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.
Topics will be announced approximately two weeks prior to the scheduled briefing.
We firmly believe that our #AFTAmember network is one of our strongest resources, so after our update, we’ll open the floor up to your questions, comments, recommendations, and lessons learned – we hope you’ll take advantage of each other’s expertise!
March 2022
Topic: Six Principles for Transformational Change at Americans for the Arts with President and CEO Nolen Bivens
We are trying out a new membership briefing format to better highlight the amazing work our members are doing in the field as well as to provide insight into Americans for the Arts’ strategy and programming! The August briefing will feature recent American Express Emerging Leader Award winner and Director of Cultural Affairs for the City of New Haven, Adriane Jefferson, in dialogue with Americans for the Arts’ new Chief of Staff, Daniel Fitzmaurice about their experience and success with developing a cultural equity plan for The City of New Haven.
About the Member Briefing August 9 at 3:00PM ET
We are trying out a new membership briefing format to better highlight the amazing work our members are doing in the field as well as to provide insight into Americans for the Arts’ strategy and programming!
August briefing will feature recent American Express Emerging Leader Award winner and Director of Cultural Affairs for the City of New Haven, Adriane Jefferson, in dialogue with Americans for the Arts’ new Chief of Staff, Daniel Fitzmaurice about their experience and success with developing a cultural equity plan for The City of New Haven.
This hour-long discussion will cover:
What a cultural equity plan is
How Adriane and Daniel developed one for the City of New Haven
Why a cultural equity plan is a necessity for any organization
How you can develop a cultural equity plan for your community
What you can do to foster support for developing your own plan
We will also leave time for your questions!
Adriane Jefferson
Director of Cultural Affairs
City of New Haven
Adriane is an Executive in Arts Administration and cultural equity with expertise in program design, event & media production, grant making, external affairs ,community partnerships, and new program initiatives. She specializes in professional development programming for young creative professionals, programs that amplifying Black, Indigenous, people of color and social change initiatives. She is a thought leader, adviser and educator pertaining to issues of Justice, Diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. She has dedicated her career to creating programs that result in a more equitable, vibrant and sustainable arts landscape. Adriane is currently the Director of the Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs for the City of New Haven and the Executive Director of New Haven Festival Inc.
Daniel Fitzmaurice
Executive Office
Americans for the Arts
Daniel is positive that everyone benefits from creativity in their communities, which is why cultural equity is a core value in his work. With professional experience as a classical pianist, music educator, and arts administrator, he personally understands the joys and challenges of navigating creative ecosystems. He most recently served as the Executive Director at the Arts Council of Greater New Haven from 2017-2022 after leadership appointments at Creative Arts Workshop and Elm Shakespeare Company, all in New Haven, CT. As a passionate arts advocate, he co-organized Connecticut's first Create the Vote campaigns from 2018 to 2022 and served on a statewide policy advisory committee for arts, culture, and tourism. As a community leader committed personally and professionally to anti-racism, he co-created Connecticut's first COVID-19 relief fund for individual creatives, Arts for Anti-Racism Pledge, and Cultural Equity Plan. He is also proud to have served as a facilitator for the Community Leadership Program and on the Boards of CT Arts Alliance, New Haven Innovation Collaborative, and the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. He and his family love exploring the vast creative ecosystem of their home states of Connecticut and Rhode Island and experience living in Portland, Oregon, and Philadelphia, PA.
Member Briefings are our opportunity to talk to you about what’s happening now! 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.
About the Member Briefing
This event was cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later time
What’s the Arts + Social Impact Explorer?
First created in 2018, the Arts + Social Impact Explorer provides examples, data points, links to research papers, and lists of active organizations to illustrate the impact of arts and culture in 30 aspects of community life from public health to transportation, safety, community cohesion, and innovation. The original Explorer has, to date, been used by more than 50,000 people across the country to advocate, inform policy, tell the story of the arts, and improve community life.
The 2.0 edition of the Arts + Social Impact Explorer incorporates an array of new features designed to improve the user experience and deepen the impact of the tool. The 18-month process to create this iteration of the Explorer was supported by the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. New features include:
A searchable, filterable Local Projects Database of social impact-related arts projects that anyone in the field can add to and explore. This database currently includes more than 400 projects from across the country and world, all tagged with information on genre, sector, budget size, geography, and more. Each entry also links back to the original project’s website.
An expanded and improved Impact Wheel, now including 30 sectors and incorporating new accessibility features, improved downloadable Fact Sheets about each sector, and a smoother interface.
A dynamic Build A Fact Sheet feature that allows users to create and generate customizable, localized information to help them make their case. The Build A Fact Sheet functionality allows users to home in on the specific issues most affecting their community, identify localized examples of how the arts are impacting those issues, curate data points and research from over 7,500 publications in Americans for the Arts’ National Arts Policy Database, and add a customized title and logo. The Fact Sheets can then be generated as a PDF to email or download; as a unique URL that can be shared and accessed for up to six months; or as a pre-formatted printed PDF piece to pass across a desk.
Coming this summer, six “How To guides” will further help users maximize the Explorer as they advocate, educate, communicate, create, and more!
Member Briefings are our opportunity to talk to you about what’s happening now! 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.
About the Member Briefing
March 8 at 3:00PM ET
As Americans for the Arts staff, board, stakeholders, and partners continue work on the strategic realignment process, workplace culture rebuild, and the proposed actions from the Task Force for Racial and Cultural Equity, President and CEO Nolen Bivens shared a memo summarizing six ideas he considers necessary for achieving transformational change.
The arts are a national asset: arts everywhere and for everyone.
Community is where the arts make a difference.
Focus on our place in a network of networks.
Success depends on equitable and collaborative partnerships.
We must build trust and resiliency.
Stay relevant, be prepared.
Join us for the March member briefing where Nolen will discuss these themes in more detail, to continue a more transparent and inclusive conversation about the way forward.
Nolen V. Bivens
President and CEO
Americans for the Arts
Nolen V. Bivens, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, is a former U.S. Army General and serves as chair of the National Leadership Advisory Council, the National Initiative for Arts & Health Across the Military (NIAHM); military community advisor for the National Endowment for the Arts Military Healing Arts Network’s Creative Forces program, and senior Policy Fellow on Arts & Military.
Bivens is president of Leader Six, Inc. and has executive leadership experience delivering successful results for public, private sector, and nonprofit organizations with $1B (+) in annual revenue, including strategic business development and sales at the VP level for a top four defense corporation, General Dynamics Mission Systems. A retired U.S. Army Brigadier General, he’s held leadership and staff positions from company through Army and Joint Pentagon Staff and U.S. Combatant and Special Operations Command levels. He has testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, and co-chairs the National Leadership Advisory Committee for NIAHM. He has been guest speaker for national nonprofit conferences, the Aspen Seminar for Leadership in the Arts; and is a contributing writer for the Smithsonian Institution, HuffPost, and American for the Arts’ social media.
Bivens holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from South Carolina State University, a Master of Science in Management from the Naval Post Graduate School, and a Master of Science in National Security and Strategic Studies from the National Defense University.
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Recorded On: 08/11/2022
Contains 2 Component(s)
