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Your Next Challenge: Engage Business Employees Through the Arts in Your Community!
Thanks for joining us this week to learn more about how arts groups around the country are engaging business employees through the arts, and what the impact is with individuals, companies, and entire communities. This week, we’ve heard from a number of arts leaders, as well business employees who’ve both led and participated in efforts to bring the arts to the workplace, stimulate innovation, and deepen the daily practice of creativity in our lives.
Here’s a recap of what we’ve seen this week, and some of the best and most inspiring quotes:
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Rock for Art
Like several other communities that have been posting on the blog this week, we at the Regional Arts & Culture Council (Portland, Oregon) were looking for a fun way to celebrate creativity in business and cultivate employee engagement in the arts while raising more money for our 10th annual united arts fund campaign, known as Work for Art. Drawing from several great models including the CincySings event produced by ArtsWave, we decided to produce a Battle of the Bands on May 12 at the beautiful Crystal Ballroom in downtown Portland.
And what a battle it was! By the end of the night, we had raised about $75,000.
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They paint too, and other employee engagement stories from Golden Artist Colors
One would think that an artist paint company, especially one that is also employee owned, would have a full understanding of the value of the arts in our lives. Unfortunately, work within a manufacturing and distribution facility requires many sorts of skills and interests, and many don’t connect what they do for the creative arts at Golden Artist Colors. It is only by constant effort of sharing the creative process and developing opportunities for integrating with artists that we can begin to break down these barriers.
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America’s Hidden Public Health Crisis—Loneliness—Directly Impacts the Bottom Line. Here’s How
Most of us has had times in our life when we’ve felt lonely and isolated—and it’s a lousy feeling. But a growing body of research suggests that not only does loneliness make you miserable—it can kill you.
Recent research indicates that health risks associated with loneliness and social isolation are comparable to the dangers of smoking and obesity, increasing the likelihood of premature death by up to 30%. With the alarming increase in the rate of loneliness and isolation in our society, America is facing one of today’s most urgent—yet largely hidden—public health issues.
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Packaging Your Impact: How Con Edison Engage Its Employees through the ABC/NY’s Diversity in Arts
At first glance, the Arts and Business Council of New York’s (ABC/NY) Diversity in Arts Leadership (DIAL) internship program looks like your typical summer arts internship: undergraduates descend on the city and ABC/NY helps them get their foot in the door of one of NYCs coveted arts and culture sector organizations.
However, you might not guess that DIAL doubles as an arts-based platform to engage employees in the corporate sector. Huh? How?
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Cincy Sings: A magical way to create employee engagement, company pride, & love for the arts in
It has been three years since ArtsWave and I launched the city-wide company singing challenge CincySings in Cincinnati, and it is evident to our city that the unique choral competition has delivered on its mission to leverage the power of the arts to create employee engagement and excitement among the participating companies, and a renewed passion for the arts across the regional community. The sing-offs that lead up to CincySings have become a staple at some of the region’s largest businesses, including Procter & Gamble (P&G) and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where it all began.
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Managing Change and Maintaining Relevance: Business Volunteers for the Arts®
Engaging with the business community has always been the hallmark of the Arts + Business Council of Greater Philadelphia; we were established in 1981 and are an affiliate of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. As an extension, our core programs revolve around engaging the employees of businesses, harnessing their skills and talents for the nonprofit arts sector.
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Engaged…in What? Employee Engagement and Art-Based Training
Human creativity is the ultimate competitive advantage. And who better to learn from than artists who have dedicated themselves to creative expression? Yet bringing arts-learning into business, while a sexy idea, is not so simple. Businesses fear wasting time, resources, and lack of clearly beneficial results. Artists are concerned with protecting freedom to take risks and avoiding ‘dumbing down’ their work for business participants.
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Prescription for Progress: Art + Health
Creating equitable places and healthy people: that’s the mission of Louisville, Kentucky-based, artist-innovation company IDEAS xLab (IDEAS). Together with its education and training nonprofit for artists, Creative Agents of Change Foundation, IDEAS has created a framework that helps corporations and communities re-frame challenges and discover new opportunities by leveraging the dynamic capacity of artists to innovate.
IDEAS was launched in 2012 as an exhibition series designed to connect contemporary artists in Central Appalachian and Southern States with international artist networks. Today, IDEAS has morphed into a new framework for social entrepreneurship centered around artists as strategic human resources on two parallel fronts, civic and corporate innovation. The ultimate goal is creating “shared value” programs between the two.
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Whistle While You Work: Employee Engagement in the Arts
I work for Aetna, a healthcare company that builds healthy communities by promoting volunteerism, forming partnerships, and funding initiatives to improve the quality of life for its employees and customers. Here in Community Relations & Urban Marketing we strive to deepen our local market presence in the communities where we live, work, and play. Because of my love of singing, my interest naturally gravitates toward music and arts in the community. So I look for those opportunities where I can contribute my talents to support the company’s mission. What follows are several accounts of my personal experiences with music and the arts in the workplace, all guided and encouraged by the leadership at Aetna. As you’ll see, they were fun, memorable, and unforgettable.
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Paper ROCKS-Glatfelter Paper and the YorVoice Music Showcase
Founded as a United Arts Fund for York County Pennsylvania in 1999, the Cultural Alliance of York County's annual campaign supports eight partner agencies that are essential to our cultural core and funds the Creative Impact Award grants that bring arts and culture to life in York County.
In an effort to promote camaraderie/fellowship in the workplace for our local corporate contributors and deepen their involvement in the Cultural Alliance annual campaign, the Cultural Alliance created YorVoice in 2015. The event brought 10 local musical acts that varied in style and genre together for a friendly singing competition. Based on the model of the Cincinnati-based ArtsWave United Arts Fund choral competition event; “CincySings,” the Cultural Alliance recruited teams from corporate contributors, as well as local performers who wanted to participate and showcase their talents to a larger audience. We had a panel of celebrity judges rank the teams to award a first place Champion and Runner Up. We also created a People’s Choice category, which awarded the People’s Choice trophy to the team with the most votes, $1 per vote.
