1. Wendy Feuer, New York, NY -- Public Art Network Award
2. Abe Flores, Los Angeles, CA--American Express Emerging Leaders Award
3. Jon Hinojosa, San Antonio, TX--Arts Education Award
4. Kate D. Levin, New York, NY--Selina Roberts Ottum Award for Arts Leadership
5. Barbara Sexton Smith, Louisville, KY--Michael Newton Award
6. Tommy Usrey, West Monroe, LA--Alene Valkanas State Arts Advocacy Award

"These Local Arts Leadership Awards honor the very best partners, colleagues, and friends to the arts in America," said Robert Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts. "The awardees are all trailblazers who are each implementing innovative and transformative programs to strengthen the communities they serve and thus building recognition for the important work of the arts.”

The Selina Roberts Ottum Award for Arts Leadership and the Public Arts Network Award will be presented on June 14 during the opening keynote of the Americans for the Arts’ Annual Convention in Pittsburgh, PA at 12:00 p.m. The American Express Emerging Leaders Award, Arts Education Award, Michael Newton Award, and Alene Valkanas State Arts Agency Award will be presented on June 15 during the Convention Town Hall Luncheon also at 12:00 p.m. Both presentations will be livestreamed with details at http://convention.artsusa.org.

Sorenson’s decision to focus her philanthropic energy on arts education dates back to 1995 when she paid a visit to Lincoln Elementary School in Salt Lake City. Lincoln Elementary was considered the most troubled school in the area, but Sorenson saw firsthand how the school’s strong visual arts program was building bridges across the cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds of the students. Sorenson decided to dedicate her time and resources to developing Art Works for Kids, a teaching model that integrates art into the core curriculum by placing arts specialists in the school to work side-by-side with classroom teachers to create lesson plans. For her tireless philanthropy and advocacy, Americans for the Arts presented her with the Eli and Edythe Broad Award for Philanthropy in the Arts, presented at the 2011 National Arts Awards. Her presence, passion, and dedication will be deeply and sadly missed.

As we continue to hear more news about the devastating tornado that passed through the town of Moore on the outskirts of Oklahoma City yesterday, we at Americans for the Arts send our thoughts and prayers to the artists, administrators, and all those affected.  When natural disasters strike, there is no way to fully comprehend or process the pain they inflict.  They are arbitrary, and yesterday’s horrific storm makes us feel powerless.  As we try to contact friends and colleagues in the area, and know that many of you are doing the same, we realize that while we can’t stop these tragedies from happening, we can join together to help others pick up the pieces.  Moore and Oklahoma City are resilient, creative communities, and we are here to support them as best we can.  Americans for the Arts staff have been in touch with many of our partners and colleagues in the area, including the immediate-past Chair of our Board of Directors, Ken Fergeson of Altus, OK, and continue to monitor the situation.  We hope to be able to share more information soon, and in the meantime, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us directly. 

Oklahoma, you are in our thoughts today. I have included below some emergency resources to help you start on the long road to recovery, and know that we are always here to answer questions, to help, and to send you our hopes for a brighter tomorrow.

Emergency Response Resources:

The Essential Guidelines for Arts Responders is an immediate resource to help you determine your organization's response and work in the weeks ahead. It is an abridged version of a longer, more detailed handbook (now in development) that's designed to help local and state arts agencies, organizations, foundations, and other arts groups plan and administer a coordinated disaster mobilization system within their service area. We hope that it helps you, and we welcome your comments and additions.

We also encourage you to visit our National Coalition Partners: CERF+ and ArtsReady for resource links and more disaster relief information.

You may also visit our website for more information; here is a link to our page that has resource links for emergency preparedness and disaster relief: 
http://www.artsusa.org/networks/laa/017.asp

Please let Theresa Cameron, Local Arts Agency Services, know how you are doing and if you have other information you would like to share.  In these days after the tornado, our thoughts are with you, your families, friends, and colleagues.

Best,

Bob Lynch, President and CEO
Americans for the Arts

If you missed out on our first live stream of the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy or Google Hangout, those videos are available on the recap page along with interviews featuring Congressional Arts Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Matt Sorum, musician Cristina Pato, and dancer Lil' Buck. In addition, a Flickr photo stream, related ARTSblog posts, and major news coverage of the events can be found on the page.

While our recap doesn't do the full event justice, it provides a sense of the energy and excitement that arts advocates bring to Washington each year.

The public now has an opportunity to vote for their favorite designs in each of the five regions from April 22–May 13!

The five schools as determined by online voting will be notified on May 14 and provided with a travel budget to fly to New York City for the finals later this summer with the winning school receiving $50,000 for its art program!

To find out more about our partnership with Vans Custom Culture and to check out our Arts Education Navigator e-book series visit http://bit.ly/vanscc.

Watch How Is the Sequester Affecting the Arts? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Also, the entire Hanks presentation is currently available for archival viewing on our YouTube channel.

This means you can watch the Lecture on YouTube regardless of whether or not you're in Washington, DC, for National Arts Advocacy Day! The Lecture, delivered this year by Yo-Yo Ma, will address what kind of education will best enable today's students to develop creativity, flexibility, and the ability to innovate and work collaboratively.

And, if you have a burning question that arises during the Lecture, you can ask Yo-Yo Ma the next day.

On April 9 from 10:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m EDT.,  Yo-Yo Ma, along with Matt Sorum (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer for Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver and Co-Founder of Adopt the Arts in California) and Damian Woetzel (former principal dancer at New York City Ballet and the director of the Aspen Institute Arts Program), will participate in Americans for the Arts’ first Google+ Hangout. They will discuss the need to develop strong public policies for arts education and field questions from Google+ Hangout attendees. Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, will moderate the event.

To submit a question for the Hangout, please send a Tweet using #AskYoYo, or send an email to artseducation@artsusa.org. Just write #AskYoYo in the subject line and then write your question in the body of the email. We'll take questions anytime from now until the Hangout.

Americans for the Arts is teaming up with American Girl to help promote the arts in U.S. schools through the Elevate the Arts School Grant Contest and Saige Learning Guide. This partnership dovetails with American Girl’s introduction of its 2013 Girl of the Year, Saige Copeland.

Elementary schools throughout the United States with students in grades 3-6 can submit entries to support their art program through the Elevate the Arts School Grant Contest. Each entry must contain two components: a digital image of artwork and a written essay. Entries should be submitted between January 1 and May 31, 2013. They will be evaluated on originality, creativity and how effectively it demonstrates the school’s enthusiasm for art and its positive effect on its students.

Grants will be awarded to 13 schools. The first-place winning school will receive $10,000, schools placing second and third will win a $5,000 each, and ten runner-up schools will each receive $2,500. Grant recipients will be announced in October 2013 to coincide with National Arts and Humanities Month.

The Saige Learning Guide is a free, downloadable arts-based curriculum designed for teachers to inspire their students to explore their creative side. It outlines seven specific activities teachers can use to infuse the arts into their classroom and inspire their students to explore the arts, share their artistic passions and promote the arts in their schools and communities.

To complement this resource, Americans for the Arts is offering additional tools that parents can use to ignite their child’s creative spirit and imagination and to ensure their school districts and education leaders are committed to the arts. These supplementary tools can be found on Americans for the Arts’ website here. 

Further details regarding the Elevate the Arts School Grant Program, including specific contest rules and regulations, and the Saige Learning Guide can be found here.

The notion of scaling up has gained currency as arts organizations, artists, and funders seek greater impact from their efforts and investments. The idea of sharing something that is effective so that the benefits can be experienced by more people is attractive, especially when something is producing good results. Disseminating ideas, replicating programs, sharing models and practices, transferring skills and technology are all approaches to scaling up.

But, when is a creative project, program, or initiative ready to go to scale or when is staying small best?

Find out all week as 20 bloggers tell us about their experiences, and the experiences of others, when making the decision to scale up!

The Cultural Districts Project is a comprehensive, three-year initiative that will provide substantive new technical assistance and training resources designed to meet the unique needs of local arts agencies and local arts organizations charged with creating, maintaining and evaluating arts, entertainment and cultural districts around the country.

Americans for the Arts has monitored the growth of arts, entertainment, and cultural districts for years, publishing the first-of-its-kind guide “Cultural Districts Handbook” in 1998. Today, Americans for the Arts is actively tracking approximately 500 districts and fields a significant number of requests for additional technical assistance specifically related to districts.

The new Cultural Districts Project builds upon this track record of service to the field, and will produce new tools to aid in the assessment of districts’ impact. The initiative also seeks to advance the national dialogue between state and local arts leaders and non-arts stakeholders about how to work together more effectively to identify naturally occurring cultural districts and leverage the arts in the ongoing effort to strengthen local economies, create an enhanced sense of place and deepen local cultural capacity.

He created programs that connected and resonated not just in Washington but also with local communities throughout the United States: Our Town, which provides funds to struggling neighborhoods for the purpose of investing in theater, dance, music, writing, and visual art; and ArtPlace, which enlists foundations, corporations, and federal agencies to use cultural enterprises to integrate artists and arts groups into local efforts in transportation, housing, community development, and job creation.

In addition, he understood how to connect and work with other branches of government, including the Department of Defense on arts and healing, Department of Education with the Arts Education Partnership, Department of Housing and Urban Development on economic development projects in the arts, and the Department of Commerce to document and track the number of jobs in the nonprofit arts sector to add more scientific evidence and scope to the arts industry.

Most importantly, he used his bully pulpit to educate both Washington and the American people on the value of the arts, specifically noting that the arts are, of course, intrinsically valuable, but also a strong source of jobs and economic stimulus. In fact, his slogan, "Art Works" was intended to persuade Americans, including members of Congress, that investment in art can build stronger communities and revive a flagging economy.

We at Americans for the Arts are sad to see him go. However, he leaves a great legacy that will be admired for years to come.

With that in mind, Americans for the Arts is proud to announce that Arts Advocacy Day will take place April 8–9 at the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, Capitol Hill, and John F. Kennedy Center for the Peforming Arts.

Network with fellow arts advocates from across the country, strategize with experienced advocates, and learn about the most important arts and arts education-based topics for 2013 during the program before meeting with your members of Congress.

In addition, enjoy Grammy Award®-winning musician Yo-Yo Ma as he delivers our 26th Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy on April 8 at 6:30 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Arts Advocacy Day registrants are eligible to reserve two free tickets to the Hanks Lecture with their event registration. Non-registrants may reserve a single, free general admission ticket online.

For more information about Arts Advocacy Day and the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy visit AmericansForTheArts.org/aad!

Awardees receiving $25,000:

• Beet Street, Ft. Collins, CO

• Lanesboro Arts Center, Lanesboro, MN

• Tacoma Arts Program, Tacoma, WA

• Arts Quest, Bethlehem, PA

• CulturalDC, Washington, DC

Ovation is also providing an additional Viewers' Choice Award. Please visit Ovation's Facebook page to review Viewers' Choice submissions and vote for your favorite project by December 31, 2012. The online submission that receives the most votes will receive a $15,000 innOVATION grant, to be announced in January 2013. 

Ovation, the only multi-platform network devoted to artists and every kind of artistic expression, developed the innOVATION Grant Program to fund and recognize the impact of artists and the arts in communities’ revitalization efforts in partnership with Americans for the Arts.

Not only did their "Call Me Maybe" parody video help them jump out to an early lead, but it also scored the top prize of $5,000 for their arts education programs. Even more amazingly, they secured 16,000 of the 90,000 total votes in the contest!

Art teacher Suzanne Tiedemann plans to use the funds to support her recent “Shells for NJ Shores Program” for which students will create shell-themed art to raise money for those impacted by Hurricane Sandy late last month. In addition, 15 other schools in 9 states will receive a total of $20,000.

Those winning $2,000 grants are:

Paideia School 15 – Yonkers, NY
Cascade K-8 Community School – Shoreline, WA
Hammer Montessori at Galarza Elementary – San Jose, CA
Greenbrook Elementary – Kendall Park, NJ
Polaris Charter School – Manchester, NH

The $1,000 grant winners are:

Kenmore Elementary – Kenmore, WA
Milwaukee French Immersion – Milwaukee, WI
Andrew Cooke Magnet Elementary School – Waukegan, IL
Kestrel High School – Prescott, AZ
PS 76, The Bennington School – Bronx, NY
Flossie Floyd Green Elementary School – Allen, TX
Northwood High School – Pittsboro, NC
Washington Elementary – Richmond, CA
Roberto W. Clemente Middle School – Germantown, MD
Bryant Elementary – Tacoma, WA

Thanks again to KRIS Wine for their generous support in this endeavor and congrats to all the winners!

The first 1,500 U.S.-based public or private high schools that register will receive four pairs of blank canvas Vans shoes to make their own creations around four themes: Action Sports, Music, Art, and Local Flavor. Students submit photos of their shoes via the Vans Custom Culture website, then an internal selection and external public vote whittle the entries down to a group of five finalists who will travel to New York City for the Vans Custom Culture final event in June 2013. The top school will receive $50,000 for their visual arts program.

We'll have more information about this exciting opportunity as the registration period begins in January 2013!