ICASC is pleased to support the launch of Art & the Public Purpose: A New Framework.  Read on for a message from Arlene Goldbard, promoting this exciting initiative: 

Dear Friends,

I am delighted to share the exciting news that Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework has launched! Please visit the Website today to endorse the Framework yourself, let others know about it, share your stories of culture and community, and help build a national force for a bold new investment in culture, and a policy recognizing that culture holds the key to a future we can believe in.

We have an amazing group of founding endorsers, all of whom join me in urging you to add your own name, seek organizational endorsements, allow the Framework to influence your own work, to educate elected and appointed officials and to change our collective understanding of the need to invest in culture.

In addition to adding your own name to the Framework, please spread the word:post to Facebook, MySpace and other social networking sites. (And urge people to become Facebook fans of the Framework ; they can find it under "Art & The Public Purpose: A New Framework").

The methods are up to you; what's important is to do all you can to build support for these powerful ideas, including:
Blog about it.
Send out an e-blast.
Use Twitter to spread the word.
Let your press contacts know that the Framework has launched.

Since May, it has been my pleasure to work with a group of artists and organizers who first came together as part of a White House Briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery. After our briefing with administration officials, we held working group sessions about what to do next. I convened a working group on cultural policy. Group members gave ourselves a challenge we have been working on ever since: to use plain language to convey the necessity of a major new investment in art’s public purpose. This Framework is the result.

People who understand the power of culture and community have unlimited opportunities to be defensive these days: hiding out, running away, hoping those who attack us will tire of it and relent, fighting fire with fire. What all these responses have in common is allowing others to set the agenda. For me, this Framework is about working with comparable energy to bring about what we desire.

What if we dedicated ourselves to putting artists to work for art’s public purpose, mending our social fabric, promoting freedom of expression and a vibrant, inclusive national dialogue, and revitalizing both education and commerce with the creativity that has always been the wellspring of our energy and success? What if we dedicated ourselves to cultivating the imagination and empathy essential to national recovery and sustainable community?

Together, we have the power to craft the narrative that defines this moment, to choose whether those who look back on this time will see us running scared or standing for all that we know is true. I urge us all to act now as though we believe that art is the secret of survival—which it is—and that our own creative actions are precisely what’s needed to save and strengthen democracy.

Many thanks to all who helped make this possible, and especially to our friends at SPARC who built the Website. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions: info@newculturalpolicy.org.

all best,

Arlene Goldbard