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Speaker Handouts
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2003 Convention Overview Home - 2003 Convention Home
Bill Keens, Local Arts Agencies Field: Crisis & Opportunity
Alene Valkanas, Emerging Leaders Breakfast Roundtable
Richard Florida, Keynote Address by Richard Florida
Joan Eisenstodt, Creating Generational Synergy
Sally Zinno, Weathering the Storm of Financial Realities
Financial uncertainty is a given. Arts agencies and arts organizations can expect and plan for the inevitable challenges when sunny skies turn to violent storms. This session will discuss strategies such as taking a long term view with a collaborative vision and multi-year plans and budgets, asset building for long term health, and contingency and cutback planning. The recent experience of the Massachusetts Cultural Council will serve to illustrate strategies that work and those that might not when dealing with a sudden and dramatic reduction in funding. Participants should come prepared to discuss grantmaking approaches they have used to build the capacity of grantees to weather financial uncertainties.
Kathryn Lee, Changing Reality Inside Out: Creative Ways of Dealing with Stress
Changing Reality Inside Out: Creative Ways of Dealing with Stress began with an in-depth review of the most exciting, practical medical findings about stress. After defining the two major types of stress: acute and chronic, workshop attendees then learned the crucial differences. Acute stresses are generally unavoidable and, in the short run, cause predictable evolutionary responses. Chronic stress is an almost unique phenomenon in humans, caused by our "thinking" mind. It is actually the more destructive kind of stress. The activation of the hormone cortisol can wreak havoc on our bodies as well as our creativity over time. Workshop attendees also learned basic tools to deal with stress. The workshop continued with break-out groups to allow exposure to the real stresses group members face and to get feedback from other participants on how to work more effectively with these stressors. Examples such as budget cuts, staff cuts and other responses from individuals led to practical, doable suggestions of how to handle these stressors. If you missed the workshop, you'll not know the "lesson learned from a school of squid" for leaders, but one piece of take-home advice: everyone has the ability to deal with stress in the most basic way. Take a deep breath!
