an blog | AJBlog Central | Contact us | Advertise | Follow us:
You are here: Home / Archives for Sunny Widmann
Sunny Widmann

About Sunny Widmann

Sunny Widmann is NAS Program Manager. Sunny believes that arts participation engenders empathy and builds cross-cultural understanding, and is interested in how the arts work in different communities across the globe. Sunny likes to spend her time practicing yoga with friends, or planning her next great adventure.

The Summit at Sundance

Posted May 5th, 2013 by 4 comments
Mt_Timpanogos_s2000

Editor's note: Over the next two weeks, we’ll feature posts around the final convening of our Chief Executive Program, The Summit at Sundance. We invite readers to participate in an online discussion of four major issues facing the cultural field. In this post, Sunny Widmann introduces the event and the process we’ll use. As with many organizations, National Arts Strategies has a portfolio of programs that carry with them varying degrees of risk and return.  When we know that something’s working well, we can keep it running with the … [Read more...]

Topic: Events The Summit at Sundance | Themes: , , , , ,

Collaboration is key in D.C.

Posted April 17th, 2013 by Leave a comment
Flag_map_of_Washington_DC

This post appears as part of the ARTSblog Emerging Leaders Blog Salon, in which emerging leaders from around the country were asked, “What would make where you live a better place or bring it to the next level?” I moved to Washington D.C. four years ago, after living in a village of 600, and I absolutely love where I live. I enjoy trying new restaurants, seeing world premiere plays, watching drummers and acro-yogis perform in my favorite public park and the proximity of it all. Although I cannot deny the benefits of living near … [Read more...]

Topic: NAS Experience | Themes: , , , ,

Stories from the Field: Measuring Impact

Posted February 4th, 2013 by Leave a comment
Calipers

Over the past three or four years that I’ve worked in the US cultural sector, I’ve noticed that arts organizations are experimenting with the way that we count.  Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are developing more holistic ways of measuring what really counts.  The recent Counting New Beans study challenged theaters to go beyond economic impact or numbers of “butts in seats” to measure the intrinsic value of their work.  Similarly, many organizations are striving to measure intangibles such as attitudinal change or … [Read more...]

Topic: Stories from the field | Themes: , ,

Salzburg Global Forum: Some Final Thoughts

Posted November 18th, 2012 by , , and Leave a comment
Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Leaders

We introduced Field Notes as a means of amplifying meaningful conversation. Over the last couple of weeks we put that to the test with content from the Salzburg Global Forum for Young Cultural Leaders, a program that was essentially 5 days of non-stop (and I mean that in the best possible sense) conversation among 64 people from 35 different countries. On an individual basis, I learned something from each conversation, each interview, each post. On a collective basis, what I learned was not something new but it was still incredibly valuable … [Read more...]

Topic: Creating & Communicating Value Events Role of Arts in Civil Society What is Global and Local? Young Cultural Leaders Forum | Themes: , , ,

Is crisis necessary for change?

Posted September 30th, 2012 by and Leave a comment
Don't panic!

While it can be invigorating to hear stories of how organizations overcome crisis, we started to wonder: why does crisis tend to be such a common motivator for change? What implications might a crisis have on the changes effected, and how might that crisis affect an organization in the short and long term? In this post, Gail Crider and Sunny Widmann share their experiences and ideas about how crisis impacts change, for better or worse.   Sometimes, but it’s risky. By Gail Crider Crisis generally means loss of strategic perspective, … [Read more...]

Topic: Conversation | Themes: ,

an ArtsJournal blog