featured speakers

Arts Education Innovator:  Daniel Windham and Robert Lynch

Director of Arts at the Wallace Foundation Daniel Windham works to improve youth access to arts education. Under Bob Lynch’s leadership, the services and membership of Americans for the Arts has grown to over 50 times its original size in 1985. Each of these leaders is an innovator of systemic reform. Wallace is a champion of long-term investments in system change. Americans for the Arts has engaged national business, legislative, and education leaders in creating change for arts education. Both organizations are in the midst of strategic planning. In a mutual interview format, these leading lights will share the innovations they’ve used to advance arts education, as well as give some insight into their organization’s future directions.

Civic Engagement Innovator: Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Maria Bauman

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is founder and artistic director of Urban Bush Women (UBW), a woman-centered dance company that brings to light untold histories and stories of disenfranchised people through dance. Zollar is renowned as a pioneering artist and educator of community-based practice in dance. Through performance and residencies, UBW taps the power of dance to encourage social responsibility. Zollar received a 2008 fellowship from USArtists, a Bessie Award for her work dedicated to African-American dance pioneer Pearl Primus, and the Martin Luther King Distinguished Service Award from Florida State University where she is the Nancy Smith Fichter Professor in Dance.

Zollar is joined by Maria Bauman, long-time company member who coordinates UBW’s extensive community engagement and education projects. Bauman is a choreographer, performer, and dance teacher and is currently working on a piece inspired by many facets of the Sean Bell tragedy.

Diverse Cultures Innovator: Luis J. Rodriguez

With 10 nationally published books in memoir, fiction, nonfiction, children’s literature, and poetry, Luis J. Rodriguez has emerged as one of the leading Chicano writers in the country. Luis’s poetry has won a Poetry Center Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award, and Foreword magazine’s Silver Book Award, among others. His two children’s books have won a Patterson Young Adult Book Award, two Skipping Stones Honor Awards, and a Parent’s Choice Book Award, among others. His novel, Music of the Mill, was published in spring 2005 by Rayo/HarperCollins; his poetry collection, My Nature is Hunger: New & Selected Poems, 1989–2004, was released in fall 2005 from Curbstone Press/Rattle Edition.

Economic Development Innovator: Jon Hawkes

Jon Hawkes is an artist and the author of The Fourth Pillar of Sustainability: Culture’s Essential Role in Public Planning, published by the Cultural Development Network in Australia. His framework places cultural vitality on par with social equity, environmental responsibility, and economic viability as the critical foci of community development. Hawkes is Director of Community Music Victoria, a nonprofit, membership-based association that supports, promotes, and facilitates music-making in communities across the Australian state of Victoria. Hawkes has been affiliated with the Australian Centre of the International Theatre Institute, the Australia Council’s Community Arts Board, Circus Oz, and the Australian Performing Group.

Public Advocacy Innovator: Norm Dicks

As Chairman of the House of Representatives Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, Norm Dicks (D-WA) currently wields the gavel on the congressional panel that recently oversaw the largest increases for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 30 years. Rep. Dicks has held three public hearings highlighting the role the arts play in fostering innovation, education, and economic development for our communities, all while tirelessly working to restore the NEA to its previous funding high of $176 million. Rep. Dicks has been an outspoken arts advocate from early in his congressional tenure, as reflected by his personal commitment to several local arts initiatives in his hometown of Bremerton, WA, and to historic preservation in Puget Sound.

Public Art Innovator: Edgar Heap of Birds

The art of Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds includes public art messages, drawings, paintings, prints, works in glass, and sculpture. The work of Heap of Birds was chosen by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian for the U.S. Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He received his M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art, his B.A. from the University of Kansas, and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Heap of Birds teaches Native American Studies at the University of Oklahoma and has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Private-Sector Innovator: Akhtar Badshah

Dr. Akhtar Badshah, senior director of Global Community Affairs, will illuminate Microsoft’s overall community investment strategy, including how and why Microsoft is committed to funding the arts. He will also discuss dynamic ways that technology enhances organizational operations and creates effective audience experiences. Dr. Badshah administers Microsoft’s global community investment and employee programs. He oversees two programs that help nonprofit organizations improve their effectiveness through technology and focus on IT skills training to enable individual employability. Badshah co-edited Connected for Development: Information Kiosks for Sustainability and authored Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability.