The Farm

Over at Community Arts Network, arts advocate and thinker Arlene Goldbard delivers a third installment in her nifty series on national service initiatives. The article, which was published in July, is lengthy, which means I won't be finished reading for about a week. I have skimmed it though, and I can tell you that Ms. Goldbard does a fine job reporting on some of the most worthy volunteer and artist corp initiatives percolating all around the country.

As she advocates, persuasively and relentlessly, for the return of the Works Progress Administration, Ms. Goldbard always reminds me of all the great artists that benefited from the program, like Dorothea and Zora. I am also reminded that low-paying survival jobs with no workplace protections and few guarantees are basically what we are talking about. Long after her time doing field recordings for the WPA, Zora Neal Hurston died in abject poverty and obscurity. She probably wasn't able to save any money while she was in her 30s because she didn't have a real job.

To her credit, Ms. Goldbard crisply points out that, for the most part, the efforts she profiles "fall short of sustainable fulltime salaries for artists working in public service," but, she says, they are "widely perceived as steps on the road toward that goal."

Anyway, if we're all going to volunteer for a living, then I think the administrators who run these worthy National Service Initiatives should also be unpaid volunteers. After they've paid their dues, they can join Mckinsey & Company and make all their lost earning potential back again, with interest.

The artists will have all that useful experience to put on their resumes.


Also: Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Promise

Education Week offers a Free Live Webinar in which two reporters will outline how our school districts are handling the ludicrous amounts of new funding for Title I, professional development activities.

Are all those tax dollars ending up where they should?

Education Stimulus: A Progress Report

Thursday, May 21, 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. EST Free registration is now open.

Volunteer

Metropolitan Youth Orchestras of Central Alabama (MYOCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing musical talent in the youth of central Alabama. Through its extraordinary Scrollworks program, the organization offers FREE music lessons by coordinating a roster of volunteer teachers. 

It's something like Venezuela's El Sistema; a publicly financed music-education program that produced Gustavo Dudamel and this bit of magnificence.

By the way, another organization, ArtCorp, sends volunteer professional artists to work in Central America locations; presenting the arts as an "effective methodology for community empowerment and engagement, educating and inspiring people to participate actively in improving the environmental, health, and social conditions in their communities."

Application deadlines are May 1, May 29 and June 26, 2009.

You might consider joining.

Wolves

Neil Gaiman's work is brilliant and exciting and he is going to be engaging in a public conversation on May 2, 2009 sponsored by PEN American Center.

When: Saturday, May 2, 2009: 1–2 p.m.
Where: The Great Hall at Cooper Union: 7 East 7th Street
Tickets: $10/$8 PEN Members
http://www.smarttix.com

Neil Gaiman wrote The Wolves in the Walls.

And there were.

Also: The New York Times reports that the private student lending industry and its Congressional allies are "maneuvering to thwart a plan by President Obama to end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students."

Pay Day

Remember when we were all into "we demand an economic stimulus package for the arts!"?

How's that going, I wonder?

The New York Times reports that the civil servants at the National Endowment for the Arts are evaluating more than 2000 applications submitted by cultural organizations seeking a portion of the $50 million in stimulus funds allotted to the arts by President Barack Obama.

The NEA has already passed out 40% of the money through grants awarded to State Arts Agencies and Regional Arts Organizations like The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA.)

Meanwhile, over at Reason Online, contributor Greg Beato says American artists "sold themselves out at the ridiculously low price of $50 million" furthermore, he asks, "Wouldn’t it have been more provocative, inspiring, and educational if they’d simply said, “No, thanks”? "

At the Nation, Jeff Chang notes that "Artists played a largely unheralded role in Obama's victory" and then poses the obvious question: "So why haven't community organizers and artists been offered a greater role in the national recovery?"

Which reminds me, remember how we were all like "Please, Mr. President, appoint an "arts czar!"?

Apparently, he did...twice.

New Things

According to Education Week, the U.S. Department of Education has started spelling out its spending priorities; letting school districts know how they should be planning to allocate their shares of the federal stimulus package. The funding involved is something close to $100 billion for K-12 education over two years.

Arne Duncan's list of favorite things includes improved data collection processes; using teachers as coaches and mentors; creating new teacher evaluation systems based on student progress; and developing online individualized education plans for students.


Also: The Three Sisters - Anton Chekhov. Translated by Carol Rocamora

TUSENBACH: What about it? Those who live after us, they'll fly around in hot air balloons, the style of their clothing will change, perhaps they'll even discover a sixth sense and develop it, but life will remain just as it is, difficult, full of joys and mysteries. And even after a thousand years, people will sigh and say: "Ach, life is hard!" --just as they do today, even then they will fear death and will not want to die.

VERSHININ: (After a moment's thought. How can you say that? It seems to me that everything on earth must change, little by little, indeed, it is changing even now, right before our very eyes. After two hundred -- three hundred years, after a thousand years, even, -- it's not the length of time that matters -- a new life will finally dawn, a life of happiness. And we shall not take part in that life, of course, but we are living for it now, we are working for it now, yes, even suffering for it, we are creating it --- and this, and this alone, is our reason for being, indeed, this is our happiness.

MASHA laughs softly.

TUSENBACH: What is it?

MASHA: I don't know. I've been laughing like this since this morning.

Eyes Wide Shut

At the Daily Beast an acidic article by Judith H. Dobrzynski that begins "Memo to President Obama, from the arts world: This is not what we had in mind."

I really couldn't bring myself to read the rest.

Gone

New York Non-Profit Press reports on a survey of about 900 nonprofit leaders around the country. Among the findings, nearly a third of nonprofit organizations do not have enough cash on hand to cover more than one month’s expenses.

Also: Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new.

Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

The New York Times reports that "cultural professionals say they are cautiously optimistic about the future of the arts under President Obama."

We'll see.

Also: Shirley Bassey fronts 007 - Diamonds Are Forever

The Journey

Wall Street rises on the news of President Barack Obama's new bank-bailout plan.

Paul Krugman despairs.

Nicholas Kristof starts another fight about education reform and the relative importance of quality teachers.

Ted Hughes was married to Sylvia and they had a son.

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Plus: Jimi H. - All Along the Watchtower

You Made Me Love You

In the midst of a global economic meltdown, I find my thoughts turn increasingly to the rent. I know it's selfish, but so is the landlord. Longing to find my professional self on the agenda of the professional problem solvers, I go to the source for succor, asking "What does President Barack Obama have on the agenda for Teaching Artists like me?"

On his official website, I find we are not mentioned in the section titled "Education." In fact, we are not mentioned at all...anywhere.

"Arts" is listed as one of the subcategories under "Additional Issues" along with "Sportsmen." From this, I conclude that we are as important to the new administration as "hunters and anglers."

Here is what little there is:

As the author of two best-selling books — "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope" — President Obama uniquely appreciates the role and value of creative expression.

It's like he smiled right at me.

Plus: Judy Garland pens a fan letter.

Behold, a Pale Horse

Yesterday, I mentioned an interactive celebrity essay contest at the LA Times' Culture Monster Blog called If I Ran the NEA. In my post, I dismissed the responses of the notable personalities as "mostly innocuous" and, although I meant what I said, I don't want to be misunderstood.

If I were trying to insult the celebrated, I would have written "mostly canned responses" or "mostly vapid responses." I did not.

Also, I did not in any way mean to imply that Ann Coulter is the pale horse of the apocalypse. But I can see how that misunderstanding might arise because she is obviously a hateful, dangerous person and we should fight her ilk tooth and nail.

Also: Love conquers all, but grassroots advocacy is the vehicle for change. Lawmakers in Albany have been flooded with proposals for how to spend New York States share of federal recovery money. Luckily, ATA maintains an online list of advocacy resources.

You should probably do something before it's too late.

Fight to Win

Over at the LA Times, Culture Monster blogger Lisa Fung ask "What would you do if you ran the NEA?

The site displays a photo grid of celebrities. Just click on a picture and behold a pale horse read their mostly innocuous responses.

More substantive commentary about all of these issues can be found on Create Equity, a blog by Ian David Moss, a student at the Yale School of Management.

I was over there reading a recent post where Mr. Moss argues that complaining about the relatively small amount of funds allocated for the arts in the economic recovery act may be be self-defeating and negative. He says "the notion that this somehow doesn't represent a victory for the arts community is one that I just don’t get."

He links to a lot of related articles and it's a terrific piece all around.

By terrific, I mean interesting and thoughtful, because I totally disagree with him.

Who's Fooling Who?

Do you remember Barack Obama and Joe Biden's Campaign Platform in Support of the Arts (pdf)? It seems like only yesterday that the candidates promised "to use the bully pulpit...to promote the importance of arts and arts education in America."

Then came the great stimulus package battles and President Barack Obama gave a big speech explaining his plan to save everything but he didn't mention arts at all, which hurt.

Then Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited a school in Brooklyn and he too said nothing about arts education at all.

More recently, a Chicago Tribune article says the Obamas attendance at art events like a recent performance of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater may be enough to boost the profile of the arts in general:

If outings to arts venues become a habit with the first family, "it would be a huge boon to the arts community in Washington and for the United States and the world," said David Andrew Snider, president of the League of Washington Theatres. "There's a widespread feeling that he ... gets the importance of the arts."

Hyperballad: Billie Holiday "Foolin' Myself"

The Building

Crain's New York Business reports that local nonprofits are "scrambling" to get a piece of the federal stimulus funds that are scheduled to start pouring into the state, any minute now.

According to Senior Reporter Miriam Kreinin Soucca, the priority is money for construction projects that are "shovel ready." She mentions a few examples, such as one about a theater that is trying to get a new sidewalk out front and this about a worthy non-profit in Brooklyn that needs a new fence to go with their $25 million dollar multipurpose room:

Pamela Green, executive director of the Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, an African-American historical society, submitted a $5 million request to the New York Department of Cultural Affairs and to several of the city's elected officials

The city has already provided Weeksville with much of the $25 million it needs for a 19,000-square-foot performance and education space that the center plans to break ground on in June.

Stimulus money would enable Weeksville to add a parking lot and a fence, but Ms. Green is uncertain about her odds.

“We don't know who else is on the list, and we don't know who we are competing against,” she says. “And we also have no idea what the requirements were.”

Hypertextual:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley

Let's Start With the Money

The New York Times reports that President Obama's new budget has a hole in the bucket.

By redirecting enormous streams of deficit spending toward programs like health care, education and energy, and paying for some of it through taxes on the rich, pollution surcharges, and cuts in such inviolable programs as farm subsidies, the $3.55 trillion spending plan Mr. Obama is undertaking signals a radical change of course that Congress has yet to endorse and Republicans were quick to pounce on.

Examine the budget document.

Examine Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.

Blow Not A Word Away

As you know, President Barack Obama delivered an historic speech on Tuesday night outlining his administration's plans for a national response to the economic apocalypse.

According to the New York Times searchable interactive video and transcript, he used the word "education" 14 times, but the word "art" did not come out of his mouth. The words "arts", "culture", "humanities" and "creativity" also yielded no search results. He did use the word "innovation" twice. He also included the word "teacher" three times.

Wonkette has posted a video of President Barack Obama embracing arch conservative and NEA basher Tom Coburn.

Hurts.

Hyper-text: Two Gentleman of Verona

Julia

O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!
Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I'll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus.'
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:' that I'll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will.

Make the Case

The New York Times editorializes about the impact of the stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama on school reform efforts:

"The stimulus package has given a real chance to resuscitate school reform, but these reforms will only happen if the new education secretary ignores political pressure from resisting states."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited a Brooklyn Charter School last week and much of the buzz, as usual, was about common achievement standards, data collection and stronger systems of accountability. Reforming or strengthening Arts Education was not one of the newly appointed secretary's talking points.

New York City schools will receive about $1.5 billion over the next two years, a significant increase in spending. Reforms on the table include a data collection system that will supposedly allow teachers to share best practices.

The stimulus package included $50 million for the NEA. A relatively tiny sum which Greg Sandow described in the Wall Street Journal as "a bubble on a wave."

If the secretary of Education doesn't think we are worth a mention, then who are we expecting to make the case for arts in the schools?

Maybe we should all write letters to Michelle Obama?

About the image: Mr. Fish is a political cartoonist over at Harpers Monthly.

Talk Fast

Education Week is currently accepting questions for an upcoming web chat on President Barack Obama's education plan. If you are a fearless leader, you might want to add an arts-related question to the cue.

The Chat starts on Thursday, February 19th @ 3 p.m.

Yikes, that's today!

Here's the blurb:

With the new administration in Washington comes the prospect of new approaches to education policy and practice that would directly affect schools and districts at the local level. Get an advance look at how decisions on the No Child Left Behind law, Title I, and other key legislation by President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may change the education landscape.

It's FREE, which is one of my favorite words.

Did I mention this is happening at 3:00 p.m. today?

Speak Memory

Then:

Arts Journal
Is there a Better Case for the Arts?
A Public Conversation, March 7-11, 2005

"Back when I was NEA Chairman, it was a great deal of fun to work with the good Endowment staff, Americans for the Arts, NASAA, members of Congress pro and con, in order to get the agency moving again. We accomplished that together, and it's great...

Thanks for all the good ideas.

- Bill Ivey"

Now:

Wall Street Journal
The Arts Need Better Arguments by Greg Sandow
February 18, 2009

People in the arts had a triumph.

They got culture money into the stimulus bill -- but not without a fight. The House, in its version of the bill, gave $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts, increasing its budget by more than the third. Then the Senate took that out. Arts advocates mobilized, made phone calls, asked supporters to make some noise. And lo! The final version of the bill restored the funds.

Arts advocates, from Robert Redford to the president of New York's Lincoln Center, are celebrating now. But I wonder, in a still, small voice, if this is really such a victory.

For one thing, in the larger scope of things, it's not much money. Fifty million dollars, in a hastily assembled $800 billion stimulus, is just a bubble on a wave...

Meta-musical: Shirley Bassey-History Repeating.