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“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.

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.

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.

From the Doris Duke Charitable Fund:

In the first episode of a three-part podcast series by Grantmakers in the Arts, DDCF Program Director for the Arts Maurine Knighton spoke about the impetus behind the Racial Equity Coding Project, which aims to gather data around racial equity funding practices to illustrate a more nuanced and accurate accounting of grantmaking efforts to advance racial equity. The Equity Coding Project began with a culmination of research led by DDCF with Callahan Consulting for the Arts and provides funders with an opportunity to examine and refine their own coding practices, as well as to adopt new data collection practices for the future.

Knighton said: “We have established a good body of work, but this is the kind of work that’s going to require stamina and ongoing commitment from us as an entire field over time. It’s not one and done. And much in the way that the societal questions that we are grappling with in this country around racial equity, are not going to be one and done. They took many years for things to get to where they are.”

The episode, “The Racial Equity Project: Unpacking the ‘Why,'” also included the insights of Susan Feder, program officer for arts and culture at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Adam Fong, program officer in performing arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Listen to the full episode on the Grantmakers in the Arts website.

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.

The Packard Foundation’s Bioenergy strategy is issuing a request for project proposals to grassroots organizations based in the U.S. South or Canada that have programs focused on frontline community organizing and power-building around social, environmental, or climate justice in one of the following issue areas: Forest protection, Community land rights, Combating extractive energy industries.

Submissions of interest must be received by 5pm PST on Tuesday, April 26.

Read the full RFP here.