Americans for the Arts

Tom Tresser

On Saturday, January 15, 2011, I started teaching “Got Creativity? Strategies & Tools for the Next Economy” at the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

I had twenty master’s degree students, almost evenly divided between those born in the United States and those from abroad (China, India, Saudi Arabia).

There are many compelling reasons for a business school to offer classes on creativity and innovation. We now live in what has been variously called the creative economy, the experience economy, and the age of creative industries.

It’s no secret that America makes more money and employs more people in the creative sectors than it does from making and moving stuff.

The total revenue of the U.S. copyright industries in 2007 was $1.5 TRILLION. That’s 1 point 5 followed by 12 zeros! In 2005 the U.S. copyright industries had foreign sales of about $110 billion. That dwarfed the foreign sales for the U.S. auto industry, which was about $70 billion.

Neil McKenzie

For years the arts have received the support of patrons in order to grow and prosper. Today the role of the patron is increasingly being replaced by support from the business community.

To many in the art world, this trend is a welcome sight in an era of strained sources of traditional funding.

Ironically, even while businesses are viewed as a source of arts funding these same businesses are faced with shrinking budgets. One of the challenges that businesses face is that they are being asked to support a multitude of organizations and worthy causes including the arts.

As the competition for corporate support increases, arts organizations must be able to prove that they provide measureable benefits. Businesses are in their comfort zone when they can quantify the outcomes or benefits associated with an expenditure or investment.

The problem is that many of the benefits associated with the arts are “soft” or intangible and thus difficult to measure -- this is a major challenge for both business and the arts as they seek to develop partnerships.

Kelly Lamb Pollock

At the end of August, when the staff at COCA (Center of Creative Arts) in St. Louis, MO, is typically enjoying a rare moment to breathe -- between the end of a busy summer of arts camps and before the dance, theatre. and visual arts students return for fall classes -- we were in high gear hosting an unlikely population of arts participants.

COCA’s new program, COCAbiz, was hosting its first Business Creativity Conference “Play @ Work,” which attracted the likes of Boeing engineers, architects from Cannon Design, and Nestlé Purina and Anheuser-Busch executives.

Accountants, marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, and business managers from St. Louis’ top companies listened to nationally regarded speakers on innovation and rubbed shoulders in arts-based learning sessions.

After more than twenty years of focusing almost exclusively on students with a penchant for dance, theatre, or the visual arts -- for arts’ sake -- we at COCA have come to understand that developing skills through the arts, using the arts as the vehicle to learn the lesson, instead of just as the lesson itself, is the key to our relevance, sustainability, and impact.

Michelle Mann

As the former Director of Corporate Social Responsibility at Adobe, employees often shared with me their passion for giving back. More than just helping at the food bank once in awhile, they sought to spend time in the nonprofit sector, to make a difference.

Recently, I’ve had an opportunity to do exactly that and I’d like to share with you my experiences and view of the arts from a corporate perspective.

For the past six months, I have been a loaned executive to 1st ACT Silicon Valley, a catalytic organization whose mission is to inspire leadership, participation, and investment at the intersection of art, creativity, and technology.

Adobe’s former CEO, Bruce Chizen, had been a founding board member of 1st ACT in 2007 and the Adobe Foundation has supported the organization’s efforts to increase the vibrancy of Downtown San Jose (Adobe's headquarters) and support the arts ecosystem.