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Arts Embedded in Corporate DNA at Goldman Properties
This piece by Laura Bruney of the Arts & Business Council of Miami was originally published on their blog, www.artsbizmiami.org/ArtsBizBlog.
When Jessica Goldman-Srebnick moved to Miami 18 years ago to work with her father, the iconic Tony Goldman, she felt like a fish out of water. The whole city was quickly becoming a serious place for business and she found her niche, fell in love with South Florida and put down roots. Since becoming CEO in 2012, this innovator and change-maker has put her own stamp on Goldman Properties with her unique vision and creative flair. The company is firmly embedded in the fabric of Miami-Dade with the arts playing a leading role in many of their projects and investments. I sat down to talk with Ms. Goldman-Srebnick, in her sunny South Beach office, about her vision for Goldman Properties and how the arts are embedded in their corporate DNA.
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3 of My Top 5 Americans for the Arts Lists
One.
The 5 best questions I heard at the meeting last month...
1. Can a vibrant community respond to contemporary issues without losing their history?
2. Can one “codify” artist’s generosity?
3. Does all access in a community mean a removal of barriers as well as providing opportunities for advancement?
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My life’s not busy, it’s full. Except today.
I first met Jessica Wilt 5 years ago. She and I were both new to Americans for the Arts...I was a new staff member and liaison to the arts education advisory council, and Jessica was a newly minted council member.
Jessica immediately took a leadership role within the council, helping us craft a strategic plan for arts education at Americans for the Arts. Her leadership in arts education in New York City gave her plenty of expertise in arts education planning. Jessica was a tap dancer and teaching artist. She worked in the education departments at Dance Theater of Harlem and Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. She served on the Leadership Committee of the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable and was a school board member for VOICE charter school.
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Americans for the Arts Holds Congressional Briefing on Veterans and Creative Arts Therapies
“How many people here have served in the military?” Two people in the briefing room raised their hands. Brigadier General (Ret) Nolen Bivens scanned the room of Congressional staffers and tried another question. “How many of you know a Veteran?” The room filled with raised hands. “That’s why we’re here,” he said.
Each year on Veterans Day we reflect on the past and present service of members of the armed forces. With service members returning from combat in waves, and a large percentage living within the civilian community, chances are, you know someone with military affiliation. Along with those taking the time to thank family members, neighbors, or coworkers for their service, there are numerous nonprofits, businesses, and organizations banding together to create program and outreach efforts to support the military community.
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Through the Power of their Creativity, Veterans Continue to Serve
During a recent trip to Denver to join in presenting a national award for state arts leadership to Governor Hickenlooper, Deborah Jordy, Executive Director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, approached me. "There is someone I'd really like you to meet." Curtis Bean was his name.
A remarkable community activist, an entrepreneur and an artist, Curtis is doing transformational work through the arts. He is also a Veteran. Straight out of high school and over the course of five years and two tours in Iraq, he completed his military service as an Army sniper.
Like many others, Curtis returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He planned on being a fireman, but anger and nightmares were interfering with his life. His girlfriend, an art student, suggested he try painting when counseling wasn't enough, and that's when something clicked. Healing started to happen -- and a new doorway was opened.
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Resilient Roads and Community Visions
In 1995, as you surely know, Oklahoma City was the site of a bombing. A man drove a truck up one of the streets in downtown, pulled into a parking lot, went into a church and prayed, left, drove another block and parked in front of a federal building. Then he got out and blew the truck up, killing over 140 people including a bunch of children who were in a daycare in the building.
I got to see the memorial that was built on the site of the bombing. That road is now a glassy slip of water bounded on each end by gates. Where the building was, there are now ornamental chairs—smaller for children, larger for adults—to commemorate each life lost. Across the street, a gigantic, swooning tree that survived the blast stands guard. And throughout the city, at all of the street intersections that became makeshift helipads when responders rushed to the scene, there are deep red and tan bricks laid in resonating circles that pulsate out. The tragedy and the resilience of the place have literally been embedded in the roads, and the vision and perseverance of the people has been memorialized through art.
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The Importance of the Arts in our Communities: Robert L. Lynch and Laura Zabel
October means something very important to the arts world and to communities throughout the United States -- National Arts and Humanities Month, now in its 30th year. Citizens of Minnesota have celebrated through numerous events that proudly showcase the state as an eclectic and dynamic artistic community, rich in cultural heritage.
It is fitting, then, that our capital city be the starting point for a nationwide dialogue exploring the future of local arts in America and the ways that community members can shape that future.
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Partnership and Shared Power in Evaluation
In this Blog Salon’s first post, Maurine Knighton opens with a quote from William Bruce Cameron, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” The second half of that quote – “not everything that counts can be counted” – speaks directly to why the work of the Evaluation Lab is so timely and essential to the advancement of cultural equity in the arts. Artists and cultural workers who are deeply embedding social justice in their work are at the margins of our sector in funding and their work is made invisible by the majority of established institutions. Additionally, the work they are doing is rarely summed up by the standard metrics that funders require –– statistics culled from box office receipts and demographic surveys. Measuring change is an admirable task that will be innovated from the ground, not the air.
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What I Learned at the Learning Lab: a Few Thoughts on Art, Equity, and Social Justice
I want to live in a world where there’s room for both studio artists and community artists.
I really want to live in a world where artists have the freedom to move back and forth between those two perspectives and – especially – to allow those two perspectives to inform one another.
I believe in art for justice’s sake, in art for learning’s sake, in art for discovery’s sake, in art for empowerment’s sake. I’d like to believe that when we say “art for art’s sake” we could mean any or all of that.
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Attracting Skills-Based Arts Volunteers in the Age of Options
Last year during Pro Bono Week, Arizona Citizens for the Arts held a series of pro bono orientations with three goals for our Business Volunteers for the Arts program, which we relaunched in 2013:
a) increase visibility of existing pro bono service activity;
b) increase understanding of pro bono needs in the community; and
c) increase pro bono service being provided in the high need areas for nonprofits.
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Cooking up Frameworks - Inviting You to the Evaluation Test Kitchen
At the October Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) conference, artist Rosten Woo described the Vendor Power! project, a poster/brochure initiated by the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and designed by artist Candy Chang to make comprehensible New York City’s most commonly violated street vending rules which are buried in hundreds of pages of impenetrable bureaucratese. For thousands of vendors whose first language is not English, the Vendor Power! poster became an essential tool, directly helping them to understand their rights, avoid fines, and know how to respond when approached by police. Woo reported with satisfaction that, following CUP’s distribution of 10,000 posters, the Dept. of Consumer Affairs seized the poster’s power to address a longstanding institutional problem and printed another 10,000. Here the system took action to change a problematic practice. If only evidence of change was always so clear!
