Theater
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…
New arts grantmaking ideas in action
Here’s the traditional path for artists to get funding: A public entity or private foundation puts out a grant application. Artists or arts organizations fill out the application with statements…
Making political art great again: t. Rutt takes the T.RUMP bus on the road
In the more light-hearted corners of the Internet, it has been jokingly suggested that Donald Trump's entire bizarre presidential campaign has really just been an elaborate piece of performance art.…
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…
MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana Videos
When MACLA/Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana was approached by Springboard for the Arts through the Creative Exchange Leading Organizations pilot to make the Spanish translation of the…
Dread Scott is a revolutionary artist whose work takes an unflinching look at Black lives in America
In 1857, Dred Scott, an enslaved Black man, unsuccessfully sued for his freedom on the grounds that he, along with his wife and daughters, had lived in free territories for four years. In the…
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…
Pillsbury House Theatre breaks the ice and serves the community
What does it mean to be a "community theatre"? What does it mean to be an arts organization "for the community"? When we talk about community, and about arts organizations with deep commitments to…
Little Fyodor Leads Charge to Keep Denver Weird
For three decades running, weirdo DJ and musician Little Fyodor and his bandmate and partner-in-abnormality, Babushka, have fought to keep Denver strange. There are few who are keeping Denver weirder…
Michael O'Bryan helps people to find sanctuary in art
Sanctuary is a place of refuge or safety. In urban neighborhoods all throughout America, sanctuary is a luxury almost beyond attainment. But Michael O'Bryan is working to bring that sense of…
ArtSpring's arts-based workshops for underserved communities promote self-esteem and understanding
Leslie Neal has been involved in the Miami dance community since 1981. In 1992, she held a tenured faculty position at Florida University as an Associate Professor of Dance with a focus on community…
Quantum Theatre experiments with the language and location of theatre
Pittsburgh's Quantum Theatre is an experimental, site-specific theatre company currently celebrating its 25th season. Founded by Artistic Director Karla Boos in 1990, the one hard-and-fast dictum…
San Jose's MACLA engages a multicultural community
In early 2016, San Jose’s Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) opened the exhibition “Custom Lives: Rasquache Renaissance.” The show exhibited colorful, cartoon-like sculptures of…
Carrie Morris Arts Production uses experimental puppetry to narrate people's stories
Carrie Morris Arts Production uses performing objects and experimental theatre to tell stories. In other words, puppetry. But this isn’t the soft, plushy children's puppetry of Sesame Street – think…
New Hazlett Theater offers a CSA for the performing arts
You're probably heard of community-supported agriculture, and if you're a regular Creative Exchange reader you have most likely also heard of community-supported art – you can even download our…
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…
Teatro Nahual is the Bay Area's first and only entirely Spanish-language theatre group
When Verónica Meza, founder and artistic director of Teatro Nahual, moved to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 2001, she couldn't find any options for Spanish language theatre anywhere. The same thing…
Building Equity in the Arts in Denver
Suzi Q. Smith was excited to bring her daughter to her first opera. A prominent Denver poet and teaching artist, Smith grew up listening to classical opera; she trained as an opera singer for two…
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…
Mad King Thomas are the most earnest postmodern dance group probably ever
There is a pretty hard line between the high brow and lowbrow in art and culture. Postmodernists like to toy with that line. Mad King Thomas likes to play jump rope with it. …
Teatro Visión celebrates Chicano culture and identities through theater
San Jose's Teatro Visión is a 31-year-old Chicano theater company. Co-founder and Artistic Director Elisa Marina Alvarado explains, "We use that term because the Chicano movement,…
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…
Swim Pony uses science-minded experimentation in artistic exploration
It might seem that science and the arts are at odds with each other – "left brain" vs. "right brain" thinking, facts and stats vs. thoughts and feelings, lab coats and calculators vs.…
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…
The Kelly Strayhorn Theater welcomes the community into their home
The Kelly Strayhorn Theater is a performing arts and cultural center in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood. Named for two of Pittsburgh’s most celebrated talents in the last…
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…
Theatre of the Oppressed NYC uses theatre to address social justice issues
This is the second in a series of artist profiles featuring the work of artists around social justice, policing, and activism. The first, on Detroit's Allied Media Conference, can be…