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New Beginnings

1/20/2015

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January 12, 2015, 2:30-4 PM, Rogue Gallery & Art Center Studio
Community Meeting Notes

Over 18 community members attended including artists, arts advocates, and representatives from art organizations including Rogue Gallery & Art Center, Art Presence, Edgy Art Events, Southern Oregon Guild, Grants Pass Commission for Public Art, Medford Arts Commission, Art Works, and more. Participants from throughout Southern Oregon  represented both Jackson and Josephine County as we came together to forge and strengthen the Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon. 

We shared the history of the Arts Alliance:
In Spring 2013, leaders from various arts organizations gathered with a vision to strengthen partnership and improve communication for the benefit of the larger arts community. Since then, we regularly held panel discussions, public, and steering committee meetings to gather input as to what the Arts Alliance should be and came up with mission and vision statements.  Meeting locations varied throughout Southern Oregon in Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass, Jacksonville, and Kerby in order to be accessible, inclusive, and to encourage participation by the regional arts community. 

MISSION: Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon is an organization of artists, arts organizations, arts advocates, and the public, dedicated to building a strong, creative and sustainable Southern Oregon arts community.

With ongoing input from our arts community, we decided to create an active and robust Arts Alliance to help our arts community thrive. Our vision for the Arts Alliance is to accomplish this mission through:
  • Developing a strong, supportive system of sharing information and services among individuals and groups having art as a common interest.
  • Strengthening the economies of Southern Oregon communities by increasing the demand for art and increasing arts advocacy.
  • Supporting activities that raise awareness of the importance of the arts and create opportunities for all to participate in and experience the arts.
2015 is the pilot year for the Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon!
Presently, the Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon is planning to launch: we are building a website, creating a map and calendar, designing and creating marketing materials, continuing to streamline communication, build membership, and we received a grant for this launch (thank you, OCF!). 


Together, we will be:
Inclusive, Positive, Communicative, Creative, Informative, Collaborative, a Resource


During the meeting we brainstormed slogans, or a tag line, for the arts marketing campaign. There were many great ideas but we narrowed down the many choices to these top hits (with number of votes):
Its SO Art (7)
A Brush With Art (6) 
SO heart Art (6)
See Art Be Art SO Art (3)
Keep Calm It’s Art (3)
Art For All (3)
One for All and All for Art (3)

The steering committee will meet next month to coordinate details for the arts marketing campaign including a logo design, regional coordination, fundraising, and to continue outreach to our blossoming arts community. We look forward to the Arts Alliance Launch in Spring 2015!

Thank you for participating and please encourage more artists and arts advocates to get involved in Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon. For now, our facebook page is a great resource for alls to artists, art events and opening receptions, inspiration and more:https://www.facebook.com/ArtsAllianceSO

Next Arts Alliance of Southern Oregon community meeting- Tues., April 14th from 2:30-3:30PM, Shield Room, The Bear Hotel, Grants Pass- SAVE THE DATE!

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We need writers who remember....

11/20/2014

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As seen on the New Yorker eMagazine November 19, 2014

But it was Ursula K. Le Guin, accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters early in the evening, who gave the definitive remarks of the ceremony, gliding through the genre debate and the Amazon-Hachette debacle on her way to explaining the crucial role that literature must play in our society. Petite, her silver hair shining, Le Guin shrugged and grinned when Neil Gaiman placed the medal around her neck. She said that she wanted to share the honor with her fellow-fantasy and sci-fi writers, who have for so long watched “the beautiful awards,” like the one she’d just received, go to the “so-called realists.” Then she continued:

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

Even Handler had nothing clever to add. “Ursula Le Guin,” he said when he retook the podium. “That’s all I have to say.”

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Top Ten Reasons to Support the ARTs in 2014

9/16/2014

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TOPIC: ANIMATING DEMOCRACY ARTS EDUCATION ARTS MARKETING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT EMERGING LEADERS PRIVATE SECTOR PUBLIC ART
POSTED BY RANDY COHEN ON MARCH - 20 - 2014

There is an old quote attributed to John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich:
“If any man will draw up his case, and put his name at the foot of the first page, I will give him an immediate reply. Where he compels me to turn over the sheet, he must wait my leisure.”

This was the charge given to me by a business leader who needed to make a compelling case for government and corporate arts funding:

“Keep it to one page, please,” was his request. “I can get anyone to read one page.”

With the 2014 arts advocacy season upon us, the following is my updated “Top 10 Reasons to Support the Arts.”

1. Arts promote true prosperity. The arts are fundamental to our humanity. They ennoble and inspire us—fostering creativity, goodness, and beauty. The arts help us express our values, build bridges between cultures, and bring us together regardless of ethnicity, religion, or age. When times are tough, art is salve for the ache.

2. Arts improve academic performance. Students with an education rich in the arts have higher GPAs and standardized test scores, and lower drop-out rates—benefits reaped by students regardless of socio-economic status. Students with 4 years of arts or music in high school average 100 points better on their SAT scores than students with just one-half year of arts or music.

3. Arts strengthen the economy. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that the arts and culture sector represents 3.25 percent of the nation’s GDP—a larger share of the economy than tourism and agriculture. The nonprofit arts industry alone generates $135 billion in economic activity annually (spending by organizations and their audiences) that supports 4.1 million jobs and generates $22.3 billion in government revenue.

4. Arts are good for local merchants. Attendees at nonprofit arts events spend $24.60 per person, per event, beyond the cost of admission on items such as meals, parking, and babysitters. Attendees who live outside the county in which the arts event takes place spend twice as much as their local counterparts ($39.96 vs. $17.42)—valuable revenue for local businesses and the community.

5. Arts drive tourism. Arts travelers are ideal tourists, staying longer and spending more to seek out authentic cultural experiences. The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that the percentage of international travelers including museum visits on their trip has grown steadily since 2003 (18 to 24 percent). The share attending concerts and theater performances has grown from 14 to 17 percent since 2003.

6. Arts are an export industry. U.S. exports of arts goods (e.g., movies, paintings, jewelry) grew to $72 billion in 2011, while imports were just $25 billion—a $47 billion arts trade surplus.

7. Arts spark creativity and innovation. The Conference Board reports that creativity is among the top 5 applied skills sought by business leaders—with 72 percent saying creativity is of high importance when hiring. The biggest creativity indicator? A college arts degree. Their Ready to Innovate report concludes, “The arts—music, creative writing, drawing, dance—provide skills sought by employers of the 3rd millennium.” Nobel laureates in the sciences are 17 times more likely to be actively engaged in the arts than average scientists.

8. Arts have social impact. University of Pennsylvania researchers have demonstrated that a high concentration of the arts in a city leads to higher civic engagement, more social cohesion, higher child welfare, and lower poverty rates. A vibrant arts community ensures that young people are not left to be raised solely in a pop culture and tabloid marketplace.

9. Arts improve healthcare. Nearly one-half of the nation’s healthcare institutions provide arts programming for patients, families, and even staff. 78 percent deliver these programs because of their healing benefits to patients—shorter hospital stays, better pain management, and less medication.

10. Arts mean business. The Creative Industries are arts businesses that range from nonprofit museums, symphonies, and theaters to for-profit film, architecture, and design companies. A 2014 analysis of Dun & Bradstreet data counts 750,453 businesses in the U.S. involved in the creation or distribution of the arts that employ 3.1 million people—representing 4.2 percent of all businesses and 2.2 percent of all employees, respectively. (Download a free Creative Industry report for your local community.)

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The grant application meeting

9/11/2014

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We hovered around the table.  Brooke Nuckles Gentekos has most of the text compiled.  We played a bit with numbers and a budget.  It's funny to come up with 750 characters including spaces.  It actually makes some things harder to read.  It's nice to have bullets but then you have spaces.  

We did get the grant application in on time.  We have bonded as a group.  I am so pleased that art is finally becoming noticed and acknowledged as an economic driver in today's economy.  There are so many wonderful artists in Southern Oregon.  All we have to do is connect buyer and seller and we are ready to roll.

Stay tuned - this is going to be really good!
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