Integrating Arts and Culture Philanthropy with Community Building
posted on: Friday, June 08, 2012
By Niki Jagpal
Late last month, the Kresge Foundation announced that it will integrate its current three-pronged approach to arts and culture grantmaking. According to Alice Carle, program director of Kresge’s Arts and Culture team, the three existing elements of Institutional Capitalization, Arts and Community Building and Artists’ skills and resources were always intended to be integrated and mutually reinforcing since the program’s inception in 2010. The new approach to arts and culture grantmaking will be implemented later this year.
As the press release states, the goal of assisting communities to build strong, healthy spaces by using the arts remains unchanged. But the means to achieve that goal will now be focused on ensuring integration of the arts and culture into comprehensive community revitalization efforts. As Carle also states, Kresge believes that its new holistic approach will lead to greater impact in the communities they work with.
The National Endowment for the Arts defines “creative placemaking,” the term that Kresge and others working in the arts, economic and community development fields as follows:
“In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.”
Kudos to the Kresge Foundation for adopting this unified and collective approach to its arts and culture grantmaking.
As Holly Sidford noted in NCRP’s Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change, the arts are an essential means by which we all identify ourselves, they provide a powerful means to overcome differences and they advance our democracy by building social capital and “animating society.”
Sidford makes compelling aesthetic, economic and demographic cases as to why prioritizing underserved communities and investing in social justice arts grantmaking are among two of the highest potential strategies for arts and culture funders to boost their impact.
The Kresge Foundation’s new focus offers the potential to accomplish both of these because the foundation focuses on lower-income and disadvantaged neighborhoods and the “creative placemaking” that will guide its work will contribute to economic development and more equitable neighborhoods in the communities that it works in.
As Carle states, “Projects designed to revitalize neighborhoods or improve the conditions of low-income people work best when arts and cultural activities are fully integrated and a part of a comprehensive community strategy. Through a collective approach, we will invest and share in our local partners’ aspirations for resilient, thriving and equitable places.”
Kresge’s new approach is a hopeful sign for the arts and culture nonprofit sector. Despite some $2.3 billion awarded by foundations to the arts every year, most of the funding goes to large, often elite arts institutions. Considering Sidford’s documentation of the evolution of new art forms, partly attributable to our changing demographics, the fact that the bulk of arts funding goes to organizations with budgets of more than $5 million that comprise less than 2 percent of all arts and culture organizations while much of the newer art forms are evolving at the grassroots levels shows that current arts and culture philanthropy is shortchanging itself. Why? Because as Sidford notes, intentionally diversifying the audience for arts and culture (prioritizing underserved groups in grantmaking) and providing arts grants that serve a social justice purpose are two ways to boost impact significantly.
Current arts philanthropy is misaligned with the needs of underserved communities and the ability of arts and culture to advance democracy. The Foundation Center Data analyzed in Sidford’s report found that only 10 percent of grant dollars to support the arts were for the intended benefit of underserved communities and fewer than 4 percent of grant dollars were classified as serving a social justice purpose. This suggests that overall arts and culture grantmaking is not aligned with evolving aesthetic and cultural practices or demographics, nor does it contribute to advancing democracy to the extent that it could. In short, current arts and culture philanthropy appears to perpetuate the myth that the arts are the realm of the elite because those larger organizations cater to primarily white and upper-income audiences.
Congratulations again to the Kresge Foundation for leading by example and best wishes to their Arts and Culture team as they begin to implement the new integrated approach to their grantmaking later this year.
Niki Jagpal is research and policy director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).Labels: : arts and culture philanthropy, community revitalization, creative placemaking, High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy, marginalized communities, social justice
By Niki Jagpal
Late last month, the Kresge Foundation announced that it will integrate its current three-pronged approach to arts and culture grantmaking. According to Alice Carle, program director of Kresge’s Arts and Culture team, the three existing elements of Institutional Capitalization, Arts and Community Building and Artists’ skills and resources were always intended to be integrated and mutually reinforcing since the program’s inception in 2010. The new approach to arts and culture grantmaking will be implemented later this year.
As the press release states, the goal of assisting communities to build strong, healthy spaces by using the arts remains unchanged. But the means to achieve that goal will now be focused on ensuring integration of the arts and culture into comprehensive community revitalization efforts. As Carle also states, Kresge believes that its new holistic approach will lead to greater impact in the communities they work with.
The National Endowment for the Arts defines “creative placemaking,” the term that Kresge and others working in the arts, economic and community development fields as follows:
“In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.”
Kudos to the Kresge Foundation for adopting this unified and collective approach to its arts and culture grantmaking.
As Holly Sidford noted in NCRP’s Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change, the arts are an essential means by which we all identify ourselves, they provide a powerful means to overcome differences and they advance our democracy by building social capital and “animating society.”
Sidford makes compelling aesthetic, economic and demographic cases as to why prioritizing underserved communities and investing in social justice arts grantmaking are among two of the highest potential strategies for arts and culture funders to boost their impact.
The Kresge Foundation’s new focus offers the potential to accomplish both of these because the foundation focuses on lower-income and disadvantaged neighborhoods and the “creative placemaking” that will guide its work will contribute to economic development and more equitable neighborhoods in the communities that it works in.
As Carle states, “Projects designed to revitalize neighborhoods or improve the conditions of low-income people work best when arts and cultural activities are fully integrated and a part of a comprehensive community strategy. Through a collective approach, we will invest and share in our local partners’ aspirations for resilient, thriving and equitable places.”
Kresge’s new approach is a hopeful sign for the arts and culture nonprofit sector. Despite some $2.3 billion awarded by foundations to the arts every year, most of the funding goes to large, often elite arts institutions. Considering Sidford’s documentation of the evolution of new art forms, partly attributable to our changing demographics, the fact that the bulk of arts funding goes to organizations with budgets of more than $5 million that comprise less than 2 percent of all arts and culture organizations while much of the newer art forms are evolving at the grassroots levels shows that current arts and culture philanthropy is shortchanging itself. Why? Because as Sidford notes, intentionally diversifying the audience for arts and culture (prioritizing underserved groups in grantmaking) and providing arts grants that serve a social justice purpose are two ways to boost impact significantly.
Current arts philanthropy is misaligned with the needs of underserved communities and the ability of arts and culture to advance democracy. The Foundation Center Data analyzed in Sidford’s report found that only 10 percent of grant dollars to support the arts were for the intended benefit of underserved communities and fewer than 4 percent of grant dollars were classified as serving a social justice purpose. This suggests that overall arts and culture grantmaking is not aligned with evolving aesthetic and cultural practices or demographics, nor does it contribute to advancing democracy to the extent that it could. In short, current arts and culture philanthropy appears to perpetuate the myth that the arts are the realm of the elite because those larger organizations cater to primarily white and upper-income audiences.
Congratulations again to the Kresge Foundation for leading by example and best wishes to their Arts and Culture team as they begin to implement the new integrated approach to their grantmaking later this year.
Niki Jagpal is research and policy director at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).
Labels: : arts and culture philanthropy, community revitalization, creative placemaking, High Impact Strategies for Philanthropy, marginalized communities, social justice
posted by Niki Jagpal at
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