2023 GIA Conference Blog
Revisiting Pasts to Build the Future
San Juan, PR | Nov 5-8
Welcome to the 2023 GIA Annual Conference Blog!
This year’s conference coverage will be shared here. Be sure to check back for updates and deep-dive reflections on any sessions or keynotes that you couldn’t attend.
Meet the Conference Bloggers
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!
Nonprofit Philanthropy and the Arts: Why We are So Awesome and How We Can Be Even More Awesomer
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.
AgitArte: A Working-Artist Collective Keynote
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.
QTBIPOC Culture in Puerto Rico:
Bré Rivera in converstion with Dania “Betún” Warhol, JMase III,
& Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
“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.
Community Foundations for Just Communities
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.
Arts, Immigration, and Mentorship
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.
Bridging the Gap Between Public Art and Public Health:
Learning about SaludArte Arizona
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.
National Latinx Theater Initiative
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.
Puerto Rican Women Artists Across the Diaspora Plenary Keynote
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.
I Was Told There Would Be No Math: An Artist-led Conversation About the Inextricable Link Among Economics, Culture, & Place
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 H. Rivera-Servera
Plenary Keynote
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.
GIA and the Future of Cultural Policy: Advancing Arts & Cultural Policy and Advocacy to Disrupt Unjust Systems
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.
What to Expect
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.
As we look toward the future we must also reflect on how the past informed our path to here. We are glad to be joined by our 2023 conference committee co-chairs Glenisse Pagán Ortiz (Filantropía Puerto Rico) and Carlos Rodríguez Silvestre (Flamboyan Foundation). They discuss how the conference took shape, ways to prepare, and what you can expect!
About the Artist
Carlos Davila Rinaldi currently lives and works in Puerto Rico. Learn more about his life and work!
Boricua Echoes
As we prepare for the upcoming GIA Annual Conference Aaron P. Dworkin, The Reader guest poetjournalist, offers a reflective and anticipatory poem.
Welcome to San Juan!
The 2023 Annual Conference is Here
Learn about what to expect from the conference planning committee co-chairs.
Conference Blogs
GIA and the Future of Cultural Policy: Advancing Arts and Cultural Policy and Advocacy to Disrupt Unjust Systems
SaludArte Arizona: Bridging the Gap Between Public Art and Public Health
Plenary Keynote: AgitArte
Plenary Keynote: Puerto Rican Women Artists Across The Diaspora: Tariana Navas-Nieves in Discussion with Tanicha López and Caridad De La Luz
National Latinx Theater Initiative
Plenary Keynote: Nonprofit Philanthropy and the Arts: Why We are So Awesome and How We Can Be Even More Awesomer by Vu Le, former Executive Director of RVC
Plenary Keynote: Dr. Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
I Was Told There Would Be No Math: An Artist-led Conversation About the Inextricable Link Among Economics, Culture and Place
Plenary Keynote: QTBIPOC Culture in Puerto Rico: Bré Rivera moderates a discussion with Dania “Betún” Warhol from EspicyNipples and JMase III and Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi
Arts, Immigration and Mentorship
Community Foundations for Just Communities
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!