Victor Tavarez, John Harper, and Fay Hanleybrown present, “Four ways funders of collective impact efforts can help foster trust to strengthen collaboration and achieve greater impact,” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Tavarez, Harper, and Hanleybrown summarize, “Regardless of the approach, building trust requires creating authentic and vulnerable connections with community partners while taking concrete actions to be a genuine collaborator.”

Read their recommendations here.

“From digital libraries to fully immersive schools, Indigenous leaders are reclaiming and spreading cultural knowledge to ensure it doesn’t get lost,” explains Fix Solutions Lab associate editor Claire Elise Thompson.

Thompson charts new approaches as, “Today, many Native people are reclaiming and revitalizing ceremonies, foodways, and land stewardship — and in many cases, discovering that to preserve their traditions, they must embrace new ways of passing them along.”

Read more here.

A new report from Salzburg Global Seminar, The Creative Power of the Arts: Reimagining Human and Planetary Flourishing looks at creative reforms in the target areas of climate, health, education, and justice. According to the announcement, “As the world confronts the compounded impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, and structural injustices, societies are bracing for a protracted and complex period of reassessment, reimagination, and restructuring. The culture and arts sector must be at the table and included in decision-making processes as societies seek to eschew a return to ‘normal’ and instead reimagine more creative pathways towards human and planetary flourishing.”

This report is the result of Focus Groups – brought together in 2021 to examine the systemic relevance of the arts and culture sector for creative reforms in the four target areas of climate, health, education, and justice – as well as other gatherings. In sharing this report, “Salzburg Global Seminar invites others to engage in a similar process of constructive inquiry to reflect deeply on what is dividing us, what is keeping us from collaborating better, and how we can achieve transformative change together.”

Read the report here.

A new bipartisan bill in Congress proposes a $300 million federal grants and commissions program for art workers. The Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA) is a joint effort between hundreds of cultural organizations to stimulate the creative economy through public art projects across the United States,”pens Billy Anania in Hyperallergic.

Rep. Teresa Lefer Fernandez (D-NM), who brought the bill to the House floor, tweeted on August 13, 2021, “The WPa put artists back to work after the Great Depression and preserved generations of history through art. Today, I introduced the Creative Economy Revitalization Act to do just that. Let’s get artist back to work after this pandemic.”

Read more here.

“Chicago’s creative vitality is worth celebrating, but we must acknowledge that support for the arts and culture sector has not been distributed equitably across the city’s geographies or populations. With this in mind, in 2019 MacArthur announced a new approach called Culture, Equity, and the Arts (CEA), through which we directly support organizations with annual budgets of $2 million and above,” Geoffrey Banks, senior program officer, Chicago Commitment, shares a new, more equity-centered approach for our funding to small and medium sized arts and culture organizations.

Banks continues, “The Culture, Equity, and the Arts (CEA) program has a new central goal: To promote equity by fostering collaborations between arts organizations and leaders and increasing culturally relevant experiences that reflect Chicago’s diversity.” Banks discusses the impact of the changes stemming from this central goal and how the Foundation plans to “be in close communication and conversation with the organizations most impacted as we navigate this transitional planning year on our journey toward a more equitable city together.”

Read the full story here.

Last month, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, along with Omidyar Network, announced more than $40 million in grants to support the establishment of multidisciplinary academic centers dedicated to reimagining the relationships among markets, governments, and people. “At a time when conventional economic prescriptions are failing and democratic governance is threatened around the world, scholars at leading academic institutions will investigate how economies should work in the 21st century and the aims they should serve,” the Foundation stated in their announcement.

“Neoliberalism’s anti-government, free-market fundamentalism is simply not suited for today’s economy and society, but what comes next is still not fully developed,” said Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which launched its Economy and Society Initiative in December 2020 to focus on identifying a successor to neoliberalism. “This joint effort reflects our shared interest in replacing outdated 20th-century thinking — individualistic versus collectivist, central control versus free markets, liberty versus equality, and the like — with new ideas that can lead to broader economic justice and prosperity for people around the world. This is a first step to support forward-thinking scholars, students, and thought leaders who can break out of a patently failing neoliberal paradigm, with its ossified left-right divides, and help shape a bold new vision for what people should expect from their governments and economies.”

Read more here.

“The Apprenticeships for Leaders in Mosaic Arts (ALMA) Summer Institute is a paid apprenticeship for youth ages 16 to 24 to create permanent handmade tile mosaic murals in public spaces across Albuquerque,” reports Erica Sweeney in Next City.

“Apprentices work alongside a master artist and it teaches them, but also compensates them for their work and gives them training on all these transferable skills,” says Vanessa Alvarado, lead artist and outreach director at ALMA. Alvarado summarily reveals, “ALMA has taught me how to be a proud female of color, how to collaborate, how to communicate, just given me a sense of pride in my community.”

Read more here.

Playwright Lynn Nottage, director Kate Whoriskey, and Ford Foundation president Darren Walker gather for a conversation about a new production, “Clyde’s,” at Second Stage Theater. Supported by the Art for Justice Fund, with the goal of ending mass incarceration and underlying racial bias through art and advocacy, “Clyde’s” shines a needed light on the importance of ‘fair chance’ employment opportunities to empower people to rebuild their lives who are returning home from prison face many challenges and this play.

Watch the conversation here.

“Due to historical inequalities, young people of color embarking on an art museum career are less likely to have families that can fund their unpaid internships or volunteer work. Done right, these types of early training opportunities help ensure that candidates of color will join the pipeline of museum professionals,” proposes Lisa M. Strong, director of the Art and Museum Studies MA Program and professor of the Practice, Georgetown University in the newsletter, The Conversation.

Strong challenges, “conventional wisdom holds that major philanthropists prefer to make gifts that are used to build new spaces,” and highlights the significant gift by Adrienne Arsht, a banker and arts philanthropist who previously shored up the finances of the Miami Center for the Performing Arts, (having) pledged $5 million for the Met to fully fund paid internships for 120 graduate and undergraduate students per year,” as a “possible model for other wealthy donors who wish to make long-term contributions to museum diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Read here.