The Exemplar Program: Field Advancement Awards

Americans for the Arts announces nine Field Advancement awards to Exemplar Grantees

Washington, DC—September 1, 2006. In its second year of the two-year program, the Animating Democracy/Working Capital Fund Exemplar Program supports nine field advancement activities defined by organizations selected to participate in the program in 2005. Through a competitive proposal process, cohort members were invited to describe activities or projects that would serve their learning interests and that may also inform and engage the field. Learning activities focus on areas such as organizational health and stability, curriculum models, and programming models at the intersection of art and civic concerns. The Field Advancement awards are being made to:

Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (MFACM), to enable MFACM executive, curatorial, and education staff to assist the first two touring sites for the exhibition, The African Presence in México. MFACM will share insights and concrete resources from its Chicago experience, provide advice, and facilitate host site conversations in an effort to design civic dialogue and public programming activities that are meaningful and relevant to the specific political and social context of each site community. Exemplar investment empowers this first voice museum to define how it will ensure meaningful civic dialogue related to a significant, successful cross-cultural exhibition as it tours, as well as to extend museum field learning about arts-based civic engagement and education through direct interactions with host museums.

Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), to support short residencies by three Exemplar partners—Arte Público Press, Urban Bush Women, and Wing Luke Asian Museum—as part of a campus-wide focus on the theme Intersections of Self and Space that will weave through all 2007 classes and partnership activities with the local community. The residencies will challenge IAIA to think more deeply about its own location and identity as an American Indian arts and cultural educational organization. The three Exemplar partners have articulated different benefits to their IAIA residency: “examining the place of dance in each of our cultures” (Urban Bush Women); making new connections with Hispanic organizations and individuals in Santa Fe, NM, for future partnerships and distribution of books (Arte Público Press); and the “opportunity to explore both commonalities and different approaches to the issues of expressing community values and culture, and individual creativity” (Wing Luke Asian Museum). Exemplar investment supports culturally specific organizations in a cross-disciplinary inquiry and sharing of artistic and cultural ideas and practices in the context of a “connected learning” model of education grounded in indigenous ways of learning.

Cornerstone Theater Company and Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, to support a joint project that examines and documents artistic leadership transition in two artist companies aiming to uphold the legacies and unique community-based artistic practices of their charismatic founders. Organizational consultant Lisa Mount will conduct interviews, facilitate three peer exchanges, and document the companies’ “stories” of transition, including present challenges as each company is still in transition and what each group has learned that can benefit other cultural organizations. Exemplar investment addresses the lack of case study material related to artistic leadership transition, particularly in founder-driven companies, and captures the thoughtful and different approaches taken by each of these two exemplary organizations.

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, to hire a professional writer to assist the center’s artistic director and a senior faculty member in documenting the development, history, theory, and practice behind the center’s comparative study curriculum. The comparative study curriculum is a hands-on, inquiry-based curriculum that trains young artists in a carefully selected sample of world cultures and artistic disciplines. The document will be used to inform coming generations of staff, board, and faculty, and to inspire independent exploration among peer performing arts and cultural institutions that teach repertoire skills to culturally diverse constituencies with an emphasis on youth and the young. Exemplar investment supports East Bay’s desire for field examination and critique of the theory and assumptions behind its curriculum, and to offer the field the benefits of the center’s experience.

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, to plan and convene a Youth Arts, Social Justice, and Community Transformation Summit on July 24, 2006, to inform the civic engagement dimension of East Bay’s new Leadership Diploma Program for high school age youth; to reflect on challenges of combining youth development with repertoire and culture-specific arts training; and to identify ideas and connections for potential partnerships and field advancement. Documentation of key discussion points prepared by adult and youth recorders/writers will be disseminated. Exemplar investment contributes to exchange and analysis of youth arts training models that embrace civic engagement goals.

Wing Luke Asian Museum, to support an intimate convening of seven to 10 participants from the Exemplar cohort and other community-based cultural organizations on the topic of place-based growth. Wing Luke staff will present its evolving model for community-based expansion in the context of its successful capital campaign and new facility development. In dialogue with others, objectives are to share lessons learned as well as benefit from peer exchange and to begin to document a place-based model while it is in progress. Exemplar investment helps this leading first voice museum to create alternative and sustainable growth models for the field of community-based cultural organizations in communities of color and in other communities. 

National Black Arts Festival (NBAF), to research and document partnership models nationally that will inform negotiations for a long-term organizational partnership between NBAF and the Woodruff Arts Center; and to document, in the form of a report or case study, the partnership development process between NBAF and the Woodruff, lessons learned, and final partnership agreement (assuming a positive outcome). A published field report will illuminate issues, challenges, and opportunities regarding partnerships between presenting organizations, presenting and producing organizations, culturally specific and mainstream institutions, and small and large organizations. Exemplar investment contributes to furthering understanding of forming fair, successful, and sustainable partnerships involving culturally specific organizations.

Sojourn Theatre, to assist with expenses for Michael Rohd and company members as they provide workshop training and a performance illuminating Sojourn’s community-based art methodology and Animating Democracy civic dialogue practices at the September 2006 Pacific Edge conference in Mackay, Australia—one of Australia’s largest conferences for community arts organizers.  Exemplar investment provides Sojourn Theatre with an international forum for sharing its art and community-based practices, as well as an opportunity to experience and learn about Australian community arts practices.

Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, to support expenses for one person from each organization to attend New WORLD Theater’s 2006 Intersection IV: Re/Generations conference, including the youth arts preconference. Exemplar investment supports cohort participation in a national conversation on cultural equity, emerging aesthetics, and activism through the arts.

The Exemplar Program provides $2.1 million in awards to 12 small to midsized arts and cultural organizations nationwide. The groups are being recognized for outstanding cultural work in their communities and in the field, based on their participation in the Animating Democracy program of Americans for the Arts and the Working Capital Fund. Supported by the Ford Foundation, the two-year Exemplar Program will enable the selected organizations to sustain and advance the extraordinary work for which they are being recognized. The Exemplar Program is being implemented in collaboration with LarsonAllen Public Service Group of Minneapolis, which also managed the Working Capital Fund.