LINC
Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) has awarded a $100,000 challenge grant to a partnership of Kansas City arts and business support organizations to begin new professional development programs for artists in the greater Kansas City metropolitan area.
The funding will be used to offer:
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Artist, INC, a series of in-depth entrepreneurial seminars that will reach more than 100 artists over the next two years, and
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KCArtistLink, which will enable all artists in the region to connect to a network of nonprofit resource organizations that can provide information about business-building and support programs.
The first offering of Artist, INC, an eight-week series of Monday night seminars for individual artists, will begin in May 2009. The program, developed through the UMKC Small Business and Technology Development Center (SBTDC), is designed to provide artists with small business skills to manage the business end of their art careers. Clear here for an application and more information.
“Artists, as sole proprietors, are not really different than other small business owners,” notes Diane Scott, Professional Development Program Manager at the SBTDC. “Artists are passionate about the art they create, but many need more knowledge and skills to market their art or manage the financial end of their work.” The program will provide groups of 25 multi-disciplinary artists with specific business training, peer-to-peer learning and mentoring from established area artists serving as program facilitators. The program will repeat in the fall of 2009 and three more times in 2010.
KCArtistLink will be launched in summer 2009. KCArtistLink is an online network connection tool using the U.S.SourceLink model, which links business development resources to the people that need them. KCArtistLink will create a community referral network linking area arts and small business support services to the artist community in the region. It will enable artists to easily find and connect with the resource organizations that can meet their particular professional needs.
LINC is a ten-year national initiative to improve conditions for artists by providing the support, technical assistance and tools to do so. The Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, in partnership with Charlotte Street Foundation, is the lead Kansas City participant in the Creative Communities program of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, funded by the Ford Foundation.
Background
Charlotte Street Foundation - in conjunction with the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City - actively sought and cultivated a relationship with LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity), a national organization that supports artists of all disciplines. LINC began as an initiative of the Ford Foundation, with key leadership funding coming also from the Allen Foundation for the Arts, Nathan Cummings Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was founded in response to findings from an important national study conducted by the Urban Institute. Investing in Creativity: A Study of the Support Structures for U.S. Artists (2003) identifies six distinct but inter-related domains that affect the artists’ lives and work: validation; demands and markets; material supports; training and professional development; community and networks; and information. See www.lincnet.net for more information.
A ten year national initiative that has been active to date in ten different locations, LINC recently invited four new areas to join its network of creative communities, including Kansas City. The goal of the Creative Communities Program is to create a national consortium of communities working together to make progressive change for artists. The program provides planning and implementation grants, technical assistance and a knowledge network. It also convenes these communities regularly, and disseminates lessons from their work. In each location, LINC is working with local partners to address priority issues identified by local research and leadership. The inclusion of Kansas City in this prestigious group (Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. - and the three other new communities South Carolina, Montana and the Native American Artists of the Northern Great Plains) will further our growing reputation as a burgeoning center for arts and culture in the Midwest.
In spring, 2007, Charlotte Street Foundation, in partnership with the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, received a $10,000 community planning grant from LINC. The planning grant is funding a period of research, analysis and diaogue required to identify key strategies aimed at making progressive changes for artists living in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This process has included broad outreach in the community to develop an inclusive database of artists of all disciplines, as well as a large “town hall” meeting with these artists to understand their needs. At the conclusion of the planning period in fall, 2008, the Arts Council and Charlotte Street successfully applied to LINC for $100,000 in implementation funding, to be matched by local sources, which will be used over the next two years for Artist INC and KCArtistLink. See www.linc.artskc.org for more info, to apply (if you are an artist) and to sign up for the database.
