinking and actions to one of a creative business that positions one’s assets differently, and position their local arts agency as a driving force for equitable community and economic development alongside their private sector partners. This collection aims to flip the conversation away from ‘business support of the arts’ to ‘how and why the arts are an essential part of business and community development strategies.'

In this workshop, teaching artists Raz Salvarita (Philippines) and Francine Kliemann (Brazil) share their respective creative practices and projects as well as their evaluation efforts and learning using the Continuum of IMPACT. Raz’s project, Unmasking Climate Injustices: Voices from the Past, Present, and Emerging Generations, aims to magnify citizens’ and students’ roles individually and collectively as activators, facilitators, and educators toward shifting community consciousness about climate change. Francine’s project, The School of the (Im)Possible, engaged eight- to 10-year-olds to give voice to the meaningful perspectives and expectations that youth bring regarding the future and issues of climate change. This workshop delves into the nitty gritty of how the Continuum was adopted and applied in each project to help specify desired outcomes and indicators and formulate a logic model and evaluation plan. Raz and Francine will share what data they collected, how they approached data analysis, and what outcomes they were able to gauge. As teaching artists who are receiving continued support through the ITAC IMPACT: Climate initiative, they will talk about what that extended support is enabling toward policy and systems change. ITAC’s Aislinn Ryan provides a preview of a 20-hour online curriculum that ITAC will offer for teaching artists and their allies to develop their own climate change projects, including a look at the evaluation curriculum.

Through its groundbreaking ITAC IMPACT: Climate initiative, the International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) is supporting teaching artists around the world to engage students and their local communities around pressing issues of climate change. Teaching artists from Brazil to Alaska to the Philippines and beyond are designing and leading innovative projects in schools and communities to raise awareness, educate, change minds and behavior, and to activate participation around a local climate challenge. Having impact around this pressing issue is imperative and evaluation is an integral part of the work for both ITAC and the teaching artists. To help, ITAC has embedded Animating Democracy’s Continuum of IMPACT as a central tool for sharpening desired outcomes and indicators of change and guiding artists’ evaluation planning, implementation, reporting, and communication.

The International Teaching Artist Collaborative (ITAC) is forging important pathways for teaching artists, schools, community leaders, and funders who share concerns about climate crises as they escalate locally and globally. In this session, learn from ITAC’s Aislinn Ryan about its groundbreaking initiative, ITAC IMPACT: Climate, which provides a framework through which teaching artists can design and lead projects in their local communities to positively impact climate issues using teaching artistry. Gain an overview of the impetus for this initiative, its intents, program design, funding, and multi-year evolution. Most specifically, participants will gain insight into how Animating Democracy’s Continuum of IMPACT is being applied as an integral tool for evaluating the range of teaching artist-led projects and the initiative on the whole and, of course, what has been learned about impacts. Teaching artist Katie Basile will discuss her in-progress project using photography and drones with students in Napakiak, AK, concerning permafrost melt, flooding, and rapid erosion and her experience using the Continuum.

Member Briefings are our opportunity to talk to you about what’s happening now! These calls will take place once a quarter, so mark your calendars to stay up-to-date on what’s happening at Americans for the Arts and across the sector. These calls are for you, so let us know if there’s a topic you’d like to know more about by contacting membership at membership@artsusa.org.

Moved by the cultural and social reckoning catalyzed by the events of 2020, scholar, educator, and writer Jan Cohen-Cruz and artist and cultural worker Rad Pereira embarked on a journey. Forty years apart in age, with different racial, gender, and national backgrounds, yet aligned in their commitment to a vibrant U.S. theater that responds to its time and place, they co-wrote, Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance 1965-2020 (released in June, New Village Press). Based on nearly 100 interviews and exchanges, they capture the contributions and experiences of a diverse range of socially engaged theater and performance makers who reflect and lift up the many voices that make up the U.S. today. Meeting the Moment provides a platform for a conversation that centers socially engaged artists—the unique roles they play, challenges they face in such intersectional work, and what they need to do that work effectively and in keeping with their values. This webinar will explore the themes that emerged through the authors' research,

This session offers an overview of ways the Aesthetic Perspectives framework can be activated including defining outcomes and indicators of artistic success, guiding data collection, and communicating findings and lessons learned. While working as an evaluator and researcher at the Los Angeles County Dept. of Arts & Culture, Susannah Laramee Kidd used the framework in a formal evaluation of public art and community engagement at four county parks and libraries. Learn how the Aesthetic Perspectives framework revealed what aesthetic factors were essential in determining project success and influenced social outcomes.

Since its release in 2017, arts and cultural organizations, Local and State Arts agencies, funders, and evaluators have tapped the framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change, to support their grantmaking and evaluation. Animating Democracy presents two webinars that shine light on how funders and evaluators and the artists they support have and can put this tool to work.

With the arts advocacy season fully upon us, join Randy Cohen, our VP of Research, to discuss the latest updates to the top “10 Reasons to Support the Arts” and get 10 case-making arrows to include in your arts advocacy quiver to convince anyone to support the arts.

This session offers an overview of ways the Aesthetic Perspectives framework can be activated at many points in the cycle of grantmaking. Learn how Kentucky Foundation for Women integrated the framework into its Bridging Divides grant program supporting two-year projects aimed to effect positive social change for women and girls in Kentucky. Committed to collecting evidence of change and participatory evaluation, hear how KFW used the framework to guide grantee evaluation and mid-term and final reporting, as well as a grantee’s experience.

​Join your peers for a ​free​ virtual conversation where we will explore tactics for how local arts agencies can create effective and mutually beneficial partnerships with their local chambers of commerce.

This webinar is a part of the 2022 Arts & Cultural Equity Studio | Mid-Career Leaders Collection. Carol Tatch and Della Rae, new leaders of the Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) in Portland, OR, will offer insights into the strategic journey their organization has taken to accomplish its mission and lead with its Core Values. This journey has led the organization to adopt a shared leadership model that has them serving to direct and lead the external and internal operations, respectively. This session will center their experiences as shared leadership executives and discuss what it means for an organization to intentionally lean in and make this transitional step to focus on equity and be responsive to, meet, and exceed community needs.

The Arts & Cultural Equity Studio | Mid-Career Leaders Collection provides mid-career arts administrators access to tailored training aimed at helping them develop the skills needed to advance in the arts management field. ACES is a three-part professional development collection spanning all topics regarding cultural equity in arts administration and career advancement.

Why does the term placemaking even exist when artists have used the arts to facilitate community development for centuries? What does placekeeping mean and how does it relate to social and racial equity? During this four-hour work led by Allentza Michel, founder and creative director of Powerful Pathways and awardee of the 2021 Jorge and Darlene Pérez Prize in Public Art & Civic Design, we will dive into these questions by engaging in a shared popular education learning module.

This webinar is a part of the 2022 Arts & Cultural Equity Studio | Mid-Career Leaders Collection. Power sharing needs to begin at ALL levels before you can consider creating a shared executive leadership structure. This workshop will introduce attendees to the process currently ongoing at the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York to create a new executive leadership structure that aligns with the organization’s values.

Almost four years after the destruction of Hurricane Harvey, the cultural ecosystem’s clearest lesson is that most of the region’s arts, cultural and historic preservation communities are unprepared for the next disruption. This is a result of a critical gap that exists between the cultural and emergency management ecosystems. The result of a two year research project, Disaster Resiliency and the Arts provides 21 key findings and strategic recommendations for initiatives and efforts that will help the arts ecosystem across the country become more resilient in the face of disasters and outlines how we can capitalize on the connections created with national experts and existing disaster response systems for the betterment of our community.

This webinar is a part of the 2022 Arts & Cultural Equity Studio | Mid-Career Leaders Collection. In this session ACI's Andrea Gordillo (she/they), Co-Director of Community Weaving, and Marian Taylor Brown (she/her), Co-Director of Collective Abundance, will discuss the tipping points and deep thought and heart work that led to this new model. They will also share initial findings from the model's implementation over the last year, and open for community discussion.

Local arts leaders and their agencies are poised to be strong partners with their local chambers of commerce and economic development organizations (EDOs) in community-wide efforts to attract businesses, retain talent, and equitably rebuild from COVID-19 while navigating the influx of federal dollars through the CARES and American Rescue Plan Acts (ARPA). This intensive workshop will present case studies of these networks working together and offer training on how to build these partnerships for mutual benefit. The workshop will explore how chambers and EDOs build business incentive packages in competition with other communities, while examining the community impact of those deals. It will explore how arts leaders can work alongside these partners to leverage arts and culture for the success of attracting and retaining businesses, while improving the overall health and vitality of their community.

In Part 2 of the How to Partner with your Local Chamber of Commerce collection, participants will take the foundational knowledge gained and basic activations from the first series and expand beyond their role as arts leaders into the role of community and economic development partner. Participants will learn about how to identify their own work and assets within their full community and creative ecosystem and begin to leverage new connections and relationships inside the chamber to address social impact, equity, and community issues. Participants will gain fluency in the Arts & Economic Prosperity studies, as well as learn how to use other creative economy research to make their case to their chamber and economic development counterparts. Participants are encouraged to use the toolkit as complimentary learning and participate in a live peer discussion once completing the 3-part on-demand webinar series.

The 11th Street Bridge Park will become the District of Columbia’s first elevated park, connecting the historic Anacostia and Capitol Hill neighborhoods that are geographically divided by the Anacostia River. Over the past six years, the project has expanded its work to include major investments in the neighborhood in the areas of affordable housing, workforce development, small business, and cultural equity. This webinar will focus on the development of the project’s Equitable Development Plan, and in particular, the addition of cultural equity strategies.

The Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) National Internship Program is a 10-week summer program that matches interns from underrepresented backgrounds within the arts with arts organizations in various communities across the country. This program strives to strengthen and advance equity in the arts management field by providing undergraduate students with exposure to dynamic leaders across a variety of arts disciplines and organizations through internship work and mentorship, access to professional development, and experience contributing to substantive projects that prepare each one for their career as arts leaders. This information session is for arts organizations interested in applying for the program as a host internship site. It will provide attendees with an overview of the requirements for applicants, program components and expectations, and a live Q & A period.

David Holland and Sandra Aponte, experienced leaders in the philanthropy sector, will offer insights into their professional journeys in the arts sector, and the path that led them to leadership roles in philanthropy.

The Arts & Cultural Equity Studio | Emerging Leaders collection provides emerging arts administrators access to tailored training aimed at helping them develop the skills needed to advance in the arts management field. ACES is a three-part professional development collection spanning all topics regarding cultural equity in arts administration and career advancement.

2022 is right around the corner which means state legislatures will be going into session. Hear from our national partner, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) on what state legislative trends to expect. Further, hear from two statewide arts advocacy experts on how you can prepare for the 2022 state sessions and what opportunities – and challenges – exist.

Member Briefings are our monthly opportunity to talk to you about what’s happening now! These calls will take place once a quarter, so mark your calendars to stay up-to-date on what’s happening at Americans for the Arts and across the sector. These calls are for you, so let us know if there’s a topic you’d like to know more about by contacting membership at membership@artsusa.org.

Hatuey Ramos-FermÍn and Valeria Miranda, experienced leaders in community programming, will offer insights into their professional journeys in the arts sector, and the path that led them to leadership roles in the field.

The Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) National Internship Program is a 10-week summer program that matches interns from underrepresented backgrounds within the arts with arts organizations in various communities across the country. This program strives to strengthen and advance equity in the arts management field by providing undergraduate students with exposure to dynamic leaders across a variety of arts disciplines and organizations through internship work and mentorship, access to professional development, and experience contributing to substantive projects that prepare each one for their career as arts leaders. This information session is for undergraduate students interested in applying for the program. It will provide attendees with an overview of the requirements for applicants, program components and expectations, and a live Q & A period.

Donna Walker-Kuhne and Mark E. Smith, experienced arts marketing leaders, will offer insights into their professional journeys in the arts sector, and the path that led them to leadership roles in arts marketing.

These bi-monthly coffee chats from Grapeseed Media and the National Arts Marketing Project, a program of Americans for the Arts, are informal discussions for arts marketing leaders who are interested in transformative and extraordinary ways to help better inform their practice.

Free and online, The Arts Organizations at a Crossroads Toolkit: Managing Transitions and Preserving Assets was created to guide arts leaders through three significant transitions you are likely to face during your organization’s life. Each of these ‘crossroads’ is addressed in a self-standing section of the Toolkit: structural shifts, departure of key staff/leadership and the creation of artistic and physical assets which deserve preserving.

The City of Camden, New Jersey received a $1 million grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge to clean up blighted areas around its transit corridors and recreate them as showcases for public art. “A New View—Camden” transformed six illegal dumping sites in Camden into dynamic art spaces, inspiring residents and visitors to take “a new view” of the city invincible. Did art help to solve the problem of illegal dumping? Tune in to find out.

In this session, you’ll learn how to build an authentic, compelling brand; configure a brand architecture that ensures innovations will add value in your organization; construct an overarching message; and develop a visual system that will connect all your efforts.

Extreme weather conditions are becoming more and more of a norm for communities across the United States. Locations with public art collections need to have a plan in place for when unpredictable weather strikes. In this 3-hour intensive, participants will work with a public art conservator on how to plan for the worst to care for public artworks. This intensive will cover what policies to have in place for emergency response, what information to have on hand to accurately survey damage, and the steps to take to develop a restoration plan for damaged artworks.

The Experts’ Guide to Marketing the Arts is a course equipping small and mid-sized arts organizations with the marketing and audience engagement tools to broaden and deepen their relationships with audiences. This is a six-module online course with the goal of supporting art organizations across the country by exploring topics like audience development, digital marketing, and other current marketing trends.

With the US open for business and summer in full bloom, we are looking forward to full scale in-person performances resuming the 2021-22 season. As we get closer, what can you do now to prepare your marketing team for a successful next season—one with the excitement of reopening but also the lingering effects of the pandemic?

For the first time since 2011, Congress has reinstated member-directed spending, commonly known as congressional earmarks. Because of this change, members of Congress now have the opportunity to direct about $15 billion toward projects in their home districts. Historically, arts and culture organizations have benefitted from member-directed spending, receiving funding for local museums, theaters, arts education programs, community and cultural centers, and public arts spaces. So far this year alone members of Congress have proposed over $200 million in member-directed spending on arts and culture projects. This webinar will explain the member-directed spending process and how local arts leaders can work with their congressional delegation on proposing these arts-related projects.

As a pre-career or emerging leader of color, navigating the arts sector can be tricky and confusing. In this panel discussion, we will be speaking with two emerging arts leaders on how their have cemented their pathways in the field. Onyx Montes and Jenee-Daria Strand, will discuss the learning experiences, challenges, and goals they have in their career as emerging leaders. In addition, they will reflect upon how emerging arts administrators of color can continue to uplift and support one another as they move through their career.

In this 8-part collection curated for pre-career and emerging arts leaders underrepresented in arts leadership, participants will gain new knowledge from arts leaders, peers, and colleagues in a safe and encouraging space to practice their own skills and creative thought.

​Join your peers for a ​free​ virtual conversation where we will explore tactics for how local arts agencies can create effective and mutually beneficial partnerships with their local chambers of commerce.

How can arts leaders ensure that their programs and initiatives are community-led and community-informed? How are artists and collaborators identified and brought into programming processes? How can arts organizations serve as economic and capacity-building engines for their communities? What questions must you ask yourself as you build coalitions for policies that advance the arts in schools? In this session, participants will learn how they can build their own internal strategies by asking themselves key questions and learning how they can use them to ensure their spaces and practices are activated with intention for sustainability, community-connectedness

In this session, participants will learn about the language (or rhetoric) of showcasing yourself in professional settings in writing. This session will resumes, cover letters, professional bios, and the process of tailoring those pieces of writing based on your current career goals, through the lens of arts management. Lead by arts management consultant, educator, and researcher, Brea M. Heidelberg, this webinar will be a great way for pre-career and emerging arts leaders to think about ways to highlight their experience.

The Rescue Plan’s Grants to Organizations program will be carried out through one-time grants to eligible organizations including, but not limited to, nonprofit arts organizations, local arts agencies, arts service organizations, units of state or local government, federally recognized tribal communities or tribes, and a wide range of other organizations that can help advance the goals of this program

In a brief presentation, Eddy Kwon (they/them) will share excerpts from past & current creative work, as well as an overview of their experiences as a non-profit arts administrator & fundraiser in the fields of contemporary music, creative youth development, and equitable community development. Eddy is a trans non-binary femme 2nd generation Korean American raised in the Midwest and now living in New York. They've learned from many generous mentors and colleagues over the years (though have never taken an arts administration or fundraising course) and hope to share some of the tools, resources, and strategies that have been useful to them in navigating a multidimensional creative and professional life. An open conversation will follow.

The Rescue Plan’s Grants to Local Arts Agencies for Subgranting program recognizes the central role that local arts agencies play in supporting artists, enhancing the quality of life in their communities, and increasing public access to the arts. Local arts agencies are valued partners of the Arts Endowment, greatly extending our reach and impact to assist communities respond to the economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.