Tuesday, June 14, 2011

A Long-awaited Links and Resources update....

To my thousands of loyal, eager readers, I apologize for the rather long gap between this and my last post. It’s been a learning, perhaps humbling, experience on the consistency needed by bloggers (and any other writer) to hold themselves to consistently write and maintain a blog. I will hold myself accountable to more consistent posts, although as a fabulous Chicago summer approaches, it’ll be tough….

Rather than a long article, I wanted to pass on a list of interesting articles, information and resources that have come my way and that I would like to pass on.

The recently held One State Illinois Arts Conference did a great deed for those of us unfortunate to miss it: all the speaker presentations from the conference are now available to view online. Have only had a chance to view a couple of the videos (the Albany Park Theater Project is interesting), but looking at the bios of the speakers gives you a bit of an idea of what videos might pertain or interest you……Another interesting conference coming up is the Allied Media Conference, which aims to share tools and tactics for transforming communities through media-based organizing; it will take place June 23-26 in Detroit....... For those of you on facebook, please consider joining the Emerging Leaders Network of Chicago group, which regularly posts some great articles that are relevant to emerging artists and administrators, even job listings. They recently posted this great article about taking risks that, although placed in the context of museum leadership, can be applied to your career as an artist, gallery-owner, or community organizer.…..the University of Chicago is running a series of discussions on the future of the city; the one held recently was on the arts and the future of Chicago; a simple to read, yet comprehensive summary of the discussion is here; I love how it brought together (and clearly explained their connectedness) a diverse network of people- economists, policy analysts, and artists together- and discussed making accessible cultural assets/resources to all members of the community…….in a previous post I mentioned the National Museum of Mexican Arts’ Crescendo Cultural, a gathering of emerging Latino arts leaders that they will be hosting July 15-16. They recently released the list of people who will be gathering in the windy city; among the participants will be Chicago’s own Tanya Saracho. I urge you to view their impressive bios, consider contacting them, inviting them to your performance or opening, letting them know of events that will take place during their time here, or simply inviting them for dinner or a drink. I’m sure they would appreciate the welcoming, and would be a great way to expand your network. I will check in with the museum about any public mixers they might have that we can attend.

c/s