I am so excited that my first “sanctuary” project with the Interactivity Foundation is going to the printers. The Future of the Arts & Society guide for public discussion is also available as a FREE download.
It was an honor and privilege to work with a diverse group of people–sculptors and poets, curators and film scholars, rapper, playwright/actor, a waitress, graduate student, economist, an attorney–to generate these possibilities about the arts. We spent many months talking about the public decisions that we will have to make as the role of art in our communities continues to evolve. We considered basic questions such as, what is art for anyway? (Please see the illustration above, for some of the ideas we batted around, rendered by the artist Calida Rawles.) We spent a lot of time talking about how financial support for the arts can and must change when it is harder and harder to control the flow of ideas and make a living on creative work. And of course, we looked at arts education, cultural diplomacy and censorship.
I hope this this discussion guide will be a useful tool for schools and community groups who are interested in having discussions about the arts and society from a variety of perspectives. The first discussion series that IF is organizing in West Palm Beach, Florida on August 21. But we are happy to give support to other organizations who may be interested in using the report. Please email [email protected] .