In this podcast, Grantmakers in the Arts welcomes you to Puerto Rico! Following a pivot late in 2021 — we postponed the in-person experiences to 2023 — and we are eager to once again hold this year’s conference in San Juan. While much has occurred in the interim, many of the complex and layered systems remain, as do the communities and organizing efforts led by artists, culture bearers, and grantmakers.

The 2023 Annual Conference is Here

Learn about what to expect from the conference planning committee co-chairs.

We are pleased to have Huáscar Robles and HD Goodridge covering this year’s conference. Both Huáscar and HD will share their comments and reactions throughout the conference. We hope you check out the 2023 Conference Blog for their coverage and reflections throughout the week!

In Puerto Rico, the expression reír para no llorar – roughly translated as “laugh to avoid crying”– resonates with many of us. It relates to using comedy and laughter to weather difficult times. Listening to Vu Le’s inciting and electrifying talk reminded me of this maxim. His lighthearted comedy became a vehicle to discuss thorny themes endemic to the nonprofit world he belongs to.

The very first plenary at the GIA Puerto Rico conference set the stage for one important theme: the inseparable ties between art and social movements. AgitArte, a grassroots storytelling collective, ignited the audience by posting provocative questions about funding for groups on the fringes such as them.

“What is bringing you Joy?” a friendly recurring question asked by Bré Rivera, Director of the Black Trans Fund. It's both an invitation to the panelists of Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) Conference’s final plenary and a strategy tool that she organizes folks with.

An animated and necessary conversation among organizers and participants organically developed during the Communities Foundations for Just Communities forum that took place on Tuesday morning. Several topics weighed deeply on members’ shoulders, and this became a space to share and, perhaps, heal.

The Arts, Immigration, and Mentorship lecture was a heartwarming, lesson-rich session with examples of how art can lead the way to inclusion for immigrants entering a society they don’t understand but desperately want to.

The intersection of public health and public art couldn’t have found a better advocate than the SaludArte Arizona program in Tucson. The collaboration of various field experts led to designing a human-centered program that used public art to strengthen the health of at-risk communities during the COVID pandemic.

Latinx theater companies have been reimagining our complex identity, displaying our vibrant history, and exposing our collective struggle for decades. It’s entertainment. It’s art. It’s healing.

The third plenary of the Puerto Rico GIA Conference lit up with the sounds, wisdom, tears, and bewitching of three Puerto Rican women who did what few have achieved: restore hope in arts philanthropy. In and out of sessions, participants have been vexed by a lack of the sector’s unity and an abundance of crippling bureaucracy.

What does it take to build a grand dream? A space for the promulgation of freedom, a place for cultural innovation, a place that recognizes the past while it designs the future? The answer is simple: imagination. This was the maxim at the heart of “I Was Told There Would Be No Math,” a session that dealt marginally with numbers and more with powerful and instinctive visioning.

Dr. Ramón Rivera-Servera’s discourse on art and resistance was the apt vehicle to bid farewell to GIA's last night in Puerto Rico. It was an invitation, a virtual journey, and a call to action. Art cannot exist without its political context, and in Puerto Rico and the Latinx universe, this is a maxim cultural institutions are contending with from San Juan to Washington and beyond.

Worrying about the future of cultural policy is inevitable. Politics, economy, and international conflicts often shape its course and all players – from federal, state, and local agencies to advocates, activists, and artists – wait patiently to see how the landscape shifts.

As we prepare for the upcoming GIA Annual Conference Aaron P. Dworkin, The Reader guest poetjournalist, offers a reflective and anticipatory poem.

Carlos Davila Rinaldi currently lives and works in Puerto Rico. Learn more about his life and work!