John Schratwieser
Serving Communities: Stewarding Public Investment in the Arts
Posted by Apr 15, 2016
John Schratwieser
In October 2015, Maryland Citizens for the Arts (MCA) hosted its fourth annual capacity building conference called ArtsLAB. This year’s theme was “Community Engagement; Roles and Responsibilities of Publicly Funded Arts Organizations.” Why did we choose this topic? Simple: The Baltimore Uprising of April 2015.
Our offices are in Baltimore City. On the day after the Uprising, the Baltimore City School System was closed. As a city resident, I considered this an egregious error if not a complete failure of the system to our youth. As I arrived at work and opened up our social media accounts, something so basic and so truly amazing happened. One after another, nonprofit arts organizations across the city started promoting arts activities, free lunches, free concerts and plays for Baltimore City School Students.
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