“Artists from across the state have come together in this small southwest Texas town to honor the 19 students and two teachers killed in late May at Robb Elementary School. They’ve painted giant portraits of each victim with the hope of helping the community heal.”

“It’s a huge endeavor at any time, but most especially during Texas in August.”

“It’s morning time but already sweltering just off Uvalde’s pecan tree-lined town square. The artist who goes by the name Uloang, has been up all night painting, to avoid the blistering midday sun.”

Read the full article here.

Artnet News author Folasade Ologundudu is conducting a four-part series, “featuring Black artists across generations who work with social practice.” The first interview in the series is with Linda Goode Bryant, “a mother of two, artist, activist, and filmmaker,” whose, “exhibition ‘Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces’ will debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York almost half a century after Linda Goode Bryant first opened the doors of the gallery that inspired the show just a few blocks away, on West 57th Street.”

“[Bryant] is a tenacious self-starter, devoted mother, generous friend, and fierce advocate who has spent her life and career working to share the stories and positively impact the lives of those who have experienced racism, poverty, and displacement.”

“Over the past decade, several institutions have asked Bryant to stage an exhibition about JAM, but she always replied that she didn’t do ‘dead art shows.’ She resisted the notion of a historical show that placed living artists who’ve continued to create new work in conversation with a project that existed decades before. But the significance of doing a show at MoMA—which, although nearby, might as well have been miles away from JAM when it was operating—proved compelling.”

“Is the acclaim being bestowed upon Black artists today too little, too late? One would be remiss not to mention that recent museum solo shows for artists such as 79-year-old Pindell and 87-year-old Lorraine O’Grady, who showed at JAM decades ago, feel backhanded after all these years. Bryant knows full well that Black creativity and talent exist outside white institutions and have never needed their permission or validity.”

Read the full interview here.

“VermontBiz Creative Futures Grants, with $9 million in funding from Vermont’s last legislative session, will be available beginning Thursday, Sept. 15, to help the creative sector recover from economic losses due to the pandemic.”

“Grants of up to $200,000 will be available to creative sector non-profits and for-profit entities, including sole proprietors, that have sustained substantial losses from the pandemic. Losses include decreased revenue or gross receipts; financial insecurity; increased costs; and challenges covering operating expenses.”

“Grant amounts, which will be based on pre-pandemic operating revenue from 2019, may be used to cover a wide range of regular operating expenses, including payroll and office expenses; rent, mortgage, and utilities; and costs associated with ongoing Covid-19 mitigation and prevention.”

The program will be open for three rounds. The first application deadline is Nov. 1, 2022, with subsequent deadlines in February and June of 2023. Read the full announcement here.

From Tooshar Swain for AFTA’s ARTS blog, “National Arts in Education Week is upon us, and it is a wonderful time to reflect on where arts education has been and where it can go with impassioned arts advocacy. K-12 arts students and educators have endured a rocky road through the pandemic, and their perseverance must continue as we head into a new normal of education in the United States.”

“The path to a new normal began with the complete shutdown of in-person learning. Many schools stopped useful learning activities in March 2020 for the remainder of the school year. Schools were quickly forced to implement a virtual learning platform. This came with no experience on how to instruct children away from the classroom and little familiarity with employing the technology for virtual learning to occur. As administrators and parents rushed to identify how best to limit learning loss in subjects like math, reading, and English, students and educators felt the pinch in arts education as they considered how best to move forward past administrative and technological restrictions.”

“While schools throughout the country have resumed in-school learning and arts education programs are thriving in some communities, quality arts programs continue to be limited or not available at all in many schools. The renamed Arts ARE Education statement is a now full-fledged national arts education campaign recognizing that all pre-K through grade 12 students have the right to a high-quality school-based arts education in dance, media arts, music, theater, and visual arts. As a well-rounded subject area under federal education law—the Every Student Succeeds Act—music and the arts support the daily well-being of students, foster a welcoming and safe school environment, and encourage inclusivity through multiple pathways for every child’s creative voice.”

Read the full article here.

From the White House Briefing Room: “At the national level, NEA Chair Jackson will participate in the United We Stand Summit, alongside National Endowment for the Humanities Chair Lowe, and will be partnering on a messaging initiative in future months. We extend an invitation for you to join us for this important, first-of-its-kind event, with information on how to watch the summit forthcoming. The arts and culture have an important role to play in this issue. As we all know, the arts help us develop the skills needed to find connection, common purpose, and recognition of our shared humanity. They are an integral part of America’s civic infrastructure: the norms and agreements that we rely on to care for one another. In this time of division and polarization, strengthening this civic infrastructure through the arts is paramount.”

“The United We Stand Summit will bring together heroes from across America who are leading historic work in their communities to build bridges and address hate and division, including survivors of hate-fueled violence. The summit will include a bipartisan group of federal, state, and local officials, civil rights groups, faith and community leaders, technology and business leaders, law enforcement officials, former members of violent hate groups who now work to prevent violence, gun violence prevention leaders, media representatives, and cultural figures. It will feature a keynote speech from President Biden as well as inclusive, bipartisan panels and conversations on countering hate-fueled violence, preventing radicalization and mobilization to violence, and fostering unity.”

Read the full article here.

“The report is authored by Rinku Sen and Mik Moore – leaders in social change narrative strategy, and we are very excited to share it far and wide, especially with funder networks who likely have had narrative change discussions bubbling up more and more. The report shares the deep gaps in understanding and funding approaches to narrative change, but more importantly, offers a framework for funders. It issues an urgent call for foundations to fund via Mass culture, Mass media, and Mass movement.”

“As a new strategic area of its work, the Convergence Partnership was interested in better understanding the ways in which “we” do “it.” Who are the “we?” Funders and practitioners that work in the narrative change arena. What is the “it?”Approaches to funding and bringing about narrative change. Established in 2007, Convergence Partnership (the Partnership) is a national funder collaborative working to transform policies, practices, and systems to advance racial justice and health equity. Given the nation’s fraught racial discourse, the Partnership believed narrative change and storytelling was a central strategy for shifting public attitudes toward racial justice and health equity. Today, the Partnership is led by eleven national, statewide, and local foundations and multifunder initiatives. In 2018, we hired Narrative Arts (then Working Narratives) and Moore + Associates to help us develop and implement a strategy to advance racial justice and health equity narratives with funders, grantees, and the Partnership itself. In the years since, they have conducted a series of trainings, audits, and workshops to help establish a shared understanding and approach to narrative change among these stakeholders.”

Read the full report here.

From the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage: “The act of creation takes on a multiplicity of forms. In our ongoing artist interview series, we illuminate the distinctive artistic practices, influences, and creative challenges of our Pew Fellows, who represent a diversity of perspectives and creative disciplines.”

“In this installment, three performance artists—angel shanel edwards, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, and Alexandra Tatarsky—discuss the audiences that motivate them, their dream collaborators, and the idea of “leakiness” between disciplines.”

About the Artists

Edwards creates movement work, film, and writing that celebrate the everyday, embodying the textures of Black queer and transgender existence, paying close attention to the overlooked joys and obligations of daily life in marginalized communities.

Kosoko’s performance works incorporate elements of dance, music, poetry, film, and visual art to reflect on Black and queer identity, often employing historical events and archival relics to speak to contemporary life.

Tatarsky’s work blends performance art, comedy, physical theater, and clown practices to probe the construction of meaning, self, and community, playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity.

Read the full article here.

“The New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is seeking proposals from artists to decorate its 46,000-pound waste collection vehicles. But artists whose designs are selected will not be paid, raising questions about whether the city’s open call devalues art,” said Jasmine Liu for Hyperallergic. “DSNY is rebooting this public art project, Trucks of Art, for the second time, and will be accepting expressions of interest from artists until September 18. Its inaugural edition happened in 2019, when four artists and students in a visual arts class were selected to cover the 400-square-foot blank “canvases” with images of sanitation workers, recycling, and flowers. Almost 100 artists applied, and Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia at the time called the designs ‘truly … works of art.'”

“DSNY will privilege proposals that center the over 7,000 sanitation workers who keep New York clean and motifs of cleanliness. Participating artists will be provided with supplies and a working space to enact their designs, and they will have just three, seven-hour work days, sometime in late September and early October, to completely adorn their collection vehicle, including all three visible sides of the truck. They will be encouraged to keep waste low by using recycled and discarded paints. The design will remain on the truck for as long as it remains intact on the vehicle. The trucks are expected to hit the road by October, and DSNY hopes to represent artists from every borough.”

Read the full article here.