Next AEA Advocacy Network Meeting

Mark your calendars:

Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
Arts Council of Sonoma County
404 Mendocino, Suite C

National Arts Advocacy Day

Americans for the Arts, in conjunction with the Congressional Arts Caucus and 83 national co-sponsors, celebrates Arts Advocacy Day 2009 Tuesday, March 31. More than 500 arts advocates from across the nation will meet with their representatives on Capitol Hill, calling on them to support arts-friendly legislation and policies.

A highlight of the day is a Congressional hearing entitled “The Arts = Jobs” hosted by Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior.

Be an Advocate!

Now is the time to contact your members of congress to express your support of the arts!

Our Next Steps - Your Thoughts?

We need to be realistic visionaries. To that end, here is a summary of what I took away from our meeting.

We need to ...

• Target our message to the specific audience for which it's intended.
  
• Seek out what is working, what has momentum, what might gain the attention of city officials, superintendents, etc. Ride with, rather then recreate.
  
• Set our sights on a large event, while working diligently and carefully towards that goal.

This is by no means a complete list. Add your thoughts! Soon we'll begin to narrow our attention to specific next steps.

What we're up against

Have you seen the experiment done with the violinist Joshua Bell performing in a Washington subway? We stated that we must "Model the Message."

Would you stop to listen? Did anyone stop?

Check it out -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

or you can see it on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

Creating the Curiosity ...

Thank you for a very inspiring first meeting on Wednesday. Just the encouragement I needed to venture into the world of blogging. This blog is a beta adventure from a novice, so your feedback is important. My hope is that we'll use this as a means for deepening the initial ideas generated at our first meeting.

How might that work? The only way to find out is by posting! Post comments, ideas, websites, inspirations ... anything you believe that would broaden the advocacy conversation.

If I'm able, I'll post the documents generated at our first meeting, so we can use those as a starting point.

Then let's see what happens ...