Literary

Let's Get To Work

Creative Exchange is the national program of Springboard for the Arts, based in Fergus Falls & Saint Paul, MN. This piece is adapted from the main Springboard website here. Springboard for the…


Special Sauce & Agency: Evaluating Work of Art

"I feel like I just got a million dollars worth of guidance!" That's what one artist commented after downloading the Work of Art toolkit. Since the Work of Art toolkit launched as a free resource in…


Fran Ilich believes another world is possible

Fran Ilich grew up in Tijuana next to the San Diego border. As a "border kid" in Mexico, Ilich has spent his life existing in a space somewhere in between – not quite Latin enough for Mexico,…


New toolkits from the Leading Organizations!

Creative Exchange is driven by a principle that more is more - the more stories we can tell, the more resources we can share, the more connections we can make, the more we can show how important art…


Find An Artist Toolkit

Artists are everywhere, and have enormous capacity to shape the world around us! This toolkit was created by Springboard for the Arts as a tool to help organizations in finding, commissioning and…


Trabajo de Arte: Aptitudes de Negocios para Artistas

Gracias por su interés en Trabajo de Arte: Aptitudes de Negocios para Artistas. Esto fue hecho por Springboard for the Arts con la ayuda del Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana y las…


2 Years of Creative Exchange!

It’s hard to believe, but Creative Exchange just turned 2! The platform was launched in 2014 in response to the question, “How do we support a movement around the power of local art and artists on a…


Yarrow Mamout Archaeology Project

The Yarrow Mamout Archaeology Project unearths the history of a prominent 1800s African Muslim

Yarrow Mamout was an African Muslim born in Guinea, West Africa in 1736, where he was thought to have been a member of the nomadic Fulani tribe. He was sold into slavery at the age of 16 and was…


Stephanie Pruitt

Stephanie Pruitt puts poems in vending machines and makes her art her business

Stephanie Pruitt loves finding ways to get poems in unexpected places. That's why she puts poems in vending machines and places those vending machines at various locations around Nashville. Pruitt is…


Denver Voice vendors connected with others who share the writing impulse at Write Denver.

Deepening Literary Lives: Homeless Writers Share Their Stories

Every Monday morning around 9 a.m., Denver VOICE vendors visit the nonprofit's Capitol Hill office to collect some of the 8,000 copies of the street paper that move across the city each month. From…


Macon Roving Listeners

Macon Roving Listeners shares voice through listening

There is an art to listening, and that is the art practiced by the Macon Roving Listeners. A common struggle experienced by neighborhoods in the midst of change – "gentrification," if you want to use…


Elementz

ArtsWave Cincinnati is the oldest and largest united arts fund in the country

Funding sources for many arts organizations tends to be a hodgepodge of foundation, government, corporate, and patron support, which makes ArtsWave Cincinnati remarkably unique – it is the Greater…


Ralph Henry Reese

City of Asylum/Pittsburgh offers writers in exile sanctuary alongside expansive creative placemaking

"Asylum" – A place offering protection and safety; a shelter.   “Silence is death. If you are silent you are dead, And if you speak you are dead, So speak and die.” –…


Alexandra Wright

YEPAW encourages youth to pursue lifestyles of excellence through the arts

Youth Excellence Performing Arts Workshop (YEPAW) got its first start when founder and artistic director Leslie Barnes had a conversation with a friend who claimed that the youth…


Devon Akmon

Arab American National Museum is the first and only museum of its kind

The metro Detroit area is an area rich with cultural institutions that celebrate the heritage, history, legacy, and continued contributions of artistic, cultural, and intellectual…


Chris Nylund and Jared Wright

Field Note Stenographers want you to watch less TV and more live music

When Chris Nylund and Jared Wright started Field Note Stenographers in Macon, they didn't do it with the intention of making big-time blog money or becoming Internet famous (anyone…


Maribel Alvarez

When the Place Is Already Made: Lessons from a Folklife Project

This is the fourth story about work coming from the PLACE (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) Initiative of the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Read Executive Director Roberto Bedoya’s…


Reading between the Thin Blue Lines with poetry

This is the fourth in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. Click on the links to read previous stories…


Sheila Womble

Arts for Learning teaches valuable life skills through paid arts internships

Miami's Arts for Learning (A4L), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing teaching and learning through the arts, launched nearly 15 years ago with a vision of connecting…


Finding Voice: How Art Empowers Civic Engagement in Refugee & Immigrant Youth

This is the first story about work coming from the PLACE (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) Initiative of the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Read Executive Director Roberto Bedoya’s introduction…


Morgan WIllis

Allied Media Conference incorporates all varieties of media to incite social change

This is the first in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. Look for more profiles in the coming weeks.  The Allied Media…


No One Can Do It Alone: How Working with "Disability" Enabled a New Artistic Ability and Approach

This is the first story about work coming from the PLACE (People, Land, Arts, Culture and Engagement) Initiative of the Tucson Pima Arts Council. Read Executive Director Roberto Bedoya’s introduction…


Little Free Library, Patricia Arroyo

Little Free Library has big ambitions for literacy & public art

If your neighborhood is home to a Little Free Library, you might be lulled into thinking that it’s been there forever — or for several decades, at least. The small sidewalk libraries’ “take a book,…


Lindsay Tucker So

Write Your Block relates poetry and place in Philadelphia

Philadelphia has a rich heritage of poetry reflected in a diversity of poets and a vibrant poetry culture that includes respected institutions like the Kelly Writers House at the University of…


Celeste Gainey

A gaffer finds her light in Pittsburgh

the gaffer  lamplighter chief lighting technician the DP’s go-to guy dispenser of gaffer’s tape brute arc myths day for night & the anti-auteur theory transposer of sun/shadow nuancer of mood…


Clemantine Wamariya

Recovering the Story: How Arts Contribute to Emergency Recovery and Resilience

How does storytelling help individuals and communities overcome disaster? East Coast Hurricane Sandy survivors became storytellers through Sandy Storyline, a participatory documentary that collects…


Marsha Music and David Philpot

Marsha Music is a writer, community organizer, and lifelong Detroiter

An interesting counter-story has emerged to the national cliché of Detroit-as-post-industrial-wasteland recently – one of a "new Detroit" rife with young, educated, well-off techies…


Satori Shakoor

How storytelling heals and strengthens communities

In April of 2014, Damian Woetzel and the Aspen Institute Arts Program convened a Strategy Group in Detroit. This convening brought together local and national experts: artists and leaders in arts,…


Laura Zabel

Welcome to Creative Exchange (again)

"I believe in the magic of storytelling, not only for teller but also the listener," says agrarian artist Nikiko Masumoto, who lives and works in California's Central Valley. "The possibility of…


Nikiko Masumoto

Nikiko Masumoto cultivates connections between the art of food and farming and stories of place

Nikiko Masumoto is a farmer, and also an artist. Contrary what people might assume about these two different aspects of her life, they are not at odds with each other. In fact, each one informs the…