welcome!

We took an innovative approach with our 2007 convention Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community—and it paid off! Please join us in thanking Nancy Deaner at the City of Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, our other Las Vegas hosts, and everyone else who helped make the convention such a success!

More than 1,100 arts and cultural leaders joined us to explore what it takes to cultivate creative communities. Keynote speaker Lyn Heward took us behind the scenes of Cirque du Soleil, exploring issues such as risk-taking, leadership, and teamwork while inspiring all her listeners to discover the creative spark within themselves. Another highlight of the weekend was the national release of the Arts & Economic Prosperity III study, which shows that the nonprofit arts and culture industry as a whole generates $166.2 billion in economic activity for our nation every year. Our Annual Report and Awards Ceremony honored six individuals for their great contributions to the field. Evening events and ARTventure tours allowed participants to network and explore local cultural life on the strip and beyond.

This year, we introduced seven new program tracks to ensure both close connection among colleagues and expanded opportunity for crossover among important areas of the larger arts field. Highlights include:

• The Arts Education Track offered lessons in Advanced Practice, Trends in the Field, and Innovative Models, with Innovator Sir Ken Robinson leading the culminating MetLife Forum on arts education and the new workforce.
• In the Civic Engagement Track, Innovator Chris Gates reinforced the value of the arts in local democracy, while session leaders and participants shared interpretations of arts-based civic engagement in a range of interactive sessions.
• In the Economic Development Track, Carol Coletta moderated Urban Arts: How Large Cities Get Creative, an in-depth look at creative, economic, and community development strategies in Austin, TX; Denver, CO; and Washington, DC. 
• The Leadership Track challenged participants to live with comfort in discomfort and certainty in ambiguity, while Innovator Rha Goddess helped remind us “if our art is not our center, then our leadership is not happening.”
• In the Private-Sector Track, strong attendance at The Future of Private-Sector Giving to the Arts in America session and the report from the first annual National Arts Policy Roundtable indicated the clear interest from the field in this work.
• The Public Advocacy Track highlighted some of the most important legislative issues in the field today, and attendees learned how to use the data from the newly released AEP III study to advocate for the arts in their communities.
• The highlight of the Public Art Track was the 2007 Public Art Network Year in Review presentation, which recognized 40 innovative and exemplary public art projects in the United States selected by curators Larry Kirkland and Miwon Kwon.
  

And in this instance, what happened in Vegas won’t stay there. From this website, you can access handouts from the sessions, as well as audio and video files of major speakers, to help you apply what you learned at the convention. Want to see how much fun we had? Check out the photo gallery and the Americans for the Arts blog.

We hope you will also consider presenting a session next year. The call for session proposals is available now, and proposals are due August 3, 2007. Please join us for the next Americans for the Arts convention, American Evolution: Arts in the New Civic Life, in Philadelphia, June 20–22, 2008!