Americans for the Arts

Every country, society, and culture places a different value on the arts.

It’s no secret that Americans love pop culture.  Meanwhile, our symphonies, orchestras, and ballets are struggling to stay in business.

In Holland, social workers are trained in the arts for the purpose of improving communities and everyday quality of life through arts learning and participation.

Meanwhile, in Bali, gamelan concerts can last for hours and sometimes days.

In Lima, Peru, concerts often start two hours later than scheduled.

No matter where you go, there may be subtle or obvious cultural differences from the way we do things in the United States.

Working in the realm of international arts management means learning to understand and work with those cultural differences.  

Colin Tweedy

I sense a sea change in the way the arts are funded. There is no doubt that many countries in Europe are cutting their culture budgets. A recent leader in the Financial Times concluded:

“Cultural organisations also need to do more to help themselves. A new act is unfolding in the drama of arts funding – and artists must play their role to the full.”

Arts organisations are entrepreneurial by nature. Many of the largest arts organisations are becoming more commercially savvy.

In London, where the lion’s share of all private cultural investment is raised, major bodies have seen the light. The Royal Opera House joined forces with RealD, a film and production company to provide 3D movies of their productions worldwide; the National Theatre is producing films of its block buster productions to 380 cinemas across the globe. The public grant percentage of their income has been reducing annually. 

Rebecca Novick

Asked to write about new business models I find myself instead thinking of un-business models. How can we move the business from the center where in fact the art belongs? Not move the money, which is always necessary to some degree, but the business, the unholy preoccupation with systems and structures and buildings and the perpetual employment of administrators.

I have the honor to be involved in a project that is striving to do this, a big, messy, ambitious collaboration with spiritual aims and practical struggles, led by a playwright and shepherded by his family of collaborators. Soulographie: Our Genocides is an international project organized by playwright Erik Ehn to bring together the 17 plays he wrote in the last decade about various genocides. Teams in ten cities are producing one or more of the plays locally, in preparation for performances of the full cycle at La Mama in New York City in November 2012. 

“How would your life be different if you were never introduced to the arts?” asked Paula Kerger, president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting System, at a recent meeting of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington.

Basically, I can only speculate how my life would be different if I’d never been introduced to the arts.

I would presume that right now I’d be interning at a large corporation such as Kenseal Construction Products (the sealant and water proofing experts on the East Coast--for whom my dad works) aspiring to become their corporate spokesperson, not Americans for the Arts (but who’s to say that’s not a possible goal here?).

I could have played sports intensely in high school, probably basketball or lacrosse--as my dad had wanted to see--and this intense play could have continued to into and through college, possibly on a full scholarship. After all, it’s the jocks that make all the money, right? Not the band geeks.

Lucky for me, my parents are proud to call me their daughter and, even during times of skepticism, have supported my dreams my whole life and are excited to see where everything takes me. If my life lacked an arts introduction, I doubt I would be as open-minded and patient, and I also wouldn’t be sitting here with a degree in dance, trying to obtain professional work experience while squeezing in time to dance every spare moment I have.

When the Music in Motion School for Higher Dance Education (MMSHDE) in St. Croix reached out to the International Association for Blacks in Dance (IABD) for support in September 2018, I snatched the online bulletin and hit the ground running. I had been looking for a way to get more involved with IABD, but at the time, I didn’t have reliable transportation which would have allowed me to take part in their Administrative Internship Program at Headquarters. But if I knew that if I could find a way to participate in and help my dance community, then I would. I reached out to local dance studios: Washington Dancewear, Divine Dance Institute, Supreme Productions and Company, and Neema Dance Collective, who willingly agreed to donate brand new and new condition dancewear to ship off to our Sister Island in the US Virgin Islands. Now, in 2019, it’s an exciting time for the revived dance school. After the island saw devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the school is back to holding classes, performing regularly, and participating in community affairs.

Annually, the Public Art Network (PAN) Year in Review recognizes outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year from across the country and beyond. The projects are selected and presented by a jury of three professionals who represent different aspects of the public art field, including artists, administrators, and other public art allies. New this year, the PAN Advisory Council curated the selected 49 selected projects for 2018 under five unique themes to broaden the exposure of the selected works on ARTSblog and social media, and to provide context to the works through national trends and themes that are impacting the field today.

At the forefront of the current dialogue across the nation and around the globe are questions concerning how we negotiate with the world around us to address the growing concerns of resource allocation, preservation, and climate change. The pursuit and development of the policies, systems, and infrastructure needed to provide long term sustainable solutions to these issues reaches across multiple fields from the political to the scientific and serves as inspiration to many of the 2018 PAN Year in Review projects. Though the materials, execution, and duration are all unique, these projects are unified by the role of the artist(s) in translating the collective experiences and stories of our essential ecosystems and habitats into personal narratives of site.