Special Series
a look at Grantmakers in the Arts’ special series
focused on intersecting and intersectional issues affecting arts and culture funding + ecosystem
“We All Belong (Building the Future),” by Tanya Shyika for Fine Acts x OBI. This work was commissioned as part of Bridging & Belonging - a creative collaboration between Fine Acts and the Democracy & Belonging Forum, an initiative from the Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) at the University of California, Berkeley. Learn more at fineacts.co/belonging.
GIA Special Series
Grantmakers in the Arts presents special programs important to arts and cultural funding related to emerging or urgent focus areas. These special series often take an intersectional approach to unpacking complex ideas, questions, and strategies and are presented in multiple formats, from webinars and podcasts to blog posts and Twitter chats.
Special series feature interviews with artists and organizers in the cultural community, the field of arts funding, and beyond that, in and adjacent to social justice philanthropy.
Learn more about and explore each of our series below.
Narrative Change Series: Liberatory Practice 2022
I invite you to think of where you are in your life in your relationship to liberation. What is most important to you? What are the powers that you hold? Where are you powerless? We cannot tackle all at once, this massive system of inequity that we have built over generations. So break it down, and see - what do you want to start shifting in your life, in your home, in your work? Where and how do you want to find healing? What needs healing? Find it, and join the movement. Become one of the fractals and join the movement towards collective liberation.
The Lost Files Podcast Series 2022
In this specially commissioned series with Grantmakers in the Arts, The Lost Files, Dr. Durell Cooper invites artists, community organizers, researchers, cultural and racial studies experts, and scholars to think about the narratives driving the arts and cultural sector – as it intersects with systems of structural racism and economic exclusion – and what opportunities for narrative change exist.
Narrative Change 2019-2022
Grantmakers in the Arts is a community of practice with a shared vision of investing in arts and culture as strategy for social change. One of the major issues we are exploring is dominant and/or mainstream narratives that continue to live on and perpetuate racialized practices and outcomes. With a system that is not broken, but rather structured intentionally to foster inequitable and unjust outcomes, the need for narrative change is more urgent now than ever. “Humans,” Ella Saltmarshe writes, “have always used stories to make sense out of our chaotic world.” Narrative change “frequently involves collaboration across difference, bringing together actors with very different positions to re-envision the goals of a system and to change it.”
We seek to elevate the importance of changing narratives among arts and culture funders, and we are excited to kick off our very first narrative change series! See below for a list of featured speakers and online learning events.
Coronavirus Pandemic 2020-2021
As the coronavirus continues to spread and its impacts change our daily lives, Grantmakers in the Arts has provided and compiled resources to support arts and culture funders as we navigate recovery and response. From webinars and podcasts to zoom calls and calls to action, responses from GIA, our members, and our fellow PSOs aim to provide guidance during this time.
Narrative Strategy: on narrative power building & practice 2022
Artist-serving organizations and arts philanthropy have a clear and integral role to play in supporting artists, especially BIPOC and artists from historically marginalized communities, in growing their narrative power. This [series is] for arts funders interested in exploring the “why, what, and how” of arts-integrated narrative strategies. The featured stories and projects also offer instructive entry points to this question: “So what does operationalizing narrative strategies within arts organizations and building narrative power for BIPOC artists look like in practice?”
GIA Annual Conference Blog
2022
Every event comes with the challenges of not being able to be in two places at once. Tram Nguyen and Jasmine Liu covered this year’s in-person and virtual conference tracks. For anything you missed, or anything you want to revisit, check out the blog!
Future of the Field: Cross-Sector Creative Placemaking 2021-2023
Grantmakers in the Arts, in partnership with ArtPlace America, presents this page as a living resource of dialogue, debate, and ideas to continue to engage the conversation of the future of arts and creative placemaking. Contributors – artists, community development practitioners, public and private funders, and researchers – offer refelctions, provocations, and conversation starters for future arts and community development research and practice. We hope they leave you inspired and with many questions to continue the work of creative placemaking, place-keeping, and arts-centered community strengthening in the future.
Black August: Funding and Justice Resource Hub 2020-2022
Black August, born out of Black liberation, resistance, and justice movements, is a month dedicated to critical learning and analysis, reflection and study of our roles in oppressive or liberatory systems, and an opportunity to grow, connect, and prepare for the challenging work ahead.
From the Black Liberation Movement and the Black August Hip Hop Project to “Writing While Black” and how to fix classical arts, we invite you to join us this month in collective reflection where arts and culture are at the root of justice and liberation.
As we are reminded by ABFE, A Philanthropic Partnership for Black Communities, “We must be in it for the long haul.”
FLOW WITH DR. DURELL COOPER
In this specially commissioned web series co-produced by Grantmakers in the Arts, FLOW WITH DR. DURELL COOPER, features conversations between Cooper and influential people from the Global Majority leading in the arts philanthropic sector. The overarching question this series investigates is what narratives exist that harm us, and how are we intentionally developing strategies to mitigate such harms in order to foster healing in communities of color?
Move the Money: Discussion Series about the Creative Solidarity Economy 2021-2022
How can arts & culture grantmaking engage in systems-change work that addresses root causes rather than symptoms of inequity? Grantmakers can play a role in the transformation of the sector by following the lead of BIPOC creatives who are innovating models for self-determination and community wealth.
This series is an opportunity for funders, artists, and movement organizers to share practices, programs, and case studies that make tangible the principles laid out in the GIA-commissioned report, Solidarity Not Charity: Arts & Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy, by Natalia Linares & Caroline Woolard from Art.Coop.
Racial Equity Podcast Series 2020
GIA is a community of practice with a shared vision of investing in arts and culture as a strategy for social change. Since 2008, GIA has been elevating racial equity as a critical issue affecting the field. To actualize this work within the sector, GIA published its Racial Equity in Arts Funding Statement of Purpose in 2015 and the journey has reaffirmed the many intersections at play as we leverage our dollars for the deepest impact.
As a part of our continued efforts, we are glad to introduce the Grantmakers in the Arts Racial Equity Podcast Series. In this series, we will discuss racial justice and racial equity with funders, lawyers, artists, arts administrators, and other key players in the funding ecosystem speaking about mentorship, immigration, criminal justice, radical imaginaries, and other topics to get a deeper understanding of how we can all be agents of change.
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!