Thank you to the many people who have been blog contributors to, and readers of ArtsBlog over the years. ArtsBlog has long been a space where we uplifted stories from the field that demonstrated how the arts strengthen our communities socially, educationally, and economically; where trends and issues and controversies were called out; and advocacy tools were provided to help you make the case for more arts funding and favorable arts policies.

As part of Americans for the Arts’ recent Strategic Realignment Process, we were asked to evaluate our storytelling communications platforms and evolve the way we share content. As a result, we launched the Designing Our Destiny portal to explore new ways of telling stories and sharing information, one that is consistent with our longtime practice of, “No numbers without a story, and no stories without a number.”

As we put our energy into developing this platform and reevaluate our communications strategies, we have put ArtsBlog on hold. That is, you can read past blog posts, but we are not posting new ones. You can look to the Designing Our Destiny portal and our news items feed on the Americans for the Arts website for stories you would have seen in ArtsBlog in the past.

ArtsBlog will remain online through this year as we determine the best way to archive this valuable resource and the knowledge you’ve shared here.

As ever, we are grateful for your participation in ArtsBlog and thank you for your work in advancing the arts. It is important, and you are important for doing it.


Breena Loraine

Finding the Right Words: Facts and Figures to Aid Your Fight for the Arts

Posted by Breena Loraine, Jun 22, 2011 2 comments


Breena Loraine

Making the Case for the Arts Session - #AFTA11

It is now more important than ever to defend funding and preservation of the arts. This was the subject of “Making the Case for the Arts,” a session at this year’s Americans for the Arts convention.

While many reasons for supporting the arts were addressed, Randy Cohen, Vice President of Research and Policy at Americans for the Arts, presented research mostly on the significance of the arts with regard to education, the economy, personal development, and healthcare.

Education. Studies show that, regardless of income level, students who are highly active in the arts are less likely to drop out of school by 10th grade (1.4 percent vs. 4.8 percent).

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Rich Mintz

San Diego, America's Finest City

Posted by Rich Mintz, Jun 22, 2011 1 comment


Rich Mintz

One of Rich's San Diego purchases.

Growing up in Los Angeles, San Diego (long known as “America’s Finest City,” but the first I heard of that in my life was Thursday evening from a cappella singers that greeted convention goers on the way to the trolley line) was a place we didn’t go to very often.

There was the time we went to Vacation Village and my dad beached the rental sailboat in Mission Bay, and the time I drove down to Rosarito Beach in the 12th grade with a couple of friends in a vain attempt to convince ourselves we were wild American high school kids (I remember drinking a lot of Mirinda orange soda).

And a couple of other short, unmemorable visits. (On one of them, when I came from DC — which didn’t have Trader Joe’s yet in those days — a highlight was the Trader Joe’s in Hillcrest.)

But for the most part, San Diego was a place you went through on the way to Mexico, or stopped in for a couple of days without ever really experiencing much of the “placeness” of the place.

So this time, while in San Diego for the Americans for the Arts Convention, I wanted to do things differently.

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Ms. Sally Gaskill

Reflections of an Arts Administrator on her Umpteenth Americans for the Arts Convention

Posted by Ms. Sally Gaskill, Jun 21, 2011 0 comments


Ms. Sally Gaskill

Sally Gaskill

My first convention was in 1983 or 1984 in Hartford, when the then National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies met with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. (Those were not only the pre-digital years, but the period when the acronyms – NALAA and NASAA - were more in alignment.)

I was a fresh-faced community development coordinator for the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. I remember what a rush it was to meet people like me from all over the country.

We did communicate back then – there were telephones, and we actually wrote letters and posted them in the mail – but there sure wasn’t Facebook or Twitter to keep us in touch with each other by the minute. So meeting up at convention was a big deal.

As the years have passed, I have been a frequent attendee of these annual meetings. Americans for the Arts has always been my home, because my work in arts administration has been grounded in community arts.

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Ms. Danielle Brazell

I Have A Problem…A Civic Engagement Problem

Posted by Ms. Danielle Brazell, Jun 21, 2011 3 comments


Ms. Danielle Brazell

Danielle Brazell

I run a local arts advocacy organization in a small fishing village on the west coast that’s home to 10 million people, 88 cities, and 81 school districts in a geography that spans thousands of square miles.

Yes, my little fishing village (aka Los Angeles) is massive!

Our advocacy approach has been high-tech/high-touch advocacy approach and is focused on three critical issue areas:

•    Arts Education
•    Cultural Economy
•    Civic Engagement

Within this context, I constantly ask the question: How can we connect more people to advocate for the arts in their community? I think the answer lies somewhere between community organizing and community development.

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Rich Mintz

Basic Online Fundraising for Busy People

Posted by Rich Mintz, Jun 20, 2011 1 comment


Rich Mintz

Rich Mintz

At the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention, I had the pleasure of listening to Camille Schenkkan of Arts for LA giving an unusually lucid and helpful introductory summary to online tools for donor development and management.

I think those of us who work in online fundraising for a living — especially those of us who mostly work with large organizations, the kind that have a dozen or more people in the marketing department, and technical staff to handle the donor database, and so forth — sometimes forget how mystifying all of this stuff is to a lot of people.

If you’re doing three jobs at once, in an environment where there’s never any extra money lying around, with a board of directors (or a major donor, city council, etc.) breathing down your neck — sound familiar? — what you want is not a bunch of platitudes about the “next generation” and the “new normal.” You want someone to tell you the dozen or so things you need to know, and the half-dozen or so things you should try to do this month or this quarter.

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