News

Arts Endowment Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa announced today that the NEA plans to award $26.3 million in grants to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations nationwide.

The 26th annual Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, DC, brought together a cross section of America's cultural and civic organizations, along with more than 500 grassroots advocates from 40 states, to underscore the importance of developing strong public policies and appropriating increased public funding for the arts and arts education.

If you missed out on our first live stream of the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy or Google Hangout, those videos are available on the recap page along with interviews featuring Congressional Arts Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Matt Sorum, musician Cristina Pato, and dancer Lil' Buck. In addition, a Flickr photo stream, related ARTSblog posts, and major news coverage of the events can be found on the page.

While our recap doesn't do the full event justice, it provides a sense of the energy and excitement that arts advocates bring to Washington each year.

As a Vans Custom Culture national charity partner, Americans for the Arts is proud to work closely with the brand to reinforce the importance of arts education in schools across the country.

With the launch of the 2013 Vans Custom Culture competition on January 2, budding artists and designers entered to become the first 1,500 U.S.-based public or private high schools to enter. And now that field has been narrowed to the top 50 schools and designs in five regions: California, Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast.

The public now has an opportunity to vote for their favorite designs in each of the five regions from April 22–May 13!

The five schools as determined by online voting will be notified on May 14 and provided with a travel budget to fly to New York City for the finals later this summer with the winning school receiving $50,000 for its art program!

To find out more about our partnership with Vans Custom Culture and to check out our Arts Education Navigator e-book series visit http://bit.ly/vanscc.

Sheila Smith, Executive Director of Minnesota Citizens for the Arts and member of Americans for the Arts, testified in support of the National Endowment for the Arts before the U.S. House of Representatives Interior Appropriations Subcommittee on April 17. Read Sheila's testimony requesting $154.466 million in funding for the NEA here.

The Obama Administration released its FY14 Budget Request with proposed increases for the nation’s cultural agencies over last year’s appropriated levels. The National Endowment for the Arts proposed funding goes from $146.3 million to $155.5. Other agencies and programs saw modest increases as well with the Office of Museum Services receiving a $2 million bump to $32.9 million and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting staying level-funded at $445 million.

Americans for the Arts, in conjunction with 87 national organizations, hosted the 2013 National Arts Advocacy Day.  More than 500 arts advocates from across the country held meetings with congressional offices in support of the arts. Acclaimed musician and arts educator Yo-Yo Ma delivered the 26th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the Kennedy Center. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) was given the 2013 Congressional Arts Leadership Award. See highlights from the events here.

Congress approves the final FY 2013 Continuing Resolution, averting a government-wide shutdown and keeping in place the 5 percent sequester cuts for the cultural agencies, including the NEA, for the remainder of the fiscal year.

National Endowment for the Arts Acting Chairman Joan Shigekawa has announced $350,000 in NEA support for 17 new research grants that measure different characteristics and contributions of the arts, which the NEA has mapped as a complex, dynamic system.

Just released by the Brookings Institution, Creative Communities: Art Works in Economic Development is a new publication based on a collaborative effort with the National Endowment for the Arts to stimulate more rigorous research on the arts and economic development.

Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, was interviewed by Jeffrey Brown last week for the PBS program NewsHour's Art Beat segment discussing how the federal government sequestration is affecting the arts in the United States.

Bob describes in detail how funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is leveraged across the country on a state and local level. They also talk about the history of funding for the NEA and President Obama's proposed FY2014 budget. See the full segment below:

Watch How Is the Sequester Affecting the Arts? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

At the end of National Poetry Month, 53 students from across the country will converge in Washington, DC, on April 29-30, 2013 to compete in the National Finals of Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest, the nation's largest youth poetry recitation competition.

Looking for those great nuggets from Yo-Yo Ma's invigorating speech? The speech as written is now available for download. [PDF, 160 KB]

Also, the entire Hanks presentation is currently available for archival viewing on our YouTube channel.

Americans for the Arts will participate in the 2nd National Summit: Arts, Health and Well-Being Across the Military Continuum hosted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is a by-invitation event focusing on the benefits of arts exposure, active art-making, and issues related to research, policy, and practice in arts and health across the military continuum. The summit is part of the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military, a collaborative effort to advance the arts in health, healing, and healthcare for military service members, veterans, their families, and caregivers. Over 200 leaders from the military and arts community will be in attendance to share their experience, findings, and solutions for moving forward. The results of the discussions will be summarized and included as part of the findings of the National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military White Paper, to be released in late Spring, 2013.

The most recent National Council on the Arts public meeting took place on March 29, 2013 in Washington, DC. The meeting archive is now online.

The NEA hosted a webinar about the role of collective impact in advancing arts education on Wednesday, March 20, 2013, with John Kania, managing director of social impact consultants FSG. Mr. Kania presented his research into the uses of collective impact by the social sector, followed by a discussion with NEA Director of Arts Education Ayanna Hudson. The webinar is now archived on our YouTube channel.

The NEA Design Program will host a series of webinars to build on findings discussed in the recently released white paper, Design and Social Impact: A cross-sectoral agenda for design education, research, and practice. Curated and hosted by thought leaders in the field of social impact design, the webinar series will build on discussions that began during the Social Impact Design Summit held in February 2012 and will cover topics that further enhance the field's capacity to design effectively for social impact. Registration for the webinars is required.

For the first time in history, Americans for the Arts will livestream the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, at 6:30 p.m. EDT from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (courtesy of Google). 

This means you can watch the Lecture on YouTube regardless of whether or not you're in Washington, DC, for National Arts Advocacy Day! The Lecture, delivered this year by Yo-Yo Ma, will address what kind of education will best enable today's students to develop creativity, flexibility, and the ability to innovate and work collaboratively.

And, if you have a burning question that arises during the Lecture, you can ask Yo-Yo Ma the next day.

On April 9 from 10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m EDT.,  Yo-Yo Ma, along with Matt Sorum (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer for Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver and Co-Founder of Adopt the Arts in California) and Damian Woetzel (former principal dancer at New York City Ballet and the director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program), will participate in Americans for the Arts’ first Google+ Hangout. They will discuss the need to develop strong public policies for arts education and field questions from Google+ Hangout attendees. Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, will moderate the event.

To submit a question for the Hangout, please send a Tweet using #AskYoYo, or send an email to artseducation@artsusa.org. Just write #AskYoYo in the subject line and then write your question in the body of the email. We'll take questions anytime from now until the Hangout.

Time is running out to nominate the great work of an individual, organization, or program in your community for one of the 2013 Americans for the Arts Annual Leadership Awards:

• Alene Valkanas State Arts Advocacy Award
• Arts Education Leadership Award
• Emerging Leaders Network Award
• Michael Newton Award for Private Sector Leadership
• Public Art Network Award
• Selina Roberts Ottum for Local Arts Leadership Award

The deadline to submit a nomination for one of the awards is March 22, 2013. Awardees will receive their honor on June 15 at the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, PA.

For more information about the nomination process as well as award rules and regulations, click here.

Northside Workshop in St. Louis has won the Viewers’ Choice award in the inaugural innOVATION Grant Program! The group won a $15,000 grant for its “Community Build the Arts” initiative, which is spurring community revitalization and engagement. 

Sixty organizations submitted their projects to be judged through votes by Ovation community members and viewers on Ovation's Facebook page. The site received an average of 25,000 votes a day over the course of the two-and-a-half-month voting period. Northside Workshop, which highlighted its "Beautification of Vacant Space" program, was the clear winner.

Northside Workshop's "Community Build the Arts" initiative includes the "Beautification of Vacant Space" program, which teaches middle school students to develop creative strategies for addressing urban abandonment in their community by incorporating into their curriculum socially engaged art and education courses like studio art, beekeeping and gardening. In addition, Northside Workshop created "The Year of Listening Project," which consists of a creative survey to help identify community needs by listening and sharing stories in order to co-generate ideas that have the potential for the most positive impact.

Ovation, the only multi-platform network devoted to artists and every kind of artistic expression,  developed the innOVATION Grant Program to fund and recognize the impact of artists and the arts in communities’ revitalization efforts in partnership with Americans for the Arts.

Since 2000, the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network's Year in Review has annually recognized outstanding public art projects through an open call submission and curation/selection process.

Up to 50 projects are selected through an open call application process and selected by three jurors. The 2013 jurors are: Justine Topfer, Curator, Out of the Box Projects and Project Manager, San Francisco Art Commission, CA; Norie Sato, Artist, Seattle, WA; and John Carson, Artist and Head of the School of Art, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

Eligible projects must have been completed or debuted in calendar year 2012. There is no limit to the number of projects an applicant can submit, but nominate soon as the call closes on April 5, 2013!

*For specific questions about Year in Review and project submissions, please contact pan@artsusa.org. For technical questions regarding the application and uploading of media and documentation please contact info@publicartist.org.