The Artchive

Legal Guidelines for Non-profit Advocates

kloudadmin — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 21:00:03 +0000

On June 8th, 2011 from 6:30-8:00pm the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts, the DC Advocates for the Arts, and International Arts and Artists offered a joint event designed to inform members about the legal rules for non-profit lobbying.

The event, titled “Legal guidelines for Non-Profit Advocates, or What Am I Allowed to Say (and Give) Without Losing my Non-profit Status?” featured presentations from Jay Dick and Walt Steimel. Jay Dick is the Director of State and Local Government Affairs at Americans for the Arts. Walt Steimel is an attorney and partner at Loeb and Loeb.

Before and after the presentation and question and answer session members enjoyed an open bar provided by DCAA and WALA. To download a powerpoint copy of Jay Dick’s presentation materials, click here. The session was moderated by DCAA Chair Robert Bettmann.

Call Email Today Tuesday May 17th, 2011

kloudadmin — Tue, 17 May 2011 14:48:58 +0000

On April 1st, the Mayor released a budget that includes plans to again slash support for artists, arts organizations, and arts education. The District can’t balance the budget by eliminating arts supports, but in the last three years they’ve reduced local funds for the DC Commission by almost ten million, down to $3.92 proposed for the coming year. This is simply unacceptable, and harms local businesses, and the arts community’s ability to provide access to the arts for all District residents. The arts may not be as vital as homeless services, but they are also one thousandth of the cost. We want local arts funding restored to FY 2009 levels of 5.16 million.

The Plan: Together we ensure a constant flood of calls and emails to the council supporting arts funding.

All of the Council “support the arts,” but none are stepping up to make restoring arts funding a priority. Please call or email the Chairman, your ward Council-member, and the At-Large members to let them know that you oppose these cuts, and that there are better ways to balance the budget. The Council has until May 25th to make changes to the Mayor’s proposed budget. Phone numbers and talking points are below. If you only have 1 minute, you can still make a difference by sending an email of making a call.

To find your ward, go here: http://1.usa.gov/jIEC1t.

Talking points for phone call:

- My name is______ and I live in Ward___. I am calling because I am concerned about the cuts to the arts being proposed by the mayor. I am calling to ask Councilmember ____________ to restore local funding for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to 5.16 million for FY12.

- I am concerned about the cuts to the arts, and I would appreciate knowing where Councilmember _______ stands on this issue. I can be reached at [Phone #]. Thank you for your time.

Phone Numbers and Emails:

Kwame Brown (Chairman) 724-8032 or kbrown@dccouncil.us
Vincent Orange (at-large) 724-8174 or vorange@dccouncil.us
David Catania (at-large) 724-7772 or dcatania@dccouncil.us
Phil Mendelson (at-large) 724-8064 or pmendelson@dccouncil.us
Michael Brown (at-large) 724-8105 or mbrown@dccouncil.us
Jim Graham (Ward 1) 724-8181 or jgraham@dccouncil.us
Jack Evans (Ward 2) 724-8058 or Jackevans@dccouncil.us
Mary Cheh (Ward 3) 724-8062 or mcheh@dccouncil.us
Muriel Bowser (Ward 4) 724-8052 or mbowser@dccouncil.us
Harry Thomas, Jr. (Ward 5) 724-8028 or hthomas@dccouncil.us
Tommy Wells (Ward 6) 724-8072 or twells@dccouncil.us
Yvette Alexander (Ward 7) 724-8068 or yalexander@dccouncil.us
Marion Barry (Ward 8 ) 724-8045 or mbarry@dccouncil.us
Jen Budoff, Council Budget Director 724-8139 or jbudoff@dccouncil.us

Thank you!
Rob

Robert Bettmann
DC Advocates for the Arts
@Rbett
Robert@DCAdvocatesForTheArts.org

DRAFT LETTER

May 17, 2010

Councilmember _____

Re: Proposed Arts funding cuts

Dear Councilmember _______,

As a voter and tax-payer in your district I write to express my very real concern about pending cuts to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Today there is NO doubt that our future requires a creative economy. There is also NO doubt that art makes that happen. In light of these truths, cuts to the small Arts and Humanities Commission budget make NO sense to me.

The Arts Commission budget is a small matter compared to many other budget items. The Arts Commission – through its work with arts organizations across the District– already accomplishes so much with so little. The Arts Commission helps keep children singing in the DC Youth Orchestra Program and dancing in the Washington Ballet. High school students write plays performed at the Sitar Arts Center, and the Kennedy Center takes its nationally recognized arts education programs into schools to teach young people the joy of music and dance. [YOU CAN PERSONALIZE THIS LETTER BY REPLACING THESE EXAMPLES WITH YOUR OWN] Children learn life skills through stage skills, and they learn grace and motion with dance. The list goes on and on. The Arts Commission helps make all this happen in the District.

Our children are the District’s future. With schools losing arts funding, many arts organizations are doing their best to step in and help save all of our futures. If those organizations lose the support given them by the Arts Commission it will be one more nail in what seems to be a coffin now under construction.

Please save the arts in the District. You have the power to do it. Restore funding to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Name
Address

Speak #4dcArts April 27th DC Arts Advocacy Day

kloudadmin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:50:28 +0000

Despite increased difficulty providing equal access to the arts for District schoolchildren and residents, funding for DC Arts and Humanities is again in jeopardy. Arts support in the District is disappearing.

Funding for DC’s arts agency, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) has been gutted in the last three years, from over $14 million in FY 09 to under $5 million in FY 11, and the proposed FY 12 budget contains further cuts. The current proposal is $3.92 million for the DCCAH to support all of the arts organizations, artists, and arts education providers in the District. As a recent report from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies argues, “The arts comprise a very small portion of state spending, less than one tenth of one percent. Reducing expenditures that modest won’t appreciably affect state budgets, but will damage the cultural sector’s ability to provide jobs, goods and services to communities.”

DC arts support is now just $3.92 million within a total District FY 12 budget of $10.8 billion. Increased funding for the DCCAH is necessary to maintain access to the arts for all DC residents. The DC Chamber of Commerce 2011 Policy Agenda states, “The past year has proven to be a test for many of our members as they work to survive the economic downturn. And over the past year, the Chamber has been able to stave off legislative and regulatory initiatives that could harm our members’ ability to operate successfully and help grow our economy, create more jobs, and improve the District’s competitiveness regionally.” As we prepare for Arts Advocacy Day – April 27, 2011 – the DC Advocates for the Arts are fighting to ensure that the District will restore a basic level of support so that artists and arts businesses in every ward have a fighting chance.

On Arts Advocacy Day, Wednesday April 27, 2011, please take a minute to tell policy-makers to support the arts in the District’s FY 12 budget.

Contact Mayor Gray via email at eom@dc.gov or by phone at (202) 727-6300, and
Council Chair Kwame Brown at kbrown@dccouncil.us or (202) 724-8032.

Please ask the Mayor and the Council Chair to support the arts in the DC budget by restoring funding for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to the FY 2010 level of $5.16 million. Please also share your participation in Arts Advocacy with your friends on facebook and twitter, and encourage them to be advocates as well. We’re using the hashtage #4dcArts on twitter.

Mayor Explains FY 12 Arts Investment Makes Sense

kloudadmin — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 19:02:29 +0000

Billboard magazine published an interview with the Mayor of Portland, Oregon, February 14, 2011 exploring his support for the arts. An excerpt: “In addition to the art and music, Portland also has high unemployment [10.7% in November 2010, according to the Portland Business Journal] and teacher layoffs. In the face of this issue, how do you justify spending money on the arts? The Mayor: If you want to live in a one-dimensional city, I respect anyone’s right to do so. I don’t. I want to live in a city that has many dimensions to it. The more arts education we offer, the lower our dropout rate will be. The more arts and culture we have in the city, the more innovative we’ll be in all other endeavors. It can’t be an innovative city and be bereft of arts and culture, or have a weak arts and culture scene. My goal is to allow for more full-time, living-wage arts and culture jobs. I was in a meeting the other day where this exact thing came up. I was meeting with area legislators, because we are trying to get the film and video tax credit renewed, and this particular newly elected legislator talked about how rural parts of the state don’t benefit from these fancy film and video jobs. I just reiterated the facts that most of the jobs in arts and culture are accessible; they are not the on-air talents. Behind every successful video, film, every successful music, entertainment offering are multiples of jobs.” To read the entire interview, click here.

The Former Artistic Director of the National Theater Explains Why Art Annoys Politicians

kloudadmin — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 15:57:34 +0000

In the European system, government arts funding covers the majority of non-profit unearned expenses. In response to the threat of significant new arts cuts Richard Eyre, former Artistic Director of England’s National Theater blogged in the Guardian about the issue February 15, 2011. An excerpt: “Of course it’s irritating for politicians to have to endure the noisy dissent of an apparently arrogant and self-interested claque, but then it’s always been hard for rulers to license the jester as well as the judge, or to acknowledge poets as the legislators of the world…. Art is about the ‘I’ in life not the ‘we, about private life rather than public. A public life that doesn’t acknowledge the private is a life not worth having. David Cameron seems to grasp this and is keen to ‘start measuring our progress as a country, not just by how our economy is growing, but by how our lives are improving; not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life.’ But how this could possibly exclude the arts and the humanities? Can’t government for once be persuaded of the virtue of subsidising weapons of happiness rather than weapons of destruction? …The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings. What we hold in our heads – our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history – is the sum of our humanity. We carry on us what King Lear called the “smell of mortality”; art redeems mortality by giving us a glimpse of eternity. It briefly illuminates something that’s more than human. By diminishing the opportunity to experience the arts or to study them and the humanities – literature, philosophy, history, religion, languages – we condemn future generations to a life a little less than human.” To read the entire article, click here.

TBD Arts: DC Advocates Tell City That Every Dollar Counts

kloudadmin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:26:26 +0000

Writing in TBD-Arts on January 5th, 2011, Maura Judkis reported on our organization’s efforts to document the impact of DCCAH funding. An excerpt: “Some of this years grantees who have previously received city funding have already posted about the difference that just a few thousand dollars can make. ‘Artists from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare Steps Out program and DC students have explored Shakespeare’s plays through hands-on activities, games, and performance that bring Wills words and world alive… It couldnt have happened without DCCAH grants,’ says Garland Scott, for the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is the recipient of 2011 funding. Katherine Jordan, the recipient of a Young Artist Grant for next year, posted that she premiered her new trio, ‘Charged Intuition’ at the Eureka Dance Festival thanks to the DCCAH. Bettmann and his board will continue to work with the city, especially in the coming months as the new mayor determines the budget.” Click here to read the entire article, and click here to visit the grants self-documentation site.

President Obama FY 12 Budget Slashes District Arts and Humanities Support

kloudadmin — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 19:06:15 +0000

President Obama’s FY12 budget contains three big negatives for arts and humanities lovers and creative economy workers in the District of Columbia. He proposed a National Endowment for the Arts budget reduction from 167 million to 145 million, and a National Endowment for the Humanities budget reductions from 168 to 146 million. Both of those budgets get re-granted to state agencies — in dc the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. Reductions in federal funding will mean reduction in federal grants, though the level of reductions remains to be known.

Of even greater impact to the local arts funding eco-system is the reduction of the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs (NCACA) program from $9.5 million to $5 million, and the transfer of this program into competitive grants administered by the District of Columbia. Last year NCACA grants provided guaranteed operating support funds of between $300,000 and $400,000 per year to the 32 qualifiying organizations in the District. No matter how this change is implemented, the largest organizations in the District lost a tremendous amount of support in the President’s proposed budget.

The NCACA funding program was a major support for the largest local DC arts employers and this reduction – from 9.5 million to 5 million – will impact our community in unforeseen ways. Operating support offered via grant from the DCCAH was capped at $30,000 in FY 11, and was a minority priority within the DCCAH granting program. This integration will likely lead to major overhaul of the DCCAH’s funding structures.

Stay tuned at http://www.facebook.com/pages/DC-Advocates-for-the-Arts/184310074921149 for more details as they emerge.

Museum of Censored Art Opens on Smithsonian’s Doorstep

kloudadmin — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 04:16:33 +0000

In a press advisory released on their website January 11th, the Museum of Censored Art announced their arrival. An excerpt: “The Museum of Censored Art will open to the public on Thursday, January 13, 2011, on the Smithsonian doorstep, announced art and free speech activists Mike Blasenstein and Michael Dax Iacovone today. The free speech advocates will open the Museum of Censored Art in a mobile office trailer outside the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, where they will screen the film censored by the Smithsonian, A Fire In My Belly by the late gay artist David Wojnarowicz. The work was part of the larger Hide/Seek exhibit of gay and lesbian portraiture currently at the National Portrait Gallery. However, the piece was removed Nov. 30 by Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough after anti-gay groups labeled it ‘anti-Christian’. The same groups that succeeded in having the Wojnarowicz film censored originally wanted the entire Hide/Seek exhibit removed from the Gallery.” Click here to read the entire release.

Washington Post Calls for Resignation of Smithsonian Chief Over Censorship

kloudadmin — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:13:24 +0000

On December 23rd, 2010, the Washington Post published staff writer Philip Kennicott’s call for the resignation of Smithsonian Director G. Wayne Clough. An excerpt: “Three weeks after the Smithsonian Institution ignited fury in the museum world by censoring one of its own exhibitions – removing a video that appeared in the National Portrait Gallery’s groundbreaking exhibition of gay portraiture, ‘Hide/Seek’ – the best option for undoing the damage remains the resignation of the man who made the decision. Curators of the critically acclaimed exhibition, although lamenting the decision, continue to defend the Smithsonian in public, and the National Portrait Gallery’s director, Martin Sullivan, continues to bear much of the brunt of the criticism. And yet Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough has gone missing. Cloughs defense of a decision that will almost certainly mark the nadir of his tenure has been limited to internal memos. By withdrawing from the public debate about what has been tactically, strategically and historically a disaster for the institution, he has called into question whether he shares the fundamental values of openness and engagement that should define the Smithsonian.” To read the rest of the article, click here.

Creative Job Solutions for DC

kloudadmin — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:43:12 +0000

Jonetta Rose Barras reported December 14th, 2010 in The Examiner on the upcoming creative economy round-table hosted by Council-member Michael Brown, and the value of supporting creative economy jobs. An excerpt: “This could go down as jobs week in the District: Mayor-elect Vincent Gray kicked off things Monday with his job summit. At-large Council Member Michael Brown is expected to hold a public roundtable Friday to examine the so-called ‘creative economy’ — the marketplace for plays, music and other artistic endeavors. ‘Its frustrating looking at New York and Los Angeles take such interest in their creative industry. We don’t deal with it like it creates jobs and makes money,’ Brown told me. He said even nearby jurisdictions have been much more accommodating to the industry, which includes fashion designers, architects, chefs, writers, graphic artists, musicians and other performing artists. He said he wants to provide resources and structure to such businesses. ‘It’s the right thing to do, and it’s the smart thing to do,’ Brown said. Recent studies have indicated the industry has been directly responsible for producing 75,000 jobs and generating $5 billion of income. ‘It’s a big deal. Most people don’t know that and don’t understand that,’ said George Koch, one of the leaders of the creative economy movement who have met with Brown and his staff over the past several months. Past could be prologue to robust job creation, said Koch, pointing to Arts DC, a 1970s and 1980s program that was funded, in part, through the federal Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.” To read the rest of the article, click here.