The new grant from Basic Income for the Arts, “will give 2,000 artists €325 (~$354) a week with no restrictions on spending.” This pilot program will be tested over the course of three years (2022-2025).

“The program is not restricted to the visual arts: Literature, theater, music, dance, circus, and architecture are among the many eligible mediums,” said Elaine Velie. “The application is also noncompetitive — artists only have to meet the eligibility requirements in order to be entered into the pool.”

Read the full article here.

President Biden paid a rare visit to Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia, a program that received funding from the American Rescue Plan. ArtistYear teaching artist fellow Coco Allred reflected on her experience of having the American leader come to the classroom.

“On March 11, 2022, President Joseph R. Biden asked Maria, a second-grade student at Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia,” writes Coco Allred for Americans for the Arts. “‘What kind of art do you like?’ Maria said, ‘Painting.’ President Biden replied, ‘Do you think you’ll be a painter when you grow up?’ Maria said with confidence, ‘I already am one.’”

Read the full blog post here.

Dr. Manuel Pastor was the featured guest on the Bioneers’ podcast episode Building the Solidarity Economy: Awakening to Our Mutuality and Shifting the Terrain of Power. The distinguished Professor discussed, “how shocks to the system are precipitating a great awakening and growing movements to transform the economy to our economy.”

“It’s been a very difficult last couple of years. We have been and are still experiencing the COVID pandemic, and it’s important to realize that this was a shock to our system,” says Pastor. “COVID was the disease that revealed our illnesses as a society: the racial wealth gap, which meant that communities of color were not able to survive the blows of an uneven economy; inadequate healthcare – black people died at 1.4 times the rate of white folks, and if we look at Los Angeles county and age adjust for that, we’ll see that the black death rates were twice that of white folks, the Latino death rates, three times. So COVID was the disease that revealed our illnesses of economic precarity, of systematic racial disparities, of inadequate healthcare.”

Listen to the podcast here.

Forecast Public Art announced the Public Art for Racial Justice Fund to, “provide much needed guidance, coaching and technical assistance to artists and communities as they undertake the complex task of confronting racial inequities…”

Public art consultants will offer their expertise to, “the many organizations, arts administrators, artists, community organizers and others reaching out to our team for help navigating racial justice in their public art programs, policies, and practices.

Read the full announcement here.

Forecast Public Art announced the Public Art for Racial Justice Fund to, “provide much needed guidance, coaching and technical assistance to artists and communities as they undertake the complex task of confronting racial inequities…”

Public art consultants will offer their expertise to, “the many organizations, arts administrators, artists, community organizers and others reaching out to our team for help navigating racial justice in their public art programs, policies, and practices.

Read the full announcement here.

On the book, Are the Arts Essential?: “As Arthurs puts it, in addressing ideas and ‘challenging our systems’ we have been more easily in awe of the arts than activated by them. To begin with, I am greatly in favor of the ‘we,’ for this convergence of intelligent minds and pens speaks for all of us, wherever we are meeting it,” explains The Brooklyn Rail contributor Mary Ann Caws. “I shall borrow the words of Catharine R. Stimpson about our need for ‘cultural interpreters who can tell the story of this brilliant pluralism’ and affirm that we have exactly those here.”

“All along the length of these chapters,” edited by Senior Fellow, Alberta Arthurs and Michael F. Diniscia, Deputy Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives at NYU’s John Brademas Center, “we see the importance of that question—indeed, of each issue raised—such as that brought before us by the significant thinker K. Anthony Appiah, reminding us by way of Duchamp that what signals a piece as a work of art is its demand for ‘a certain sort of attention.’”

“All along the length of these chapters,” edited by Senior Fellow, Alberta Arthurs and Michael F. Diniscia, Deputy Director for Research and Strategic Initiatives at NYU’s John Brademas Center, “we see the importance of that question—indeed, of each issue raised—such as that brought before us by the significant thinker K. Anthony Appiah, reminding us by way of Duchamp that what signals a piece as a work of art is its demand for ‘a certain sort of attention.’”

Read the full article here.

“Grants management professionals are strategically positioned to influence a funder’s racial equity and racial justice funding. But in three decades of working in and with foundations, I have consistently seen a pattern where people serving in these roles are excluded from these conversations as a matter of institutional habit,” explains Lori Villarosa, Founder and Executive Director, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Justice.

Villarosa defines racial equity and racial justice before offering, “three ways in which grants management professionals can reimagine the core functions of their roles to better support racial justice funding.” These include: identifying the why in data management, easing the burden on grant applicants, and reexamining the concept of risk.

Read the full essay here.