I suppose the title "The Future and Our Role in Shaping It" does sound a little self-important outside the context of the meeting. The session asked funders to respond to the questions, "What do you envision a vibrant and healthy arts ecology looks like in 2020? " followed by " What should you be doing in 2009 to ensure that happens?" So the goal was to get funders thinking long-term and beyond a recession-of-2009 mentality. The responses of the 300+ participants will be digested and summarized and published in early 2010 on www.giarts.org.

Generally not one for conspiracy theories, I really do think that the self-important title does beg some input from us "shaped futures". I'm not proud of saying this, but is that the last great monopoly to be investigated? If a grantor wishes or doesn't wish to fund someone, fine, make that known, please be clearer and less cloistered about your own goings-on and stop wasting our time writing what takes weeks only to hear that internal changes have caused a different funding pattern. If a grantor is going to want to know everything, including what I just had for lunch, why wait until an entire full-blown complicated application to be able to tell if you will grant to an organization or not?