EVENTS
RALLY FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE ON MARCH 31, THURSDAY
The Rally was fantastic! Peaceful, with 2,000+ people on the lawn between 12-1 PM and 4,000 total all day. Great homemade signs, including for Arts. Lots of arts supporters came — old and new, and we signed up new names from all over NH.
The Rally for New Hampshire - March 31, 2011
Lots of press were there. See the rally slide show on WMUR (we are on the bottom left of picture 16), and New England Cable News.
We gave out informational handouts as well as about 100 stickers to wear, saying “The Arts Matter.”
After strong statement on the arts read by the MC, fiddler Patrick Ross musically closed the Rally.
Thank you all!
The Arts Advocacy Summit, January 4, 2011
Thank you to everyone who made it to the Arts Advocacy Summit on January 4th. For those who were unable to attend, please see the following Summary.
Summary:
The Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord hosted NHCFA’s Arts Advocacy Summit on January 4
NH Citizens for the Arts (NHCFA) convened its second Arts Advocacy Summit on January 4, 2011, at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord. Forty-five people attended. The primary goal of the Summit was to hone and practice arts advocacy skills so arts leaders and arts supporters will be prepared when asked to publically advocate.
NHCFA urges advocates to introduce themselves to their elected officials now, especially newly elected legislators, to get to know them and to discover their interests. When the time comes to advocate for a specific position on legislation, NHCFA will send out information.
After providing information on themselves (see data below), participants broke into groups in order to answer two questions, and then to practice conversations with an elected official.
What is the most effective argument that you have used to support funding for the arts?
Four arguments emerged the most frequently: 1) The arts can be an economic driver in the local community; 2) the arts strengthen community health and vitality; 3) arts education enriches youth and promotes citizenship; 4) the arts promote individual skills – creativity, imaginative thinking, personal enrichment.
What does government do best to support the arts?
The two most common answers to this question were: 1) government support leverages private dollars and multiplies the impact of public investment; 2) government funding is non-partisan and creates broad access to arts education and arts programming for all populations.
Next, participants were asked to move into groups by geographic region so that they could begin to network and identify activities and tools to use together. At the end of this break-out session, participants were asked to fill out a self-addressed postcard with a personal “Advocacy Plan” for the next several months.
Conclusions:
The networking and positive energy that emerged from the Summit was encouraging.
NHCFA will continue to gather data, send out emails and host meetings that strengthen the ability of arts organizations and arts supporters to network and more effectively advocate for arts funding and arts policy.
Anyone interested in getting more involved should be in contact us at NHCFA.
Who attended:
On arriving, participants were asked to use dots to answer questions posted on the wall. This gave us immediate baseline data on the interests and demographics of this core group.
Well-represented were the Greater Concord, Manchester, Monadnock and Seacoast areas. There was smaller representation from the Upper Valley, North Country and Nashua area.
• Two-thirds of participants were staff or board members of non-profit arts organizations. Arts educators, individual artists, and others made up the rest.
• There was equal interest in supporting arts education, performing arts, individual artists and “other.”
• Many participants in the room had experience as advocates, with 21 of 45 people reporting that they had organized a public forum in support of the arts and 21 reporting they had spoken at a forum.
• State and local funding of the arts was identified as equally important; not many identified federal funding as important to what they did.
• Availability to advocate: 22 participants indicated they had 1 hour/week to spend on advocacy. 8 had more time than this, 6 had less. 22 hours/week on advocacy is wonderful!
• 33 out of 39 respondents said that a one-on-one meeting was the most effective way to advocate on behalf of the arts.
• 37 out of 39 respondents said they saw private, not public, funding as having the greater potential to increase the amount of money to make a difference in an organization’s operation.
• Advocacy Tool kit: respondents said that in order to most effectively advocate for the arts, a broad set of resources was needed. Equal merit was given to statistics, talking points, lists of key decision-makers, and the support of other advocates. This information gave NHCFA valuable information on what to provide.
