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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.

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K.E. Semmel

A Picture IS 1,000 Words: Design Matters

Posted by K.E. Semmel, Oct 12, 2010 0 comments


K.E. Semmel

Kyle Semmel

Ben Burdick’s take on design in arts organizations is apt. As someone who has worked in marketing at such an organization—and as someone who, somewhat grudgingly, has also done some (rather embarrassing) design work out of necessity—I couldn’t agree more. I can’t improve on his suggested steps, especially the part about getting beyond emotional responses, but I can write about just how vital strong design is for an arts organization (or come to think, any organization).

Objectives are important, and good design is essential to fulfilling them. Whether you want it to or not, your graphic design is part of your message. Every time you put marketing materials out into the world, you reflect on who your organization is and what it does. A well thought out design—one that speaks to what you do—becomes the shorthand for how people remember you.

I write the above paragraph while thinking specifically about our own case. Last year we were lucky enough to be selected for a special branding initiative with the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, one of DC’s pre-eminent arts organizations, in its Business Volunteers for the Arts program. That program helps smaller organizations like ours reach objectives in areas like financial planning, marketing, and strategic planning, among others, by connecting them with professional volunteers.

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What should we adopt? How can we adapt?

Posted by , Oct 12, 2010 0 comments



Amelia Northrup

Reading over the blog entries this week, particularly David Dombrosky's entry on the rise of the citizen critic and Ron Evans' post on online reviews, I was reminded of an experience I had a few years ago when our local paper cut its classical music and dance critic.  I had a meeting with many of the marketing directors in the city, who were understandably upset about the firing and convinced that their success was inextricably linked with newspaper coverage.

Many of these people had been in marketing for 30 years. When they first started out in the business, the primary marketing channels were TV, radio, and newspaper (and maybe billboard, telemarketing, or fax.) When a new medium was introduced, it might take a while to master, but that was fine.  The learning curve was viewed as an investment because you knew that medium would still be around in five years.

Compare that to now.  We have new, “must-have” technology platforms coming out nearly every 6 months to a year.  Today, we are being pushed toward mobile apps for phones and iPads, geolocation social media like Foursquare, and more.  We are not sure if these technologies will still be popular in three months, let alone five yea

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Susannah Greenwood

How Can Wrong Be So Right?

Posted by Susannah Greenwood, Oct 13, 2010 0 comments


Susannah Greenwood

Susannah Greenwood

Oh, Chad Bauman you might be my new hero. Your insightful article on A Collection of Worst Practices was in a word, awesome. In another word, brave. Just one more word… awesome. Oh, wait, I already said that. Dammit. But, seriously, we’re brought up all our lives to believe mistakes are bad. You mess up that one term paper and it’s 40% of your grade and your GPA is affected for life, you’ll never get into grad school, you’ll never attract a spouse, you’ll end up miserable living in a ditch, a worthless piece of detritus and probably a total sot (not to be confused with Scale of Trustiness). What, your parents never used that argument? Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration, but so many times the consequences of mistakes are seemingly so monumental that you don’t take any risk at all. You never grow. And let’s be honest, sometimes those BEST practices don’t have the same results for you in your organization.

I’m here to support loud and clear MISTAKES. Boy, do I love sharing the mistakes. Sure they can be a bit of a sucker punch to the pride, but mistakes and sharing them are at the core of collaboration, education, and the continued drive for improvement and ultimate success. Hopefully your mistakes aren’t BP sized, no one wants that, but it’s easier to rise from the ashes if you just approach things with the attitude of practice makes perfect…or maybe not perfect, but very respectable progress and desired outcomes. When people say we are building on our “experience” what they really mean is, “we messed up a lot, but we won’t do that again. Not the same way at least.”

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Tim Mikulski

Advocacy is Easier Than You Think (from Arts Watch)

Posted by Tim Mikulski, Oct 13, 2010 0 comments


Tim Mikulski

Tim Mikulski

Having worked for a state legislative caucus and an individual legislator at the beginning of my career, it always amazes me that potential arts advocates feel that contacting local or state officials is either a difficult or frightening experience.

As arts education programs across the country continue to face uphill budget battles in individual school districts and even within schools, it is the perfect time to sit down with leaders at all levels to discuss the benefits of arts education and the good work that you do or witness others doing in your own communities.

Recently, I have been working on a new tool kit for our Keep the Arts in Public Schools Facebook Cause that provides teachers, students, and parents with a few easy steps for those groups to take to support arts education in their respective schools.

Here are the six easy steps that parents and teachers can take to affect change for arts education in their schools:

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Alison French

It’s a Wrap: The Arts Marketing Blog Salon is Now Closed

Posted by Alison French, Oct 13, 2010 0 comments


Alison French

On behalf of Americans for the Arts, I would like to thank all of our readers for stopping by our first ever arts marketing blog salon.  With almost 6,000 views, 73 comments, 15 bloggers, hundreds of tweets and retweets, and hundreds more of Facebook likes, the salon was a perfect way to jump start the National Arts Marketing Project Conference: New. Tech. New Tools. New Times.

I also want to extend a huge thank you to our bloggers:

All their contributions were thoughtful, smart, relatable, and well presented.  They shared their ideas with ease and honesty, and I can’t wait to hear what they all have to say when they present at the NAMP Conference in San Jose, November 12-15.

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Marisa Catalina Casey

Why Art Matters

Posted by Marisa Catalina Casey, Oct 25, 2010 5 comments


Marisa Catalina Casey

Students from Starting Artists

When I was 16 years old I desperately wanted to do something—something to express myself, something to make a difference. For me, that something became a fundraising calendar that I conceived of and photographed as a high school student and then again as a college student. I photographed portraits of internationally adopted children, worked with graphic designers to put them into a calendar and then sold the results to family, friends, teachers, community members and later at Barnes & Noble. The two calendars raised thousands of dollars to benefit international orphanages, including the Colombian orphanage I was adopted from at the age of three.

This project taught me that I could use both creativity and entrepreneurship to positively affect the world. Today, this is what I teach my students at Starting Artists, Inc. (SA). I founded SA in 2006 as a graduate student in the Program in Arts Administration at Columbia University Teachers College. I wanted to create a place where young people could use media arts and business skills to be just as artistic and innovative as I was at their age.

During the SA Afterschool Program, students learn the professional tools to make a statement—a statement about their lives, a statement about their communities, and a statement about their world. Through classes in photography, graphic design, printmaking, crafts, mixed media, video, animation, music mixing, and entrepreneurship students transform from passive media consumers into active media producers and catalysts for change.

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Michael R. Gagliardo

Creating Lifelong Learners

Posted by Michael R. Gagliardo, Oct 18, 2010 2 comments


Michael R. Gagliardo

Michael R. Gagliardo

Back in July I received a comment on a blog post, after asking readers what the subject of my next blog post should be.  One reader, Denise, chimed in with the topic of “persuading school systems and communities to recognize the foundational importance of classical music and cultivating a lifelong appreciation.”  I like it.

I’m currently teaching a class for the University of Alabama’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  In a nutshell, OLLI is a program that is designed for “mature adults” with the basic premise being “learning for the pure joy of learning.”

What a great concept!  Adults come and take classes on music, history, computers, languages – you name it.  There are no tests, no homework, no age limitations – just an open, exciting learning environment where students who share common interests come to brush up on things they are already familiar with, or to add new learning experiences.

It begs the question – how do we take this love of and desire for learning and transfer it from the world of “mature adults” to the realm of those we should be working hard every day to reach – young people?

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