“Yesterday, the National Endowment for the Arts joined more than 90 federal agencies in releasing its Equity Action Plan to the public, and shared the plan with stakeholders and partners.”
“The NEA’s Equity Action Plan builds upon on the agency’s already high standards of diversity and inclusion in its programs and practices, and was developed with staff member input from across the Arts Endowment.”
“Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust’s nearly $141 million in grantmaking during the last half of 2021 is a keen expression of both its legacy of long-term strategic investment in Maricopa County’s (AZ) resilience and its unique ability to respond powerfully to unfolding crises,” announced in the Business Wire.
They summarized, “The Trust was established nearly 22 years ago with Virginia G. Piper’s $590 million endowment to help nurture communities and individuals in Maricopa County. But in 2020, a series of crises, including the devastating health, social, and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the stark, painful reckonings about inequity and racial injustice, compelled the Trust to respond differently and immediately. To date, the Trust has awarded $43,754,250 in COVID-19-response and COVID-19-related grants. Grantmaking in fall 2021 continued to place special emphasis on organizations serving Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.”
The Barr Foundation seeks a Learning and Evaluation Consultant to support the newly launched cohort, Powering Cultural Futures (PCF), a new six-year initiative that provides funding, technical assistance, peer networking, and other supports to a diverse cohort of 15 BIPOC-rooted organizations in Massachusetts.
The responsibility of the role include:
Collect, analyze, and synthesize learning from specific initiative activities, including:
The co-designed cohort learning agenda
The collaborative self-assessment and prioritization process
Customized capacity building activities o Trainings on organizational development topics
Trust-building work and activities to establish shared values
Design and implement learning and evaluation activities to assess whether the key programmatic elements of the PCF Initiative are meeting intended goals. These elements include multi-year general operating support; knowledge and technical assistance; peer-learning cohort; and targeted supplemental funds.
Plan and subsequently lead a process to create an initiative-level Theory of Change, and adjust and update the Theory of Change as needed.
Identify key questions that surface in the cohort, share analysis across consultant team, and collaboratively use these learnings to inform the creation and implementation of a learning agenda that benefits the organizations in the cohort.
Intent to submit a proposal is due Thursday, April 14, 2022 and the deadline to submit a full proposal is Friday, May 6, 2022.
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.”
“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.
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.’”
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.
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.
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.’”