February 25, 2021

 

Both our “Anti-Racism as Organizational Compass” and “Rootwork | Grounding Community Arts Education Beyond the Pandemic” speaker series are now complete. Guild members can access all of the recordings in our Resource Center. 

The “Anti-Racism as Organizational Compass” series will continue in some form, later this year or in 2022—we’ll be taking time first to pause, absorb what we’ve learned, and plan the next step collaboratively with stakeholders. 

The Rootwork Learning Cohort, which attended the “Rootwork  | Grounding Community Arts Education Beyond the Pandemic” series as a group and met with the 3 Cohort Advisors to discuss together after each session, will now use the series as inspiration to design new, adaptive models for community arts education that respond to our current moment, which will then be disseminated to the broader field.

Research shows participatory arts learning for older adults provides significant wellness benefits critical to counteracting social isolation 

 

February 16th, 2021

 

The National Guild for Community Arts Education and Lifetime Arts are pleased to announce that 14 nonprofit community arts education organizations from 9 states have been selected to receive Catalyzing Creative Aging seed grants. Ranging between $2,000 and $7,000, these grants will support new and expanded creative aging programming, both in person and virtual, for adults ages 55+ in their communities. A total of $70,000 is being awarded. 

The 14 Catalyzing Creative Aging seed grantees will pilot innovative creative aging programs that respond directly to expressed community needs and the constraints of our socially distanced world. 

 

The recipients are:

• Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge , Baton Rouge, LA (Photography, Creative Writing)

• Austin Soundwaves, Austin, TX (Mariachi)

• Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Dallas, TX (Visual Arts, Storytelling)

• The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, PA (Clay)

• Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, New York, NY (Flamenco)

• Healthy Living and Fitness, Oklahoma City, OK (Mask-making)

• The Legacy Arts Project, Pittsburgh, PA (Collage and Poetry)

• New England Conservatory, Boston, MA (Choir, songwriting)

• Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Berkshire Community College, Pittsfield, MA (Singing)

• Ping Chong + Company, New York, NY (Theatrical Storytelling/Memoir)

• Portsmouth Music and Arts Center, Portsmouth, NH (Percussion)

• The Rockland Conservatory of Music, Pearl River, NY (Songwriting)

• Sonoran Glass School, Tucson, AZ (Glass Arts)

• The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE (Clay)

 

Read the full descriptions of funded programs.

 

Led by professional teaching artists, creative aging programs provide sustained arts instruction in socially supportive environments in a variety of community settings. These programs have proven psychological, physical, and emotional health benefits for older adults. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated social isolation and its health impacts making these programs more crucial than ever, while also making them more challenging to produce. For this reason, all seed grantees will receive coaching from Lifetime Arts throughout the grant cycle to support ongoing program development, student recruitment and engagement, digital strategies, and more. 

“These grantees’ programs will provide elders in their communities with much-needed creative and emotional outlet, as well as a source of social interaction.” said Ashley Hare, National Guild’s Director of Leadership Development. “The programs will also demonstrate to the wider field that successful adaptation of programming to meet these needs is possible with the use of social distancing, use of outdoor space, and virtual programming.” 

The 14 seed grant recipients were chosen from a larger group of 20 organizations who were selected to participate in the multi-phase Catalyzing Creative Aging program, provided by the National Guild for Community Arts Education and Lifetime Arts. Between November 2019 and June 2020, staff and faculty from these organizations received training and coaching via workshops, webinars, and consultations designed to increase each organization’s capacity to serve older adults through skill-based, participatory arts programs. 

“Once again, National Guild members will be delivering innovative and responsive programs to older adults across the US,” said Lifetime Arts’ CEO Maura O’Malley. “We at Lifetime Arts are inspired by the level of inventiveness, the dedication and the passion these organizations display—especially in these challenging times. Congratulations to all.”

 

Catalyzing Creative Aging seed grants are made possible in part by generous support from Aroha Philanthropies and the NAMM Foundation.

 

 

The National Guild for Community Arts Education ensures all people have opportunities to maximize their creative potential by developing leaders, strengthening organizations, and advocating for community arts education. Through these strategies, the Guild aims to address our country’s widening opportunity gap which leaves millions of individuals with little or no access to the creative resources they need to reach their full potential. www.nationalguild.org

Lifetime Arts was founded in 2008 as a service organization with a singular goal: to enrich the lives of older adults through arts education. Lifetime Arts is the national leader in building the capacity of organizations, agencies, and individuals to initiate, develop, implement, and sustain professionally conducted Creative Aging programs for the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. www.lifetimearts.org

December 30, 2020

The National Guild for Community Arts Education

Statement of Support for Americans for the Arts’ (AFTA) Arts Education Advisory Council

 

The Board of Trustees, the Racial Equity Committee of the Board and the Staff of the National Guild for Community Arts Education are writing to voice our deep concern about the issues raised by the Arts Education Advisory Council for Americans for the Arts to actualize racial equity in policies, practices and priorities. We join the AFTA Arts Education Advisory Council in the call for change. We also support the call for change regarding the accounts of a hostile work environment at AFTA by current and past staff members.

The Guild, a longtime member and partner of Americans for the Arts, stands in alignment with the AFTA Arts Education Advisory Council in a united call for Americans for the Arts, our nations’ largest and most powerful organization serving the arts sector, to proactively address longstanding unresolved racial inequities in the arts sector along with labor matters in the AFTA organization with deliberate speed and transparency.

As national organizations serving the arts, it is our moral and cultural responsibility to dismantle the oppressive systems that have dominated the arts sector for decades. As a national membership organization in the arts field, the Guild continues to listen to the call for accountability; to reflect on how we have been complicit in the white supremacist, patriarchal, ageist, and ableist culture of the arts sector and the larger society in which we operate; and to devise ways to put into action recommendations like those from the Arts Education Advisory Council.

Structural racism is by design. (Sentiment expressed in the book "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America," by Ijeoma Oluo with which the National Guild concurs)

The fact that the vast majority of leadership/decision-makers (CEO’s, executive directors, board members), staff and faculty of non-profit arts organizations are white is by design.

The dearth of fully resourced arts presence in BIPOC communities is by design.

The dearth of arts in schools for Black and brown participants is by design.

The dearth of BIPOC artists and teachers is by design.

 

Racial equity as “window dressing” rather than as authentic promotion of anti-racist practice in arts organizations is by design. We at the National Guild believe that we are either dismantling structurally racist designs and creating new equitable ones or we are complicit in the maintenance of oppressive systems in the arts. There is no middle ground.

We, the Board officers and senior staff of the National Guild for Community Arts Education would welcome a conversation with the AFTA Board about these matters, including our concerns about the leadership of Robert Lynch and his capacity to serve as an effective advocate for the growth and strength of the vast racially and culturally diverse arts sector in this country.

We at the National Guild recognize the necessity of our organization aligning in partnership with organizations that share our values, principles, and policies. Given the issues raised above we need to discern if AFTA is an organization with which we can remain in alliance. We look forward to a conversation as soon as possible.

---

Signatories on behalf of the National Guild for Community Arts Education's Board of Trustees

Duffie Adelson

Board Chair, NGCAE

 

Sandra Bowie 

NGCAE Board Vice Chair and Co-Chair, Racial Equity Committee; Executive Consultant

 

Kyle Carpenter

CEO, MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, MN

 

Chad Cooper

Executive Director, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn, NY

 

Eric Delli Bovi

President & CEO, Urban Gateways, Chicago, IL

 

Sofia Fojas

 

Dr. Derrick Gay

Co-Chair, NGCAE Racial Equity Committee; Diversity and Inclusion Strategist

 

Lili Hussey

Principal/Founder, Mariner Consulting, LLC

 

Darren Isom

Partner, The Bridgespan Group

 

Lee Koonce

NGCAE Board Secretary; President & Artistic Director, Gateways Music Festival

 

Karen LaShelle

Co-Chair, NGCAE Racial Equity Committee; Executive Director, Creative Action, Austin, TX

 

SoYoung Lee

Executive and Artistic Director, Rocky Ridge Music Center, Estes Park, CO

 

Gayle Morgan

NGCAE Treasurer; retired grantmaker in the arts

 

Robyn Newhouse

Civic Leader, Springfield, MA

 

Nancy Ng

Executive Director, Creativity and Policy, Luna Kids Dance, Inc., CA

 

Myran Parker-Brass

Boston Public Schools (Retired)

 

Martha Rochelle

Board President, Armstrong Community Music School, Austin, TX

 

Katie Smythe

CEO and Artistic Director, New Ballet Ensemble and School, Memphis, TN

 

J. Curtis Warner Jr.

Founder and Past Executive Director, Berklee City Music, Boston, MA

 

Lecolion Washington

NGCAE Board Vice Chair; Executive Director, Community Music Center of Boston

The Rootwork Learning Cohort is a small cohort that is coming together to study, practice, and document new models of community arts education practices informed by, and supportive of the many varied lived experiences of our communities in the unique context of our current moment. These six teams of community arts educators were selected through an application process to attend the “Rootwork | Grounding Community Arts Education Beyond the Pandemic” speaker series, and then use the sessions as inspiration over the next five months to design new, adaptive models for community arts education that respond to our current moment. 

The teams are being guided in this process by a trio of Rootwork Advisors: Karla Estela Rivera, Calida Jones, and Barbara Mumby-Huerta.
Meet the teams and the advisors here.

Our board’s Racial Equity Committee and Guild staff shared our recently finalized Racial Equity Guiding Principles and Policy Statements at the Guild’s 2020 Annual Meeting November 20th. These Principles and Policies represent many hours of work from Guild board and staff, particularly our Racial Equity Committee, and have been developed this year as part of our ongoing transformation towards becoming an anti-racist organization.

 

You can read (and watch) more here:

Read history and context of our racial equity work, including graphics summarizing the principles and policies.

Read our full Racial Equity Guiding Principles and Policy Statements document.

Watch the recording of the Racial Equity Committee’s presentation at the annual meeting.

At the National Guild 2020 Annual Meeting, we virtually presented our Annual Awards. The 2020 National Service Award was presented to Carol Ross, and the 2020 National Leadership Award was presented to Rhiannon Giddens. 

Read the award recipients’ bios.

Watch Carol Ross’s acceptance of the National Service Award

Watch Rhiannon Giddens’s acceptance of the National Leadership Award

The latest edition of the National Guild Benchmarking Data Report contains a wealth of data—on staff and faculty compensation, instructional fees, income and expense ratios, and more—that can inform your planning and budgeting and help funders and policy makers better understand the needs and impact of our field. The data, gathered from 179 Guild member organizations, is presented in easy to read charts and tables.

For the first time, the report also includes sections on racial equity, creative aging, and analysis of salary information by organization type, type of community served, and organizational budget size. Our Development Manager, Kate Riley, wrote a blog post about how the decision to include questions about creative aging in the survey was part of our effort to confront ageism and promote inclusion for community arts education students of all ages, and what the resulting data tells us. Read the blog post on the Aroha Philanthropies website.

Access to the Benchmarking Data Report is $50 for members; $100 for non-members. Membership is currently pay-what-you can. 

You can learn more and purchase a digital copy of the report here.

The National Guild is seeking a search firm to assist us in finding a visionary, human-centered Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with experience leading an organization through transition, specifically towards adopting a shared leadership model and building an anti-racist organization. 

The Guild’s newly adopted racial equity guiding principles and policies call for a redistribution of power within the organization; we are committed to structures, policies, and practices rooted in sharing and equalizing power so that we can create new equitable solutions, innovations, and insights. 

The CEO reports to the Board of Trustees and is responsible for effectively leading the Guild as well as overseeing all financial and operational aspects of the organization, defining strategic opportunities, and developing a shared vision for the Guild’s future. They also serve as the public face of the organization and play a leading role in building and maintaining collaborative relationships with the community arts education field and allied sectors, deepening the organization’s commitment to racial justice and effectively communicating the Guild’s mission.

More info and requirements for proposals from search firms can be found in this job posting: https://nationalguild.org/job-board/jobs/request-for-proposals-rfp-for-executive-search

Please help share with your networks! Proposals will be accepted until Friday, November 20th.

National Guild for Community Arts Education

Announcement from the Board of Trustees

September 24, 2020

 

Jonathan Herman, CEO of the National Guild for Community Arts Education, has announced that he is leaving the organization after 25 years of service.

Jonathan has served as the Guild’s executive leader since 2004 and as a member of the staff since 1995. Over this time Jonathan has seen this 83-year-old organization through many transformations, including a name change in 2010 (from the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts). During his tenure, the organization launched and supported national initiatives in creative aging, leadership development, arts in education, and creative youth development. The Guild’s membership increased in diversity and grew to include over 400 community arts education organizations across 47 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Canada. 

Jonathan’s decision to leave his position was announced to the Guild’s Board of Trustees and staff in early 2020. A public announcement was planned for March, but it was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Guild’s board chair, Duffie Adelson, stated that “Jonathan has served the Guild with passion and devotion over the past 25 years. He has led the organization through challenges, many successes, and significant growth during his tenure. We are extremely grateful for his service to the Guild, to our members, and to the field. We wish him all the best and much happiness in his next chapter.”

Adelson continued by stating, “Even in the midst of the pandemic and the accompanying economic and social crises, the Guild is in a strong position to make this transition. Our staff and board represent a wealth of experience, energy, passion, and commitment to the Guild’s mission and values. The organization is financially stable, with the resources to navigate this leadership change as well as the challenging years ahead.”

The Board of Trustees is in the process of launching a national search to identify the Guild’s next CEO. The details of this search and process will be shared transparently with the field.

Jonathan’s last day with the Guild will be November 20, 2020, which coincides with the 2020 Annual Meeting. The board sincerely expresses its gratitude to Jonathan for his 25 years of dedicated service to the Guild and to the field of community arts education. 

You can read a letter from Jonathan to the field here.

September 24, 2020

 

Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing to let you know that I will be stepping away from my role as CEO of the National Guild on November 20th, following the 2020 Annual Meeting. It has been my delight and privilege to serve as a Guild staff member for the past 25 years, including as CEO since 2004. These years have been a gift. I feel blessed to have worked, lived and grown with an organization that I am so fond of. The people I have worked alongside at the Guild have been such wonderful and generous colleagues, mentors, partners, co-conspirators and friends. I extend my warmest appreciation to you.

You may already have heard this news. I began to discuss my departure back in January and an announcement was planned for March, which was then delayed by COVID-19. My decision to leave the Guild was driven by personal and family priorities as well as my desire to make space for the next generation of leadership. I firmly believe that the Guild is in a strong position and poised for a vibrant, thriving future.  

Over the years, the Guild has demonstrated its ability to respond and innovate. I am particularly proud of the ways we have grown and broadened our tent.  I am so grateful to work with a stellar, highly skilled staff that is motivated, energized and committed to learning and to transforming the Guild so it can most effectively contribute to the fulfillment of our mission. I am so pleased to have worked closely with current and former trustees who bring critical leadership, vision, energy and support to the institution.  

Most of all, I am continually inspired by the work that our members and networks do to ensure arts education is accessible and embraced as essential for human development and healthy communities. This has been especially true these last challenging months.

While I am looking forward to new challenges and opportunities, I know that I will always remain committed and connected to our shared mission. I had very much been looking forward to celebrating the end of my tenure at the Guild in person at our annual conference in NYC in November. I regret this missed opportunity but encourage you to reach out to me anytime. 

Thank you for everything you do to expand creative opportunities and enliven communities across the country.

 

Sincerely,

Jonathan Herman

CEO 

National Guild for Community Arts Education

jonathanherman@nationalguild.org 

212.268.3972