First Spring
In April, I started working at Springboard for the Arts to create the new Development Consulting Service for small arts organizations.  I’m so glad I did!  Springboard has totally renewed my passion for creativity, community and empowerment.  The world is what we make of it and few people are better at illuminating, moving, provoking and inspiring us than artists. 

Just this week I met with a media artist who highlights the successes and accomplishments of the entire arts community, an elder artist and poet from Somalia who wants to unite youth through music, a young rock music musician who wants to promote sustainability, a leader in the dance community who wants to preserve an archive of two decades of African American dance in Minnesota and the director of one of the country’s best community-based arts organizations.  These people and projects reminded me of a few things:

1)    We are so lucky to live here.  The massive numbers of individual artists, the bustling nonprofit arts community, the dedicated arts funders, philanthropists, audiences and thriving professional creative sector are an embarrassment of riches.  Each week there is something or someone who inspires us.

2)    We need to be creative and smart.  Especially in this economic climate, sharing resources, brushing up our business skills, thinking strategically about how the financial and personal health of one affects the health of all is even more important. This year will be remembered for its challenges, but also for how we all learned to stretch, to do more with less. To slow down, think hard and move forward with intention.

3)    We have everything we need.  Whether its resources, people or ideas, I’m a firm believer that there is plenty to go around once we get out of the way. Sometimes in letting go of ideas about how things were or should be, that the real energy appears. Artists are masters at creative problem solving, making something of nothing, moving people, ideas and energy around until the magic happens.

Springboard’s reason for being is to cultivate an environment for more magic to happen – in your creative work, in the wide-sweeping creative community.  And that, is a very good reason to come to work in the morning!

- Betsy

Labels: arts fundraising

# posted by Betsy @ 10:38 AM