Blog Posts for Arts & Business

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.


Michelle Dean

GROWING THE PROFESSION: THE ART THERAPY CREDENTIALS BOARDS PERSPECTIVE - PART I

Posted by Michelle Dean, Dec 06, 2010 4 comments


Michelle Dean

Michelle Dean

What are all those letters after your name? is a frequent question I am asked, to which I often jest I have more letters after my name than in it. In a long-overdue, two-part installment of the blog, I will not only explain what all those letters mean, but also convey some significant changes that the granter of the credentials, The Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB), is making. Deborah A. Good, ATCB President and Rita Maloy, Exective Director, were very generous to grant an interview to discuss the vision for the future of art therapy from the ATCB’s perspective. The ATCB is an organization that credentials art therapists.  Credentialed art therapists must prove competency and are accountable to ATCB in terms of maintaining ethical standards of practice. The organization has recently unveiled an update of opportunities for becoming a registered art therapist (ATR), as along with a new certification for supervisors, the Art Therapy Certified Supervisor (ATCS). Additionally, the ATCB plans to apply for accreditation of the ATR-BC through the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) later this year.

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Ms. Margy Waller

The Arts are Compelling to Leaders Because They Make Places Unique

Posted by Ms. Margy Waller, Dec 06, 2010 0 comments


Ms. Margy Waller

Rocco Landesman with ArtsWave

At ArtsWave in greater Cincinnati, we’re engaging our business leaders in a conversation about the ripple effects of benefits from the arts in our community. And we find people in the private sector are particularly intrigued by the way the arts and artists make communities and neighborhoods exciting, vibrant, unique places to live and work.

Our corporate friends who are recruiting employees from all over the world tell us  that the arts in our region – our music, theatre, dance, museums, galleries, festival and more—make jobs here more appealing, and make retention easier.

This experience with business leaders is consistent with the research we completed last year, when we found that people across our region understand and value leaders who invest in the arts because of these benefits.

We learned that the following two ripple effects are especially helpful and compelling to enumerate:

  • A vibrant, thriving economy: Neighborhoods are more lively, communities are revitalized, tourists and residents are attracted to the area, etc. Note that this goes well beyond the usual dollars-and-cents argument.
  • A more connected population: Diverse groups share common experiences, hear new perspectives, understand each other better, etc.

We’ve been using these findings in our work for about a year now and we’ve had real success in changing the conversation.

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Ms. Katherine Mooring

Doing it “the old way" is not an option

Posted by Ms. Katherine Mooring, Dec 06, 2010 0 comments


Ms. Katherine Mooring

Katherine Mooring

It’s an understatement to say that I learned a great deal from some very engaged individuals representing both the arts and the corporate worlds while writing the recently released BCA Monograph. But one comment in particular, from Bob Speltz, The Standard’s Director of Public Affairs, has really kept my mind turning. “We are facing intergenerational changes in business leadership,” he said. “The elder statesman CEO is gone, and the men and women leading companies today are seeing fundamental change. Doing it “the old way" is not an option, and it will require a very different set of skills for arts administrators to appeal to new leadership and the people who work around them.” Bob was a fantastic interview, but I found this to be an especially insightful observation. For me, it was particularly refreshing to hear given the NEW ways we’ve begun experimenting with professional and leadership development initiatives for Charlotte-area arts leaders, many of whom have direct responsibility for securing private sector support.

Certainly Arts &Science Council is not alone as an arts council in providing critical capacity building and technical assistance programs for the artists and organizations we support, and like many others, we started down this new-ish path (for us) with a more traditional approach. Over the past 5 years or so, we’ve offered a series of high quality full and half-day workshops featuring hot topics of the day delivered by experts in the field, and we’ve had success with that approach - great attendance, positive feedback, and appreciative constituents. In the past year though – largely in response to significant psychological changes faced by those of us still working in a sector that’s taken quite a beating – we’ve shifted the focus somewhat. We’re still offering workshops, but intuitively it began to feel like those of us working in the cultural sector were really craving opportunities for deeper, more personal professional and leadership development. So, we’ve gone in a few new directions…!

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Bruce Whitacre

The Experience Money Truly Cannot Buy?

Posted by Bruce Whitacre, Dec 06, 2010 0 comments


Bruce Whitacre

Bruce Whitacre

We are tracking some interesting information as 2010 comes to a close.  One of the obstacles to arts giving, according to the Triennial Report, has been corporate earnings.  Yet we just concluded a quarter of record corporate earnings.  What does this mean for the cultural sector as a whole?  I’d like to explore a link we in culture don’t often make, although it is immediately apparent: the companies that support us are usually after someone else: our top individual donors!

Many companies draw upon NCTF to entertain high-end clients in New York and around the country.  Demand for these services is climbing, and our conversations for 2011 are to a surprising degree about increasing engagement with theatre.  Bigger budgets mean more to spend on top clients.  Good times!

But are we positioned to make the most of this slow but now apparent recovery?  I’ve been attending a lot of networking sessions that focus on the behavior of the affluent.  After all, the single largest source of support for not for profit theatre is affluent individuals, and as I said, a great deal of our corporate giving is focused on chasing those same individuals.

But who are they, and what are they after?  How have they changed in the last few years?

The most important point about the affluent is that they are older, generally above 55 years in age, and they grew up middle class.   In other words, they’re mostly Boomers.  And at this age, they have nearly all the things they want.  So what’s next?

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Jim Rivett

What is business’ perception of the arts?

Posted by Jim Rivett, Dec 06, 2010 0 comments


Jim Rivett

Jim Rivett

The business community has commonly perceived the arts as ancillary to its day-to-day operations and important only to the enrichment of its community’s cultural vitality. Now thanks to positive research and a new understanding of creativity’s potential—including efforts to meld creativity and the arts within and across multiple disciplines such as science and mathematics—business is just beginning to “get it.” Companies and corporations are s-l-o-w-l-y changing their perceptions and discovering the untapped success potential the arts can deliver.

The business community is beginning to understand the value the arts and creativity bring to the workplace. It’s realizing the arts can positively shape corporate culture and enhance the lives of workers both in and out of the workplace. But more importantly, business is gradually getting the message that by supporting and embracing the arts, the true impact of art’s potential to foster creative inquiry, entrepreneurial thinking, pure imagination and inspiration can serve as fuel for authentic corporate competitiveness.

Translated: The arts have bona-fide, bottom-line benefits.

That’s the message businesses throughout Wisconsin have been receiving through our firm’s volunteer work on behalf of the Wisconsin Arts Board. By creating brochures, presentations, and videos, and through our task force involvement, our business has been working to change the perceptions that Wisconsin businesses have about the arts. We want our state’s business community to understand that by juxtaposing and infusing the arts and creativity within the realms of technology, science, engineering, and beyond, unlimited possibilities spring forth.

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