In recognition of National Arts in Education Week, U.S. Representatives Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), and Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) reintroduced legislation to increase access to the arts for students. The Arts Education for All Act will support and encourage arts education and programming for our young children, K-12 students, and youth and adults involved in the justice system. It will help to close existing gaps in access to arts education, which has the potential to improve the lifelong health and success of both children and adults.

“Despite the positive impact arts education has on children’s lives and well-being, the arts are often the first programs to be cut in schools. As ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees arts and humanities funding, and as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus, I am continuously advocating for the arts in Congress. And while I’m grateful for existing federal support for arts education, programs should be more accessible for students and educators to get more involved,” said Congresswoman Pingree. “Fortunately, Mainers recognize that the arts are powerful tools for development and creativity—which is exemplified by our thriving and vibrant communities. Our Arts Education for All Act will help ensure our educators have the resources they need to maintain and expand arts programming so every American child – no matter their zip code or background – has access to an enriched, creative learning experience.”

The Arts Education for All Act will support and encourage arts education and programming for youth and adults in early learning centers, K-12 schools, and juvenile justice facilities by:

Improving arts programming in caregiving and early education 
Providing support for arts access in K-12 schools 
Making professional development for arts educators a priority
Increasing the usability and accessibility of data on access to arts education 
Integrating the arts in afterschool and summer learning programs 
Facilitating arts education in the justice system 
Allowing arts education to be used in reentry and recidivism reduction efforts 

A summary of the Arts Education for All Act can be found here.

During National Arts in Education Week, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) introduced legislation to increase access to the arts for students.

Bonamici’s Arts Education for All Act – introduced with Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) – will help close gaps in access to arts education by supporting and encouraging arts education and programming for young children, K-12 students, and youth and adults involved in the justice system.

“The arts spark creativity, critical thinking, and empathy in students,” said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. “These skills benefit and enrich students throughout their lives regardless of what path they take. It is unacceptable that there is less access to arts education for students from Black, Latino, and low-income families, especially when research shows that students who have arts education perform better in math, reading, and writing. I wrote the Arts Education for All Act to help address these disparities. And with student mental health as a top concern, the arts can help bring healing and wellness.”

“Despite the positive impact arts education has on children’s lives and well-being, the arts are often the first programs to be cut in schools. As ranking member of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees arts and humanities funding, and as co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Arts Caucus, I am continuously advocating for the arts in Congress. And while I’m grateful for existing federal support for arts education, programs should be more accessible for students and educators to get more involved,” said Congresswoman Pingree. “Fortunately, Mainers recognize that the arts are powerful tools for development and creativity—which is exemplified by our thriving and vibrant communities. Our Arts Education for All Act will help ensure our educators have the resources they need to maintain and expand arts programming so every American child – no matter their zip code or background – has access to an enriched, creative learning experience.”

“Art teachers across my district shared stories of the power that arts education has on our youngest children. It opens up a love for learning and allows them to thrive in new and exciting ways. The arts also help us celebrate our cultures, our identities, and communities,” said Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández. “I’m proud to join Rep. Bonamici on the Arts Education for All Act to give educators the support they need to expand arts programming experiences for children of all ages. It will ensure they can foster a learning environment that promotes creativity, expression, and healing through art.”

The Arts Education for All Act has been endorsed by more than 100 national, state, and local organizations and individuals, including Americans for the Arts and Grantmakers in the Arts. Supporters from Oregon include the City of Portland.

“The Arts Education for All Act will help bring the power of arts education to early childhood programs, low-income K12 students and systems-involved youth on a scale we haven’t seen before,” said Eddie Torres, President and CEO, Grantmakers in the Arts. “By empowering childcare, K12 schools, and programs serving systems-involved youth, this bill has the potential to enrich lives and expand educational opportunities for millions,” said Eddie Torres, President and CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts. “The arts community, but most importantly the children of our nation, owe a great deal of thanks to the innovative and continued leadership of Congresswoman Bonamici on this critical legislation.”

“The National Association for Music Education is proud to endorse the Arts Education for All Act, introduced by Representative Suzanne Bonamici,” said NAfME President Scott R. Sheehan. “As an association, we work towards a future where every child has access to a high-quality music education that helps foster their creative potential. The Arts Education for All Act brings us closer to that future, by increasing the number of arts educators in schools, ensuring arts instruction is standards based and sequential, and offering a pathway for evaluating existing arts courses in schools. The Arts Education for All Act would also expand arts programming to youth in the juvenile justice system, bringing the positive benefits of an arts education to students who previously lacked access to this vital resource.”

“School budgets often don’t include much – if any – funding for related arts classes and programs. There simply isn’t enough support for these offerings – even though research has shown that the arts stimulate the mind. The Carnegie Center especially promotes the literary arts. When school children engage in creative writing classes, their overall writing skills and self-expression also improve. This bill would help ensure that students get access to related arts classes, like creative writing, that will help them explore and express their voices.” – Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning

The full list of endorsements can be found here.

The Arts Education for All Act will support and encourage arts education and programming for youth and adults in early learning centers, K-12 schools, and juvenile justice facilities by:

Improving arts programming in caregiving and early education
Providing support for arts access in K-12 schools
Making professional development for arts educators a priority
Increasing the usability and accessibility of data on access to arts education
Integrating the arts in afterschool and summer learning programs
Facilitating arts education in the justice system
Allowing arts education to be used in reentry and recidivism reduction efforts

A summary of the Arts Education for All Act can be found here, and the full text can be found here.

From Pew Research Center: The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (the Center) announced today that it has awarded 40 grants and fellowships totaling $9 million in support of Philadelphia-area cultural organizations and artists. The grants will fund public events and programs that celebrate the diverse and creative contributions of local artists and tell personal stories of prominent Philadelphians. Several projects highlight the role of the arts in grappling with illness, healing, and caretaking—especially since the pandemic—while others focus on contemporary expressions of cultural identity.

The Center’s 2023 awards include $8.1 million to 28 local arts and heritage organizations for project funding, $1.3 million of which is provided as unrestricted general operating support. Plus, $900,000 in unrestricted funds will go to 12 Philadelphia-area artists as Pew Fellowships in the Arts.

“Our newest grants illustrate the arts’ contributions to understanding and reflecting on salient issues of the moment,” says Paula Marincola, executive director of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. “From contemplating experiences of living through a pandemic to interpreting multifaceted cultural identities, the funded projects and artists will offer programs and creative works that will be meaningful to a wide range of audiences and invigorate civic and artistic life in the Philadelphia region.”

Donna Frisby-Greenwood, The Pew Charitable Trusts’ senior vice president leading the organization’s work in Philadelphia, adds, “The richness of the Center’s 2023 grantees reflects the diversity, complexity, and vibrancy of our city and region, and it is gratifying to see the Center’s grantmaking foster work that will reach communities across the region.”

Following is a partial list of organizations and artists receiving awards, along with the topics they will address. A full list of grantees and funded projects is available at pewcenterarts.org/2023grants.

From Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona: The Pima County Health Department and the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona are partnering on a series of five free art and wellness events this September and October to promote community healing through art.

These family-friendly “Celebrate SaludArte” events will bring together public art and public health and feature community-inspired artwork, live performances, food trucks, raffles for prizes, and health resources. Artists also will unveil their temporary art installations at each celebration, which will be held in each of Pima County’s five supervisory districts.

SaludArte is a collaborative project between the Health Department and the Arts Foundation to find ways in which community engagement, health, and art can intersect to amplify the voices and experiences of the community, while also helping to increase health equity, access, literacy and COVID-19 mitigation across the region.

“I’m excited that public health and the arts community are working together, and I hope that this is only the beginning of a strong collaboration,” said Dr. Theresa Cullen, Pima County Health director. “Health happens everywhere! And art initiatives are a powerful means to reflect our community values, strengths, and resilience, as well as elevate the voices of diverse cultures, communities, and groups.”

A central focus of the SaludArte program is promoting community healing through art. A community-driven panel in each of Pima County’s five supervisory districts selected the artists to translate their stories and hopes into a temporary art installation.

Learn more about the series here.

From PEAK Grantmaking: In early 2022, PEAK Grantmaking signed the Disability & Philanthropy Forum’s Disability Inclusion Pledge, a call to the entire philanthropic sector “to recognize that ableism—the systemic stigma and discrimination against people with disabilities—is a core barrier to equity and inclusion,” asking organizations to “commit to a continuing learning and implementation process that will advance systemic change … and serve as models for disability inclusion in the philanthropic sector.”

To support pledge signatories, the Forum created an action-planning framework, best-practice recommendations, and in-depth resources to support organization-wide adoption of accessibility practices across eight action areas—including disability-inclusive language, accessible events, team training and participation, inclusion audits, measurement, and reporting. Over the past year and a half, the PEAK team has tapped into those resources to embark on a staff learning journey that centers the perspectives of disabled people and to implement changes to improve accessibility across our platforms, policies, and practices.

Recognizing that we have much work ahead, we hope that these highlights of what we’ve learned thus far along our continuous learning journey will encourage you and your organization in joining us in advancing disability equity and inclusivity.

Read the full post here.

“A while ago, a colleague mentioned a funder who required a whole-ass grant proposal from their current grantees to renew their grant every year. Requiring a full proposal for renewal is very annoying, but common enough, like the philanthropic equivalent of pinkeye,” said Vu Le for Nonprofit AF. 

“This one funder, however, specified that grantees could not copy and paste information from previous year’s proposals. This forced grantees every year to spend time rewriting their mission statements, community needs, program descriptions, evaluation methodologies, budget narratives etc. using different words and phrases, even though most of that information remains the same.”

With AI-supported grantwriting platforms like Grantable increasingly being used in our sector, nonprofits can better deal with clueless funder malarkey and shenanigans like the above. Someone can paste answers from last year’s grant proposal into ChatGPT, for example, and ask it to paraphrase, saving them time and energy that can be used on much more important work, such as running programs or turning some milk crates into a makeshift filing system.

With the rise of AI-assisted proposals, I bet some funders are probably experiencing a combination of fear, anxiety, and possibly resentment. With the barriers being lowered, they may be flooded with more grant proposals. They may no longer be able to judge and discard proposals based on ridiculous and inequitable criteria like spelling and grammar. They may use AI themselves to read, summarize, and possibly even select proposals for funding, which brings with it some ethical considerations of its own. This article from our colleagues in Australia provides a good summary of how many funders will respond to increasingly-AI generated grant applications.

However, I am less interested in how funders WILL respond, and more on how they SHOULD. While there are tons of crappy, fustilarian funders in our sector, there are plenty of amazing ones. For those who are trying to be thoughtful about the increase in AI-generated content and what that means for their work, here’s some advice:

Let go and have a Zen-like acceptance of a new normal:
Refocus on your value of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Recalibrate your criteria and parameters
Reimagine your grantmaking process and accept the One Proposal
Don’t punish nonprofits for using AI
If you’re using AI yourself, be intentional about equity

Whether funders like it or not, AI is here, and it will be used to write grant proposals. It will save many organizations a lot of frustration and grief that often come with traditional grantmaking practices that have been inflicted upon the sector over decades. Funders can use their energy to resist this, or use this as an opportunity to reassess inefficient and inequitable granting processes and work with nonprofits on a more meaningful level to tackle systemic issues plaguing our communities.

Read the full post here.

Today U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) joined Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to announce the first bipartisan, bicameral push in decades to reform the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which has not been updated in nearly 40 years and currently punishes older and disabled Americans for saving for emergencies and their futures. The senators’ bipartisan SSI Savings Penalty Elimination Act would update SSI’s asset limits for the first time since the 1980s to ensure disabled and elderly Americans are able to prepare themselves for a financial emergency without putting the benefits they rely on to live at risk.  

The current SSI program punishes disabled and elderly Americans for working, saving for the future, and getting married. Right now, individuals receiving SSI benefits are limited to $2,000 in assets; for married couples it’s $3,000. The average current monthly benefit is $585 for individuals. For approximately 60% of recipients, SSI is their only source of income. The Savings Penalty Elimination Act would raise those caps, which have not been changed since 1984, to $10,000 for individuals and $20,000 for married couples, and index them to inflation moving forward. 

A diverse range of more than 300 organizations, including AARP, JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Evangelicals, Microsoft, the Bipartisan Policy Center, The Arc of the United States, Catholic Charities, and more are joining the new effort.

Read the full announcement here.

With the end of year 2023 soon approaching, we at Humanidades Puerto Rico (HPR) find ourselves looking back at a period of intense activity. As we do so, we’re excited to share news of recent work that represents what we are passionate about and that show the ways in which our humanities-based programs support work that truly makes a difference. 

Just days ago, the documentary film “Voces de pasión”, by Sonia Fritz, premiered locally. Made possible in part by the support of HPR and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the film showcases the journey of five rising Puerto Rican opera stars, all of whom trained at exceptional institutions like the San Juan Children’s Choir, the Escuelas Libres de Música, and our Conservatory of Music, among others. Their stories help understand the importance of promoting equitable access opportunities in arts education, and the role of institutions that deserve our continued support as grantmakers.

Also, this past year dozens of cultural organizations engaged diverse audiences thanks to partnerships and subawards made possible by NEH through ARPA funding; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and Fundación Ángel Ramos. We deeply thank the partnership of these funders and celebrate the tenacity of an arts and culture ecosystem that remains working collectively –¡contra viento y marea!— to keep spaces for connection and dialogue alive and open to the public.

Having joined GIA only some months ago in March 2023, we feel proud and fortunate to be part of such an amazing community of practice.

Learn more about Humanidades Puerto Rico.

You can also learn more about Humanidades Puerto Rico on the photo credits page.