From Americans for the Arts 

BCA 10 Webinar

Each year the BCA 10 honors ten businesses that have been exceptional partners with the arts. These companies set the standard of excellence and serve as role models for other businesses to follow. Hear directly from 2016 honorees–Dogfish Head Brewery, Austin Energy, and Johnson & Johnson–about why they partner with the arts and learn how to create successful partnerships with the businesses in your community. Join Americans for the Arts on Wednesday, September 7 at 3pm eastern and learn how businesses are partnering with arts programs to fuel community development and determine the best tools, talking points, and approaches for starting conversations with businesses in your community. Register here. 

 

BCA Survey of Business Support for the Arts

The 2016 National Survey of Business Support for the Arts, which is jointly conducted by The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, is open to companies of all sizes who participate in corporate philanthropy, employee engagement, volunteer programs, or sponsorship. Fill out the survey and share it with your business networks!

 

BCA 10 Gala

Join Americans for the Arts on October 5, 2016 at the Central Park Boathouse to celebrate this year’s 10 best businesses partnering with the arts in America! Learn more. 

 

pARTnership Movement Essay: Embrace Diversity & Team Building

Learn how the arts can give diverse groups of employees opportunities to bond together over shared interests in our most recent pARTnership Movement essay. Read more from The Travelers Companies in Minneapolis, MN and ShoreTel in Sunnyvale, CA about how they are using the arts to Embrace Diversity & Team Building. Each essay in this series features case studies and supporting research to illustrate how businesses can partner with the arts to reach specific goals.

 

#ShowYourArt for National Arts & Humanities Month

In celebration of National Arts and Humanities Month, Americans for the Arts is launching a social media campaign intended to highlight personal stories under the hashtag #ShowYourArt, a platform through which we can work together to raise the visibility of the value of the arts in our lives and communities. Do you dance when no one is looking? Do you sit in the park and draw? Have a journal filled with words or doodles? Maybe it is a public art piece or art experience that changed the way your community thinks or feels, the way you look at your work, your world or your life. We would love to have your story as part of our 31-day campaign and beyond. Here’s how to participate:

 

1.       BY SEPTEMBER 9: Send your NAME, TWITTER HANDLE, INSTAGRAM HANDLE, AFTA MEMBER ID, EMAIL to Ruby Harper.

2.       Send a sentence (20-25 words) about how your show your art. (For example: Choreographing musical theater is one of my most fulfilling ways of making art. I love sharing that experience with my kids.)

3.       Include an image (Ideally 800 px by 800 px). (For example: I’ve got a great photo of me carrying my infant daughter while leading a rehearsal.).

4.       Give us permission to use your quote and image by including this in your email:  “By sending this quote and image, I acknowledge that Americans for the Arts has the right to use the quote, the image or a combination of both for marketing purposes related to National Arts and Humanities Month and other Americans for the Arts promotional purposes.”

 

From Your Peers

Based on a survey of 500 skilled workers and 508 businesses in Ontario, a study from Canada's Business for the Arts reveals that 65 percent of communities agree that a thriving arts and culture scene is a driving factor when considering relocation. Read more key highlights from the study.

 

Nominations are open for The Arts Council of Winston-Salem’s annual awards, and this year they’ve created a new one, the Arts-Integrated Workplace Award. This new award honors a local company for its exemplary efforts to integrate the arts into all facets of its corporate culture and employees' lives.

 

The new executive director of Paint Creek Center for the Arts in Rochester comes from a career outside the art world, but has brought a strong message to business leaders that supporting the arts is in their best interests. Read a recent interview with Tami Salisbury. 

 

The end of summer is recruitment time for LAAs that operate leadership training programs for creative entrepreneurs and members of the business community to infuse their professional work with creative thinking and practice. The Colorado Business Committee for the Arts and North Texas Business Council for the Arts are recruiting for their Leadership Arts programs. The Arts + Business Council of Greater Philadelphia is recruiting for its second annual cohort of business leaders to take part in its CreativeXchange program.

 

The Arts Incubator of the Rockies (now known as the AIR Institute) has been acquired by Berea College in Kentucky. AIR Institute programs teach design thinking, business planning, and entrepreneurial initiative with the latest business development strategies and tactics, such as fast prototyping and lean startup principles. Beth Flowers, founder of AIR, will serve as the Director. Read more. 

 

South Central Pennsylvania is learning how to mix art and business for maximum effect. Read more. 

 

News Roundup

The new Giving USA report was just released. In short:

·         Giving to the arts by individuals, foundations, and corporations grew 7.0 percent to $17.07 billion in 2015.

·         4^th consecutive year of arts funding growth.

·         Arts pulled 4.6 percent of all charitable giving in 2015. 

·         Private contributions to all charities in 2015 were $373.25 billion—up 4.1 percent.

 

Making efforts to build or strengthen a diversity and inclusion program at your organization? Forbes has six ways to take it from intention to impact. Read more. 

 

And here’s a great infographic from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship on the differences between diversity and inclusion, and the steps to get to both.

 

Art at Viacom’s headquarters in Manhattan champions creativity and public art to engage employees and build its brand. Read more. 

 

Businesses in St. Petersburg, FL find art good for the bottom line. Read more. 

 

In honor of the Olympics, did you know that from 1912 to 1948 the Olympics awarded medals to sculptors, architects, writers, and musicians? Read more. 

 

Blauckbaud recently donated $1 million to help build the International African American Museum in Charleston, SC. Read more. 

 

Just for fun, watch more than 200 Rubik’s Cubes turn into Pokemon art in less than two minutes. Watch here.