CONFERENCE ARCHIVE
2022 Conference Blog
Welcome to the 2022 GIA Annual Conference Blog!
We are pleased to have Tram Nguyen and Jasmine Liu covering this year’s in-person and virtual conference tracks. Both Tram and Jasmine will share their comments and reactions throughout the conference. We hope you check here for their coverage and reflections.
2022 Conference Blogs
Undoing Bad Policy for Racial Justice
“How many of you rolled into a grantmaking job without ever having done grantmaking before?” Cole posed to the audience. “How many of you encounter ways that things are done that you don’t stand by and are racist?” Many rose their hands for both questions. Much of the job is about “unwinding, reversing, and eliminating bad policies that are functioning in all of our lives,” she said.
Advocating to Capitalize on Windows of Possibility
How can organizations pursue the most effective advocacy strategy, and what kinds of advocacy should be prioritized at what times? Research and advocacy work are often deprioritized or neglected when there doesn’t seem to be an immediate or urgent cause for doing it, even when it can be the source of the most significant structural change.
Digital Innovation, Arts and Tech: Hrag Vartanian and Kamal Sinclair in Conversation
It was so intriguing to be introduced to the ideas of Hrag Vartanian and Kamal Sinclair, two very eclectic folks who work and think across the worlds of contemporary arts, performing arts, emerging technology and digital innovation.
In the Presence of Greatness: Jawole Willa Jo Zolla
One of the great gifts of the GIA conference is exactly what planning committee member Anna Campbell, senior program officer at the Howard Gilman Foundation, said at the end of this keynote. We get to be in the presence of greatness—a truly great artist sharing live performance of her work, along with reflections from an extraordinary life.
Preconference: Investors in Culture
During Investors in Culture: Impact Investing, BIPOC-Owned Business & Solidarity Economies we were joined by graphic recorder Sara Yukimoto-Saltman.
Transformational Leadership at the NEA
It was immediately clear from Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson’s keynote why she has been called one of our nation’s most profound thinkers about the intersection of arts and culture with justice, equity and liberation.
It Starts Here
Applying for things is a murky process, especially for the applicant who doesn’t have many preexisting ties to the organization they’re sending an application to. Many of us have spent hours on end finely crafting application essays and soliciting recommendation letters only to never hear back from those reading them, and these experiences can leave us with the impression that the application process is an incomprehensible black box.
Capacity Building for the Arts in Puerto Rico
The immediate crisis the program was established to respond to was the economic downturn in Puerto Rico since 2011 — with significant out-migration that has made staffing at arts organizations challenging compounded by losses associated with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, how could the AIM program best bolster efforts at these ten organizations to continue to provide arts and cultural programming?
Radical Indigenous Imagination Igniting
the 8th Fire
Long before colonizers came to Turtle Island, a series of prophesies were given to the Anishinaabe people. “They foretold of eras or fires that would come to pass, leading to a crossroads in which human beings would have to exercise our gift of free will to determine our collective future.” So began the keynote panel organized by NDN Collective on Indigenous People’s Day.
Supporting Artists as Workers
On Sunday, the “Supporting Artists as Workers” pre-conference convened several panels that discussed the importance of treating artists as workers — even as the nonprofit, private, and public sectors often refuse to view them as such. This kind of approach is a needed one as cultural workers unionize across the museum and publishing worlds: how might we capture momentum gained from the increasing consciousness across all sectors that creative work is labor and apply it to artists as well?
Recovery and Transformation in
the Wake of COVID
So, we have massive changes and massive challenges, many of them likely to be a permanent part of the new terrain. How will we pivot and reinvent a way forward? As the moderator, Michael Greer, posed to the breakout participants, “How do we, as grantmakers in the arts, act now to support a more robust, equitable, and resilient sector tomorrow?”
What to Expect
Grantmakers in the Arts welcomes you back to NYC — occupied Munsee Lenape, Wappinger, Canarsie, Lekawe, and Matinecock lands and hometown to GIA since 2018 — for our annual conference! Since our last gathering, we’ve witnessed the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, demands for justice for Black lives, and a history of racial inequity that remains unreconciled. The unprecedented pandemic-era reverberations have taken tolls on our health and environment, and our tolerance and capacity for uncertainty. We believe the vibrance and creativity of NYC keeps us feeling, dreaming, fighting for new futures. What can we make possible by gathering, attending to both grief and joy, and committed to moving forward together?
Take a listen as Nadia Elokdah (Grantmakers in the Arts) speaks with conference co-chairs Brandi Stewart (Doris Duke Charitable Foundation) and Salem Tsegaye (The New York Community Trust) about what you can expect at the conference.
Welcome to New York!
The 2022 Annual Conference is Here
The 2022 conference planning committee is thrilled to welcome Grantmakers in the Arts’ members back to our first in-person conference in three years! This is a big moment, and what better way to celebrate than in a city whose streets will make you feel brand new and bright lights will inspire you. (For an optimal reading experience, we suggest you play “Empire State of Mind” in the background.)
FEATURED POST
ABOUT THE BLOGGERS
Tram Nguyen
Tram Nguyen joins us from Oakland, CA for the virtual track of the 2022 GIA Conference.
She currently works in the Health Equity, Policy, & Planning team in the Office of the Director, Alameda County Public Health Department. In this role, Tram coordinates local, regional, and state policy work to advance health and racial equity, focusing on housing.
Prior to this, she was the executive editor of ColorLines magazine (2001-2007), where she led award-winning journalism about racial justice issues and community organizing across the country. In 2004, she published a book, We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities After 9/11 (Beacon).
She holds a Masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School.
Jasmine Liu
Jasmine Liu is a writer based in New York City, hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area.
She recently graduated from Stanford University, where she studied anthropology and mathematics. While there, she completed a 120-page honors thesis entitled “Deranging the Senses through Space and Time: Classical Music Festivals in the Twenty-First Century.”
Currently, she is a staff writer at Hyperallergic, where she covers developments in the contemporary art world. On the side, she writes reviews of new releases in fiction. Her essays span topics of coming-of-age, solitude, irony, and whether Asian American identity is ultimately vacuous. She recently began a part-time master’s program in Language, Literature, and Theory at Hunter College.
Special Series Throw Back
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Special Series Throw Back 〰️
Check out our Special Series racial equity podcast edition with Adriana Rios, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and Luisa Martinez, Otros Dreams en Acción!