Angela Meleca’s Post

It's a critical time for our sector to really lean into what we are and what our value proposition is to arts and culture. So grateful to have research to dig into to help us through this time of reflection and reframing... Go ADC Consulting !!

Team members from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council (Morgan Kasprowicz, Ajani Powell, and myself) were in Harrisburg yesterday to meet with legislators to discuss state-level funding for the arts. We were joined by more than 50 fellow arts and humanities leaders from across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to advocate for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts' budget to increase to $15 million (it's sat stagnant at $9.59 million since 2015, despite rising expenses and challenges). Presently, Pennsylvania ranks 33rd in the nation when analyzing state-level funding for the arts ($0.82 per capita). When compared against our fellow Northeastern states we rank 8 out of 9, only slightly ahead of Maine. Similarly, when compared against our fellow Mid-Atlantic states we rank 6 out of 8, only coming out ahead of Virginia and West Virginia. When compared against Ohio ($2.16 per capita), New York ($5.63 per capita), and New Jersey ($4.92 per capita), we are lagging severely. Collectively we made our rounds yesterday and had robust conversations with our elected officials. It's now important that they hear from their constituents. Please contact your elected officials and voice your support for seeing the PCA's budget increase to $15 million. You can find your legislators, along with their contact information, using this link: https://lnkd.in/e4cDFffc

Studies show that the arts boost the economy, enhance quality of life, and improve education. When speaking to elected officials, emphasize these points and use specific, relevant data. Advocacy is essential year-round. Use this Missouri Arts Council Fact Sheet to support your case >> https://loom.ly/02rA7vw

Out Now! The Ohio Arts Council's latest Annual Report is available. Covering FY 2024 (July 1, 2023-June 30, 2024), we take a look back at a historic time period for public funding for the arts in Ohio, thanks to the OAC's $51 million biennial budget. With increased resources, the agency kept its promises to fund the arts in all 88 counties, significantly increase support for in-school teaching artist residencies, and welcome new applicants across the state. Find the full report, along with links highlighting a recent honor for OAC Board Chair Ginger Warner and the full 2023 Field Survey results, at: https://lnkd.in/e8QMtEk3

Is Public Funding For The Arts Worth The Hassle? One can carp about the sad history of direct public arts funding in the United States and many do. But one might also argue that there were consequences far more dire for champions of the idea of government dollars for the arts. https://lnkd.in/gpB2Pg9g

“By opening up the arts to everyone, everywhere, the lives of children you will never meet, whose names you will never know, will be changed forever.” In her first speech, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy sets out arts policy plans at #LabourConference24. Read on for the highlights 👇 1) ARTS EDUCATION 📚 "We’re going to reignite the imagination of the next generation, because a complete education is a creative education." Lisa Nandy announces the upcoming curriculum review that will aim to "put arts, sport and music back at the heart of the curriculum." 2) LOCAL COUNCILS 🏬 Lisa Nandy acknowledged that the slashing of council funding has created "cultural deserts" in parts of the UK. She proposes to hand back power to communities to reclaim their cultural assets and historic buildings. 3) CREATIVE INDUSTRIES 🎭 Lisa Nandy announced plans to support creative industries everywhere - including with councils and mayors - with "good jobs and the chance to write the next chapter in our national story." 4) PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING 📺 The Culture Secretary criticised attacks on public service broadcasters, including the BBC. The Government is about to kickstart the Charter review "to ensure the BBC survives and thrives well into the latter half of this century." 5) ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND 🎨 "We will never accept that there is a trade-off between excellence and access." Lisa Nandy plans to review Arts Council England. She says that it will help "to ensure arts for everyone, everywhere". 6) CIVIL SOCIETY 👥 "They are the central partners in the country we seek to build. They have not just a right but a duty to speak out." - The Culture Secretary intends to reset the Government’s relationship with civil society, including charities & trade unions. ---- We welcome these pledges to address chronic underfunding, neglect & barriers to arts access, education and provision. We call on the Culture Secretary to deliver on all these promises. Because the arts matter, and everybody should have opportunities to experience and engage with them.

Earlier today I read shocking stats shared by Campaign for the Arts - a near 50% decline in GCSE Arts since 2010. Where will the cultural workforce of the future come from if this continues? I have lived and worked in the North East all of my life - despite a passion for art I was told in education that art would not get me a "proper job". Even my own parents, arts graduates themselves, asked if studying art was the right choice. They supported me completely but they worried that the space to make a career in culture did not exist, particularly if I stayed in the North East. And I come from a family of 'arty' types - I come from a place that had access and opportunity. In truth my degree itself did not make me. What made me was having was visiting galleries, was standing in the empty skeleton Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and staring at the work of Anish Kapoor filling it because my brother needed to visit as part of his own arts course, was a teacher at school loving my poem aged 7, was my GCSE art teacher encouraging me to construct elaborate still lives and spending a little longer on my sketchbook than they had...It was many tiny moments of culture that made me believe in being part of a future cultural workforce. What made me was growing up volunteering with my mam who was a community development worker. She used creativity to bring together communities in the poorest areas of the North East - first in Teesside and then in East Durham where I found my own path. Her projects were not about art but about improving literacy, transforming spaces, community cohesion, reducing isolation for older adults...but the creativity is what made them work. Nine years ago I got a role on a Creative People and Places programme. I was employed by a charity that offered both community development but also crisis services like food parcels. Here I began to see how those first moments of cultural experience could change a person. To know that you can give that first moment, that first trip to the theatre, that first step into a gallery space or hold of an instrument for the first time, or believe they can is pure magic. But it's something that children should know from birth, something that should be in the core of our education, something somebody in their eighties should not be experiencing for the first time because of a programme like No More Nowt. Nobody should have to wait until then...to sit in a theatre or visit a gallery or paint or share creative joy. Darren Henley CBE Chief Exec of Arts Council England has a quote I often think of "Creativity is everywhere, opportunity is not". No where is that more clear than the North East. Today's commitments are welcome but we need our government to stand by them, to make sure nobody is left behind by culture, whether that's in education or in our communities. Opportunity, like creativity, should be everywhere as well. #CreateYourPlace #IntoTheLightDurham #GreatNorth Kim McGuinness

In our March issue: FEMA reducing barriers for artists experiencing disasters; how Illinois Arts Council, South Carolina Arts Commission, Oklahoma Arts Council, Virginia Commission for the Arts, ArtsWA / Washington State Arts Commission and others are supporting their states' communities; top-line data from NASAA's annual State Arts Agency Revenues report; new resources about arts councils, arts and economic resiliency, the federal-state partnership in the arts ... and more! https://shorturl.at/cquX2

It's disheartening to see further evidence from Equity UK of the attack on arts funding. In real terms, Arts Council budgets in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have all shrunk significantly since 2017. Threats to arts access are mounting, after years of dwindling funding at the national and the local level. The arts have been repeatedly and systemically undervalued in education, society and policy. Enough is enough. We call for urgent action and a commitment to champion, defend and expand arts access for all. https://lnkd.in/edYMiUC4

I work in a community art gallery in a predominantly working class part of East London. They run free art workshops and just recently staged a portraiture exhibition with work by 8-17 year olds. I speak a lot to parents who come in and they pretty much all say the same thing. Kids love to draw and paint and make. They want it and they NEED it. Even the ones not deemed ‘arty’. ALL kids. And they like to be together (for the most part) while they do it. They (the parents) also say that there isn’t enough provision in school and out for structured creative time. Art teachers are committed but under resourced. Kids need time away from screens and phones. Time away from social media. Time spent playing and making and losing themselves in activity that is unpressured and purely expressive. Time spent learning how to think, build and process. I can’t say it enough. Creative activities knock on to every sphere of life. Spending time in purely creative pursuits frees your mind and encourages original thought. It facilitates problem solving. You can be a creative accountant or dentist or, and we REALLY need some of these, a creative politician. It’s not about being ‘arty’. It’s about thinking originally and differently and having the tools to express that. If we don’t have that, we’re just drones