Mass Cultural Council invests $2.2M in Creative Youth

Last week, the Mass Cultural Council released a spending plan for the new fiscal year that will invest more than $2 million in Creative Youth Development and Education through YouthReach, SerHacer, STARS Residencies, Big Yellow School Bus, and Poetry Out Loud.

The Council also unveiled a new strategic plan and vision for unleashing the power of culture across the Commonwealth. 

Mass Cultural Council invests $2.2M in Creative Youth

Senate Budget Plan Boosts Cultural Funding & Supports New Public Art Measure

View this email in your browser State Senate Budget Plan Boosts Cultural Funding & Supports New Public Art Measure (Boston, MA) - The Massachusetts Senate demonstrated strong support for the arts, humanities, and sciences in the Fiscal 2018 budget plan it approved last week, boosting cultural funding by 18 percent and approving a new program to support public art. Those proposals now go before a House-Senate conference committee charged with reconciling the two chambers' approaches to the budget for the new fiscal year that begins July 1. The House and Senate then must approve a final budget plan before sending it back to the Governor, who can sign it, veto it, or veto select line items. Over the next several weeks the Mass Cultural Council and its advocacy partners—MASSCreative, Mass Humanities, Mass Artists Leaders Coalition, and others—will urge members of that conference committee to adopt the Senate plan so the benefits of public support for culture can be shared across more communities. "The Senate showed real leadership at a time of continuing pressure on state finances," said Anita Walker, Mass Cultural Council Executive Director. "They heard from advocates statewide that state support for culture is not a subsidy—it is a down payment on our future prosperity as a Commonwealth." The final Senate budget calls for $16.5 million to support the arts, humanities, and sciences through the Mass Cultural Council. That would represent an increase of $2.5 million, or 18 percent. By contrast, the House would allocate $12 million for the arts and culture, a cut of roughly 13 percent, for next year. Current state arts funding via Mass Cultural Council is $14 million. The budget plan also included language sponsored by Senator Eric Lesser of East Longmeadow to establish the Massachusetts Public Art Program (MPAP), which would set aside funds for the creation and preservation of public art on Commonwealth-owned properties. MASSCreative and its advocates campaigned in support of the measure. "The Senate budget offers a real chance to further fuel our creative economy," said Walker. "We will put those additional dollars to work in ways that drive cultural tourism, employment, and community vitality across the Commonwealth." Walker urged the cultural community to thank their Senators for their show of support, and ask their Representatives to support the arts and culture provisions in the Senate budget. Arts and cultural leaders can go to our Advocacy Action Center for additional background on the process and information for making the case to lawmakers. About the Mass Cultural Council The Mass Cultural Council is a state agency supporting the arts, sciences, and humanities, to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts and its communities. It pursues its mission through a combination of grants, services, and advocacy for nonprofit cultural organizations, schools, communities, and artists. The agency's total budget for this fiscal year is $16.1 million, which includes a $14 million state appropriation and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other sources. The Council also runs the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund in partnership with MassDevelopment. Copyright © 2017, All rights reserved. This e-mail was sent from Massachusetts Cultural Council Our mailing address is: Massachusetts Cultural Council • 10 St. James Ave., 3rd floor • Boston, MA 02116 • 617-858-2700

Creative Youth News - March 2017

Creative Youth News View this email in your browser Act Now to Support Arts Education The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) released its draft Massachusetts Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Plan on what determines a successful school in the Commonwealth. Access and participation in arts education for grades K-12 is squarely in the plan as a strategy to broaden the curriculum and improve learning for every Massachusetts child. Read the highlights of the plan. DESE is welcoming public comments until March 9, before the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education votes to approve the plan. Join us in sending an email of support to state education officials for including the arts in the plan. The approved plan will go to the U.S. Department of Education on April 3. Read Mass Cultural Council Executive Director Anita Walker's letter in support of arts education. You can also urge your state Representative and Senator to sign onto a Dear Colleague Letter led by State Senators Sonia Chang-Díaz of Boston, Eric Lesser of Longmeadow, and Adam Hinds of Pittsfield, to keep arts education in the new state plan. Governor Declares March as Youth Arts Month Springfield Sci-Tech High School Band performing at the 2017 Commonwealth Awards. It's Youth Arts Month, time to celebrate the arts' central role in a complete education for our young people in school and beyond! Check out the Governor's proclamation, and the Mass Cultural Council's FY18 budget request to inspire creative minds, and help us advocate for more arts for more kids in Massachusetts schools and communities. Hear What Your Colleagues Are Up To Check out the latest conversations with arts and cultural leaders on Creative Minds Out Loud, MCC's podcast. Priscilla Kane Hellweg, Executive Director of Enchanted Circle Theater, talks about how Enchanted Circle has become the regional leader in arts integration, working district-wide in public schools throughout Western Massachusetts, and collaborating with over 60 community partner organizations, developing work that bridges arts, education and human services.  Dr. Peggy Codding, Professor of Music in Music Therapy at the Berklee College of Music, says our brains allow us to compensate for the needs our brains have. She describes the ability of the brain to retrain neurons through music therapy, helping people with profound functional disabilities to express themselves. Creative Learning through STARS Residencies In his famous TED talk on creativity in education, education expert Sir Ken Robinson asked why dance is not taught in schools every day. 'Creativity,' he said, 'is as important in education as literacy,' and he cited dance as a vital form of physical creativity. Anna Hendricks, founder of Great Falls Creative Movement in Turner's Falls, puts this important insight into practice for her students. Through the support of a STARS Residency grant, Hendricks conducted a week-long residency at The Village School in Royalston, MA, that demonstrated the value of dance for children, in classes from preschool to 6th grade. Learn more.  STARS Residencies funds creative learning with cultural partners in the arts, sciences, and humanities in schools to achieve important student learning goals. Through a STARS residency, an elementary school might host a scientist to infuse a fifth grade unit on the local environment with creative learning with an environmental scientist. Or, a high school dance program might invite a professional choreographer to lead a series of masterclasses for the students to help them extend their learning. Seen & Heard Blog: Gustavo Dudamel Lectures at Harvard University Gustavo Dudamel Open Rehearsal with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. In November, as part of a series of Lectures at Harvard University called "the Creative Class", students from both the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, and the Longy Sistema Side-by-Side orchestra had the opportunity to work with the artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel. In a sit-down conversation with LA Phil CEO Deborah Borda, Dudamel spoke at length of his experience as young Venezuelan musician in El Sistema (Venezuela's Youth Orchestras and Choirs Program), and his commitment to support music education as an opportunity to develop creative potential, and develop the critical learning and life skills young people need to become active contributors to their communities. Read more.  About the MCC The MCC is a state agency supporting the arts, sciences, and humanities, to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts and its communities. It pursues its mission through a combination of grants, services, and advocacy for nonprofit cultural organizations, schools, communities, and artists. The MCC's Creative Youth Staff Diane Daily, Program Manager (STARS Residencies, Creative Minds Out of School, Poetry Out Loud, Big Yellow School Bus) Rodrigo Guerrero, Program Manager (SerHacer) Erik Holmgren, Program Manager (YouthReach) Copyright © 2017, All rights reserved. This e-mail was sent from Massachusetts Cultural Council Our mailing address is: Massachusetts Cultural Council • 10 St. James Ave., 3rd floor • Boston, MA 02116 • 617-858-2700

Celebrating John F. Kennedy & The Arts

View this email in your browser Celebrating the Birth of John F. Kennedy and his Contributions to Our Nation's Arts and Culture This is the second in a series of columns recognizing President John F. Kennedy's contribution to the arts. It is part of a partnership between the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation celebrating the centennial of Kennedy's birth. Robert Lynch, President & CEO of Americans for the Arts, is First Recipient of JFK Commonwealth Award Together with the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, it is my honor to announce that Robert Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts, is the first recipient of the JFK Commonwealth Award. A Massachusetts native, Lynch is one of the nation's leading arts advocates who has recently been on the front lines of efforts to protect the National Endowment for the Arts and other federal cultural agencies amid rapidly shifting political conditions.  A Cultural Legacy at Risk? The storm clouds are gathering. Will they bring forth a nourishing spring rain that wakes up and replenishes? Or ferocious winds that flatten decades of sturdy growth? The winds of Washington carry ominous news. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) may be on the chopping block, this as we culminate a celebration of 50 years since the endowments' inception. The NEA and NEH were the inspiration of President John F. Kennedy. He served just over 1,000 days before he was assassinated, leaving their enactment into law to President Lyndon Johnson and the US Congress. Kennedy spoke and wrote passionately about the role of the arts and humanities in a democratic society. In an article for Look magazine in December 1962, Kennedy writes of the arts: "far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, it is very close to the center of a nation's purpose—and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization." "Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free society. We know that a totalitarian society can promote the arts in its own way—that it can arrange for splendid productions of opera and ballet, as it can arrange for the restoration of ancient and historic buildings. But art means more than the resuscitation of the past: it means the free and unconfined search for new ways of expressing the experience of the present and the vision of the future." Even as Kennedy clearly embraced the compelling role of the arts and humanities in our nation, he seems uncertain of the role of the federal government in their support. First he writes, "A nation's government can expect to play only an indirect and marginal role in the arts. Government's essential job—the organization and administration of great affairs—is too gross and unwieldy for the management of individual genius." And later in the same article, "…Washington, it has been remarked, is a single-industry town, and that industry is politics and statecraft. Such an environment, some have said, provides barren soil for the arts." President Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy greet composer Igor Stravinksy and his wife Vera de Bosset Stravinsky as they arrive for a White House dinner party, January 1962. Photograph by Abbie Rowe, courtesy of the JFK Library Foundation. But this does not mean that government should not concern itself with the arts and humanities: "I would hope in the years ahead, as our cultural life develops and takes on new forms, the Federal Government would be prepared to play its proper role in encouraging cultural activities throughout the nation." "To further the appreciation of culture among all the people, to increase respect for the creative individual, to widen participation by all the processes and fulfillment's of art—this is one of the fascinating challenges of these days." Less than two years after Kennedy was assassinated, President Johnson signed into law the Arts and Humanities Bill, creating the endowments. In the past 50 years, there have been a number of attempts to defund the NEA and the NEH. They are often triggered by a particular piece of art that is objectionable to a legislator. The root of the objection is typically complex societal change that is reflected in the art (more on that in an upcoming column). But the language of the law that brought us the endowments speaks not so much to the funding of a particular piece of art, but rather to the freedom to make art and be creative.   Kennedy wrote, "When the creative impulse cannot flourish freely, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, the society severs the root of art." This notion is clearly reflected in the NEA enabling legislation, calling on the endowment to "help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent." Public funding of the arts and humanities is right and essential in a democratic society. Freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry are the bedrock of democracy. Artists, writers, and historians produce a priceless record of our civilization. And the public dollar ensures that that record belongs to and is co-authored by the citizens of this nation. This is not a time to shutter the windows and head for the basement. It is a perfect opportunity to harness the wind and reassert the foundational value of America's unique public/private partnership in our cultural life. As Kennedy put it in remarks at Amherst College in 1963, "Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much."   Sincerely, Anita Walker Executive Director Read Column I. About the MCC The MCC is a state agency supporting the arts, sciences, and humanities, to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts and its communities. It pursues its mission through a combination of grants, services, and advocacy for nonprofit cultural organizations, schools, communities, and artists. The MCC also runs the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund in partnership with MassDevelopment. Copyright © 2017, All rights reserved. This e-mail was sent from Massachusetts Cultural Council Our mailing address is: Massachusetts Cultural Council • 10 St. James Ave., 3rd floor • Boston, MA 02116 • 617-858-2700