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From USC Norman Lear Center Media Impact Project: Interest in narrative change approaches has been increasing over the last several years in the advocacy and philnathropic worlds. 

With support from the California Health Care Foundation, the USC Norman Lear Center embarked on a learning project to:

Explore what is needed to generate impact through entertainment-driven narrative change
Align impact expectations among key stakeholders

As part of the larger learning project, we interviewed 23 key stakeholders in the narrative change ield, with a focus on those leveraging entertainment media:

9 representatives from funding and philanthropic organizations
9 representatives from practitioner organizations
5 narrative change experts and consultants 

Read the full report here.

From National Endowment for the Humanities: The Department of the Interior and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced a new inter-agency partnership to expand the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative through the collection of oral histories and digitization of records documenting the experiences of survivors and descendants of federal Indian boarding school policies. NEH has committed $4 million to support the digitization of records from the United States’ system of 408 federal Indian boarding schools and the creation of a permanent oral history collection, documenting the experiences of the generations of Indigenous students who passed through the federal boarding school system. 

The Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative is an ongoing, comprehensive effort by the Interior Department to recognize the troubled legacy of federal Indian boarding school policies with the goal of addressing their intergenerational impact and shedding light on the traumas of the past. 

Creating a permanent oral history program on the history of federal Indian boarding schools has never before been undertaken by the U.S. government and is a resource that has been requested by Indigenous communities. The Department’s oral history project will ensure stories and experiences that survivors share can be understood and learned from for future generations.   

As part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative and in response to recommendations from the report, Secretary Haaland launched “The Road to Healing.” This year-long commitment to travel across the country is giving Indigenous survivors the opportunity to share their stories and be connected with trauma-informed support. NEH’s Chair Lowe has joined DOI staff at several stops on “The Road to Healing,” including this week’s event on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington State. The oral history project will build on this effort to create space for survivors. Details regarding the facilitation of this effort will be released in the coming weeks.  

In addition to NEH’s direct support for the Interior Department’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, NEH will also fund related humanities programs—including scholarly research, convenings, and educational programs—that further public understanding of the history and impact of the federal Indian boarding school system. This funding builds upon previous NEH-supported work such as the Heard Museum’s Away From Home permanent exhibition of American Indian boarding school stories, and the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project, which is digitizing and transcribing government records, photographs, oral histories, and other historical materials documenting the experience of Native American children who attended the Genoa U.S. Indian School in Nebraska between 1884 and 1934.

Read the full announcement here.

From National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response: Raleigh, NC, Olympia, WA, Jackson, MS, and Trenton, NJ are among the communities which will be served by a new Crisis Analysis & Mitigation Coach. Ten arts administrators have been selected for training by NCAPER, the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response, and Air Collaborative. The full list is here.

These leaders will join ten existing coaches in the CAM program, a nationwide network of arts responders trained to coach distressed communities in developing or expanding mitigation efforts using the arts and creativity. According to NCAPER Executive Director Janet Newcomb, “Rather than waiting for another disaster to occur, CAM Network coaches use ‘Blue Sky’ moments to plan readiness and mitigation, to be better prepared for the next disaster, and to build vital community communication networks.” Why are existing relationships key to responding to and garnering resources following a disaster, and to building resiliency for future crises? “Because all disasters are local. Crises happen in a specific place, and immediate help will come from local resources. People must first rely on local community resources, and work locally to build community resilience,” Newcomb says.

CAM focuses on recruiting coaches who currently work within state and local arts agencies and arts service organizations, and CAM participants will build their coaching responsibilities into their job descriptions, as a requirement of the program. Local arts councils usually have the most direct connection with artists in their community, and are aware of smaller and emerging organizations. They have a direct line to get information and connections to these folks, and to connect them with local community and economic leaders. State arts councils and commissions are also critical players in the crisis preparedness and recovery ecology. When a disaster of significant scale occurs, the funding is going to flow through the state government, so the state arts agency needs to be at the table to make sure that resources get to the arts sector.

Read the full announcement here.

From The Lewis Prize for Music: We are thrilled to announce that The Lewis Prize for Music, a philanthropic music arts organization committed to advancing systems change through Creative Youth Development, is now accepting applications for its 2024 Accelerator Awards. The organization will grant nearly $2 million to Creative Youth Development organizations across the country, dedicated to creating positive change through youth music programs. 

Each award is valued at $500,000, and CYD music organizations that seek to influence youth-serving systems to ensure all young people have access to learning, creating, and performing experiences that reflect their culture and identity are eligible to apply.

The application is open now from Friday, March 24th, to Friday, June 2nd, 2023, at thelewisprize.org.

Learn more about the award here.

From Toledo Museum of Art: The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) has committed to invest $1 million in the new Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy launched by Upstart Co-Lab, a nonprofit impact investing leader that connects capital with creative people and companies in the creative industries delivering both social impact and financial return. This Strategy is the first of its kind in the U.S. 

TMA is the first museum to commit to the Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy and stands as a model other cultural institutions can follow as they align their endowment investment strategies with their values and mission. Returns from the investment will bolster TMA’s operating budget and help the Museum fulfill its mission.

The Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy will invest in fashion, film and TV, video games, food, the creator economy, the visual art market, immersive experiences, health and beauty and other creative industries. Priority will be given to businesses founded by women and people of color with commitments to developing quality jobs, anchoring vibrant communities and enabling sustainable creative lives.

“The Toledo Museum of Art’s existing investment portfolio is diversified, managed with the help of a third-party consultant and governed by the Museum’s Investment Review Committee. As a hedge to any downside risk, TMA developed a novel strategy and found a generous anonymous donor with a deep passion for creative industries and a history of arts advocacy to fund an account to guarantee any future losses to the Museum’s investment.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to have the Toledo Museum of Art be the first museum to commit to this inaugural impact investing strategy for the U.S. creative economy,” said Laura Callanan, the founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab and former senior deputy chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Levine and TMA are showing leadership to their cultural peers. They have innovated an approach that we hope other museums and arts organizations will follow.”

Investors in the Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy include the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, among others.

Read the full announcement here.

From Lyrasis: Emergency response and preparedness for performing arts organizations can be a difficult task for individual organizations. This free 2 hour webinar will demonstrate how working with multiple organizations in a network for disaster management can be accomplished. The history of networking for improved emergency preparedness in the cultural heritage, arts, and government sectors will be examined, with an exploration of existing networks. Case studies of the Pennsylvania Cultural Resilience Network and CultureAID in New York City will be presented to help guide you on how to start your own, or join an existing, cooperative disaster network. You will learn how to use the Cultural Placekeeping Guide to direct your networking efforts.

The webinar takes place on Tuesday, May 2nd at 1pm ET. Learn more and register here.

“At the end of last year, the Crenshaw Dairy Mart (CDM), a nonprofit cultural space rooted at the intersection of art and activism, announced its upcoming Fellowship for Abolition and the Advancement of the Creative Economy (CDM-FAACE). The first three artists selected as fellows are Autumn Breon, juice wood, and Oto-Abasi Attah; they will each receive a $100,000 stipend and healthcare,” said Matt Stromberg for Hyperallergic. “The theme of the inaugural fellowship is ‘Inglewood and Prototyping the Abolitionist Imagination,’ stressing the importance of CDM’s location in Inglewood, a historically Black city from the 1960s through the ’90s (though Latinos are now the majority), bordered by South Central LA to the East, the 405 freeway to the West, and the 105 freeway to the South. All three fellows have roots in Inglewood, and they spoke about the impact that restrictive housing covenants (known as redlining) and freeway construction have had on communities of color in South LA.”

“Each fellow not only has previous connections to Inglewood, but to the Dairy Mart itself. Breon curated the first exhibition there, Attah painted a mural of the late rapper Nipsey Hussle on its exterior, and wood asked the Mart to house a community fridge they helped organize in 2020. These links between the CDM and the surrounding community are key to another aspect of the fellowship called CDM Projects, for which the fellows are tasked with proposing programming, events, workshops, or other strategies to engage with their neighbors.”

“Even before they opened in 2019, the CDM was prioritizing outreach. ‘They just said, ‘Hey come break bread with us. We want you to see the Dairy Mart and tell you about what we’re working on.’ says Breon. ‘As a result, there were all of these points of connection between creatives in the community. It feels like the fellowship is just adding infrastructure to what was already happening organically.’”

“The second important part of the inaugural fellowship’s theme is ‘abolition’ and all three fellows were invited to apply based on their demonstrated commitment to art and abolition. ‘We sought out individuals who were already practicing at that intersection,’ Blakeney says.”

“’As a team, we often talk about abolitionism as having two arms: one is abolishing traumatic systems for communities of color such as policing and carceral systems,” explained dorriz. “The other end of abolition is being tasked with recreating systems, repairing, transforming. We exist at that latter end where imagination is met with healing.'”

Read the full piece here.

From Upstart Co-Lab: The “creator economy” is the online ecosystem of platforms, products and services that enable independent content creators to make their work, build their audiences, monetize their ideas, and manage their careers. Technology is transforming how creative work is produced, distributed, compensated, and enjoyed — while simultaneously expanding who gets to tell their stories and who sees their own experiences represented online. Upstart Co-Lab believes impact investors can play a role to ensure the values of diversity, equity, inclusion and access are prioritized in this rapidly growing sector.

The latest in a series of deep dives into key creative industries, this report looks at a fast-growing segment of Upstart Co-Lab’s pipeline of impact investment opportunities in the U.S. creative economy.

Key Findings
The creator economy deemphasizes traditional gatekeepers like producers, editors and gallery owners by giving creators direct access to their audiences and, ostensibly, reducing barriers to creative careers for currently marginalized groups. By equipping creatives with the tools of entrepreneurship, the creator economy offers new pathways to wealth building and the promise of a “creative middle class.”

However, there are challenges to delivering on this potential:

More people have access to become money-making creators, but the most successful creators and their content do not reflect the diversity of the U.S.

While there is a lot of money being made, earnings are not flowing equitably: top creators and traditional gatekeepers are harvesting most of the profits, exacerbating inequalities by race, gender, and geography.

The creator economy promotes individuality flexibility, and freedom of expression; however, the ecosystem fails to ensure creator wellness, especially related to mental health, bullying and harassment.

In addition to the treasure trove of content with something for every audience, there is a preponderance of low-quality, addictive material.

Opportunity and Impact
The market size of the global creator economy is estimated to be at least $100 billion. Leading venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global have validated the investment potential of the creator economy, backing hundreds of startups and building at least 15 “unicorns” with >$1b valuations.

Upstart sees a tremendous opportunity for impact investors to help provide the guard rails and incentives that will secure the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access for the creator economy as it continues to grow.

The creator economy is ripe for foundations committed to narrative change, diverse storytelling, and free expression; art collectors and art workers who have been asking for impact investment opportunities connected to art and culture (per a 2021 survey from Deloitte); and museums and other cultural institutions that are beginning to engage their endowments in alignment with values and mission.

Creator economy startups hold significant impact potential; impact investors can invest in private companies via VC funds, angel investments, and crowdfunding.

Public companies supporting the creator economy rank well on ESG criteria and offer competitive returns; investors can take an active stakeholder role to amplify their values.

Implications
Factors affecting the creator economy in 2023 include technology sector volatility, crypto market shocks, and a more cautious investment environment with less capital moving to young companies and new ideas.

While Upstart Co-Lab believes that content, culture and community will play a major role in the 21st century — and that intentional engagement by impact investors can ensure the related economic benefits are shared equitably and sustainably — the creator economy is a nascent and quickly evolving sector and there remains much to learn.

Upstart’s new Inclusive Creative Economy Strategy will be closely considering opportunities to invest in the creator economy.

This research was supported by Halloran Philanthropies.

Read the full report here.