Twenty-five years ago the Jazz Journalists Association began to identify and celebrate activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz as members of an “A Team,” soon renamed “Jazz Heroes.” Today the JJA announced its 2025 slate of these Heroes, 29 people across North America who put extraordinary efforts into sustaining and expanding jazz in its various forms.
So who...
In deference to St. Patrick’s Day, I’m reposting an entry from ten years ago. Titled “Yeats and the Economics of Creativity,” it originally ran on the Arts Endowment website on May 7, 2025.
Last month, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, I took part in a conference titled “Creative Minds: The Importance of the Creative Economy in...
When we talk about the arts and DIY, we commonly refer to craft activities or teaching oneself how to play a musical instrument. But what could be more DIY than free-form dancing? The adjective says it all. Free-form, freestyle, or free dance is a series of unstructured, personally directed movements in which creativity and improvisation are at a premium....
A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts re-affirms what we have learned from many other previous studies—namely, that arts education is closely linked with positive academic outcomes and social and emotional development.
The report appears in the wake of new data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), based on survey questions that researchers from the...
Call it entrumpy—a “gradual decline into disorder” (riffing on “entropy”), attributable to the unpredictability of our unprecedented President. Exploiting his
It’s been a year since I posted to the Artful Manager, when I reflected on the passing of my dear friend and colleague Diane Ragsdale. Since then, I’ve been focusing my public writing in the ArtsManaged initiative, an effort to create free, online, and evolving resources for Arts Management practitioners. You can subscribe to the weekly newsletter, browse the...
Art that is primarily skill-based -- graphic design, stock music or images, text and marketing, etc -- can be created faster and often better than human artists, and at lower cost. This is particularly true for compound art that requires specialized equipment and/or collaboration of specialists. As for art with high creative quotient, humans will not only be essential, but the automation of skills available to them will likely make them better. Maybe much better. And certainly more prolific.
On many days lately, the last places I've wanted to be are 2020 and 2021. I've been retreating to the 1950s, creating in my apartment a musical time capsule. That's thanks to Brooklynites who have been clearing out their closets while stuck at home, finding all manner of LP records and depositing them in second-hand stores, where I’ve stumbled...
The President & CEO of the Music Institute of Chicago shares about the evolving responsibility of preparing youth for society through music education. - Aaron Dworkin
Stuck like a plum in a pound cake for a decade at The Philadelphia Inquirer, I wondered where to eat. A colleague knew I needed a spot to eat that would make me feel like myself, so he took me — so I recall, maybe he recommended it — to Judy’s Cafe, on South 3rd and Bainbridge in, yes,...
In research terms, a convenience sample is a group of folks who feature in a study because — well, they happened to be there. And yet, under the right conditions — especially in program design and development — access to study subjects “in the right place at the right time” can prove extraordinarily helpful. Also, let’s face it: COVID-19...
I hope that officials of the Newark Museum of Art felt at least a twinge of seller’s remorse (if not a rush of shame) after reading the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s lavish praise of the painting that Linda Harrison, Newark’s director, had deemed expendable. - Lee Rosenbaum
