Recently by Helen DeMichiel, Co-Director, National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture

Thank you David Dombrosky for more Capitol Hill Office anecdotes. Perhaps your Republican Congressman helped the Arts Caucus work towards the proposed 2.5 million increase to $170 Million for the FY2011 NEA budget.

Echoing Alex Shapiro, we at NAMAC realized at the beginning of the Obama administration that there is a great need to train media and art makers to attain fluency in policy issues NOW, and to be able to confidently participate and influence the great telecom and cultural policy debates of this moment.  To that end, we are currently planning a Winter 2011 NAMAC Campaign and Policy Institute for media and arts leaders to learn about how to become policy influencers and train others -- especially artists -- across their own cultural networks.

The "idea exchange" that has taken place with Future of Music, Fractured Atlas and NAMAC has resulted in what I think is still a visionary outline for the issues that triggered this forum, and that we can be working on all together, our collaboratively created Green Paper on The Future of Digital Infrastructure and the Creative Economy.

Throughout this remarkable dialogue, I keep thinking of David Shield's new book Reality Hunger and this quote:
"In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies are no longer the basis of wealth.  Now relationships, links, connection and sharing are.  Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer and engage a work.  Art is a conversation, not a patent office."
Now, on to devising new ways to get financed and compensated for this vital work. 

July 23, 2010 1:31 PM | | Comments (0) |

It is astonishing to watch all the idea sparklers twirl around the AJ blog.  As a filmmaker and arts organization leader, I am amazed at how much I continue to learn from my own simple, but fascinating real life experience around policy issues and advocacy in the public interest domain. I never thought an experience like going on a variety of Capitol Hill visits to congressional/senate offices, and meeting with aides to talk about the kind of work artists are doing in their districts would be so interesting and meaningful.   

 

And they were interested too!  They want to hear from us about how artist/innovators are working in communities, using new technologies and experimenting with new modes of communication.  In one instance, I talked to Congresswoman Doris Matsui's aide about a beautiful and deeply resonant multimedia-internet project created in her district called Saving the Sierra and how the project connected to net neutrality and the National Broadband Plan.  The aide lit up and took copious notes.  They hear so much from industry lobbyists smoothly performing their talking points, that when they meet an actual creator who can articulate a connection to their districts or state, it is so powerful and memorable.  Time and again, we hear that we need to visit legislators and explain how the work we do fits into policy and "workforce development" objectives - so, why not make it into an intentional inquiry and project? This kind of approach could shift the dialogue space and open it up to the first steps towards a "win."

 

And we can work locally.  John Killacky writes movingly in NAMAC's latest publication, Leading Creatively , how important it was for him to become involved on behalf of the arts, in Minneapolis city politics during the 90s culture wars era when his programming was being directly attacked. Sometimes it is hard to remember that we can build powerful relationships with local congressional offices, and just to stay connected with them around a few key issues that matter to us.

 

My own creative and organizational work is being transformed by participating in media and cultural policy activities on the ground -- walking the corridors of Capitol Hill, talking to people who work in totally different arenas than me, but who want to know more about my work in media and the arts and how it relates to the larger issues they are struggling with -- health care, the economy, jobs/national service, energy/the environment, the future of media, etc.  In this populist moment I find it is really important to turn our values into grounded and strategic actions.

 

From my experience now I see it is critical to: Collect stories.  Get a cluster of arts people together, meet to figure out the agenda for a local district meeting with your congressional representative's staff, do the meeting, blog to your social network about it, and plan a follow-up visit.  Collect more stories and report to potential funders about what you are doing.  Put together a local group that can request travel and training grants from funders to visit representatives on Capital Hill.  Stay connected to local, regional and national arts organizations and lobby them to find more funding to bring artists and new arts leaders to Washington to visit Congress. Make a case for why artists and arts leaders need to be trained to become effective spokespeople and become involved in policy education and advocacy. These may be first steps, simple steps, but they are ones so many artists have yet to experience, and it is one of many ways to start Hacking the Policy Space.

July 21, 2010 1:09 PM | | Comments (0) |

About

This Blog Arts and culture are a cornerstone of American society. But arts and culture workers are often left out of important policy conversations concerning technology and creative rights even though the outcomes will have a profound impact on our world. Is it benign neglect? Or did we... more

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About Last Night
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lies like truth
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For immediate release: the arts are marketable
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No genre is the new genre
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innovations and impediments in not-for-profit arts
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classical music
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Fresh ideas on building arts communities
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Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
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Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
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Slipped Disc
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The Unanswered Question
Joe Horowitz on music

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Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
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CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary