"Last month, 800 advocates were in Washington to defend to Congress the 47 cents per person that America spends on the National Endowment for the Arts. This amount should be much more but despite its seemingly small percentage, government support leverages billions in matching dollars, increases access—especially for the underserved—and encourages new voices, ideas, and expressive endeavors that have kept the U.S. at the vanguard of creativity and innovation.

This system has prevented any one entity from imposing a single aesthetic, resulting in a vibrant American creative and artistic environment. What it hasn’t achieved is nationwide industry stability—but we have compelling community stories of where that stability is happening through creative solutions like hotel-motel taxes and cultural districting."

All seven opinion pieces can be read on the "Room for Debate" site and Lynch's entire article can be found here.

The innOVATION Grant Program invites mayors, county executives, or other elected leadership of their community to endorse the most inspiring story of artists helping to revitalize a community in their city. Ovation will feature the most compelling submissions on its Facebook page and website, providing a national platform for these encouraging stories.

Ovation, Americans for the Arts, and national experts in creative placemaking will select this year's grant recipients based on creative, economic, and social impact, as well as ability to bring together public, private, nonprofit, and community efforts to improve and enhance a specific region around arts and cultural activities.

The innOVATION Grant Program guidelines and application will be available online after June 15 and grant recipients will be announced in October 2012.

In addition, several speakers touted the importance of the arts industry in America and the need for our government leaders to not only understand the vital contribution the arts make, but to also take immediate action to ensure this crucial sector of our economy thrives. Speakers at the Kick-Off included:

• Alec Baldwin, Emmy Award®-winning TV, film and stage actor and arts advocate
• Pierre Dulaine, celebrated ballroom dancer and dance educator
• Ben Folds, celebrated singer-songwriter and record producer
• Hill Harper, film and television actor, author and Co-Chair of Arts Advocacy Day
• Melina Kanakaredes, film and television actress
• Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts
• Nigel Lythgoe, producer of American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance
• Omar Benson Miller, film and television actor
• Johnathon Schaech, actor, writer and director
• Ken Solomon, Chairman, Ovation
• Tiffani Thiessen, television actress
• Clay Walker, renowned country music singer

During the event, Alec Baldwin appeared on Bloomberg Morning Call, CNN International, and NPR Morning Edition touting the importance of government funding for the arts. On the eve of Arts Advocacy Day, Baldwin delivered the 25th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts & Public Policy. This leading national forum for arts policy serves as an opportunity for public discourse at the highest levels on the importance of the arts and culture to our nation's well-being.

Following the Kick-Off, top business leaders, artists, civic leaders, and grassroots advocates took the halls of Congress to drive home the importance of developing strong public policies for the arts and to fight for increased funding to the National Endowment for the Arts and the incorporation of the arts into education reform.

Most recently, Rep. Platts successfully took to the House floor to help turn back a $10 million cut to the NEA budget, successfully urging fellow representatives to oppose the reduction. He has also been an outspoken supporter of arts education as a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, which oversees national education policy.

Visit ARTSblog or our press release for more information.

• It indicates that while music and visual art are widely available in some form, six percent of the nation’s public elementary schools offer no specific instruction in music, and 17 percent offer no specific instruction in the visual arts.
• Nine percent of public secondary schools reported that they did not offer music, and 11 percent did not offer the visual arts.
• Only three percent offer any specific dance instruction and only four percent offer any specific theatre instruction in elementary schools. In secondary schools the numbers improve somewhat as 12 percent offer dance and 45 percent offer theatre. Sadly, the study was unable to survey dance and theatre specialists because the data sample didn’t have sufficient contact information in those disciplines.

Despite being designated a “core academic subject” in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 and being included in mandated elementary school curriculum in 44 states, this survey demonstrates that access to arts education remains elusive to a tremendous number of students across the nation.

This may not be surprising to many following the state of our education system as recent surveys from Common Core and the National Arts Education Foundation have provided fresh evidence of the arts being a victim of the narrowing of the curriculum.

Furthermore, this report mostly found schools with the highest percentage of free or reduced-price lunch-eligible populations significantly less likely to provide students with access to arts education at both the elementary and secondary levels.

This means that the nation’s poorest students, the ones who could benefit the most from arts education, are receiving it the least."

Visit ARTSblog to read Narric's full response.

This year's theme is Local Emerging Leaders Networks: Leveraging Impact for the Future. Local network leaders will examine the idea of change—by putting financial, human, and material resources where they have the greatest opportunity to spark growth—in the arts sector by examining four major areas of their work: advocacy; civil discourse; public, private, and social sector partnerships; and nonprofit and arts leadership development.

The following guest bloggers are expected to participate:

Katherine Mooring, Chavon D. Carroll, Aaron Fiedler: Charlotte Emerging Arts Leaders
Tara Aesquivel: Emerging Arts Leaders/Los Angeles
Sara Bateman: Emerging Leaders in the Arts Network - University of Oregon
Gregory Burbidge: Emerging Arts Leaders of Atlanta
Jennifer Armstrong, Jess Kaswiner, Eboni Senai Hawkins: Emerging Leaders Network Chicago
Julia Mandeville: Emerge ABQ (Albuquerque)
Elizabeth McCloskey Miller: Emerging Arts Leaders DC
Hillary Anaya: Emerging Leaders of Mobile
Madeline Orton, Jonathan Elliott, Kacy O'Brien: New Jersey Emerging Arts Leaders
Molly O'Connor: Oklahoma's New and Emerging Arts Leaders

New posts will be published each day so make sure to visit, read, and comment!

Nominations are open until April 20. Visit the DMAI website for more information and to download the nomination form.

Lynch’s testimony will highlight the critical role the arts have to the health and vitality of the United States, the need to increase the current level of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and to strengthen public policies for the nonprofit arts community.

YoungArts recognizes and supports America’s most talented 17-18 year olds in the visual, literary, and performing arts. It identifies emerging artists and assists them at critical junctures in their educational and professional development, raising the appreciation for, and support of, the arts in American society.

The Arts Action Fund wants to educate all presidential and congressional candidates that an investment in the arts is:

• an investment in the growth of our American economy
• an investment in jobs that cannot be outsourced abroad
• an investment in well-rounded education for our children, and
• an investment in our national culture and heritage

Read more on the Americans for the Arts Action Fund website. 

Then, come back for our Private Sector Blog Salon November 14-18 for a discussion about the new landscape of arts and business partnerships as the arts are being more deeply integrated in business strategy to benefit workforce development, recruitment and retention, management training, creative problem-solving, and community engagement.

• Frank Stella - Isabella & Theodor Dalenson Lifetime Achievement Award
• Beverley Taylor Sorenson - Eli & Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts
• Jenny Holzer - Outstanding Contributions to the Arts Award
• President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities - Arts Education Award
• Gabourey Sidibe - Bell Family Foundation Young Artist Award
• Wells Fargo & Company - Corporate Citizenship in the Arts Award

The annual awards recognize those artists and arts leaders who exhibit exemplary national leadership and whose work demonstrates extraordinary artistic achievement.

They are organizations and individuals—artists, business leaders, and patrons—who understand that the arts and arts education enrich people and communities alike.