Special Features
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...
Microloans help artists build sustainable careers
Blayze Buseth was ready to launch his career as an artist. As a ceramicist, he had received several requests for commissions, particularly for his “Legacy Vessels,” or customized cremation urns....
The Disconnect Between Healthcare and Health Insurance
After three years helping artists get health insurance through Springboard for the Arts’ Artists’ Access to Healthcare program, I should be overjoyed that our country’s uninsured rate is at an...
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...
Renewable energy art helps us design a better future
The planet is getting warmer. Sea levels are rising. Climate change is being felt in disasters and shifting ecosystems around the world, in a way that’s often disturbing to individuals wondering how...
Friendly Streets: Bottom-up St. Paul project changes the way people look at their city
The following is excerpted from Jay Walljasper’s new book, “America’s Walking Renaissance,” which can be downloaded for free here. This excerpt was initially published by MinnPost. Laughter,...
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...
Low-power FM radio shares community voices to a hyperlocal audience
Ohm Radio, Credit Adam Chandler Photography, courtesy of Vikki Matsis On July 7, 2016, radio host Philip Gracia began a live Internet broadcast of WFNU in St. Paul, Minnesota, by saying, “We’re...
Lessons from RARE: Engaging Artists in Real Estate Development
As real estate developers increasingly look for responsive models, many are seeing the value of incorporating art into buildings and spaces. In one current case study, the Richfield Artist Resident...
FOUR SMALL THINGS TO DO TODAY TO CONNECT YOUR COMMUNITY TO HEALTHCARE
More than 10 years ago, Springboard for the Arts began working to connect our community to healthcare with an Artists’ Health Fair and a Voucher Program. These are worthwhile endeavors and we’ve...
Artists and Relationship Building
This post is part of a series in conjunction with TRG Arts on developing relationships with both new communities and existing stakeholders through artistic programming, marketing and fundraising,...
The Artist's Way: Making Denver a Better Place for Creatives
At 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning, the Mercury Cafe is filled with the sounds of Denver in decompression mode. The steam of the espresso maker, orders called to the kitchen, clinks of champagne...
Ready Go's mobile art projects capture attention and engage the community
How likely are you to sit and have a conversation with a stranger in a park? What if you could do so while playing a board game at a table under brightly colored flags, all of which popped up in your...
Transit-Oriented Art: Expanding Access in Motion
For a toolkit on how to engage artists as leaders around major disruptions like light rail construction, get the Irrigate toolkit on artist-led creative placemaking. Routine riders of public transit...
Arts with Purpose: Catalyzing Civic Engagement in Denver
Pay no mind to the woman in tattered layers with dirt caked onto the hands with which she holds a cardboard sign. Disregard the worn-out sleeping bags strewn across the sidewalks and trash-bag...
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...
Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council works through art to lead social change
At the Three Rivers Arts Festival in 2014, a volunteer choir took the stage with an original piece: “The Pittsburgh Complaint Song.” As the Complaints N’at Choir, they put the grievances of...
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...
Denver's Next Great Art Districts
Just north of downtown Denver, a petite but peppy Georgia Amar owns and operates her fine art gallery and studio in Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe. Her husband, Jack D. Pappalardo, is an...
The Macon Arts Alliance, Leading Through Transformation
This story is part of a series of features on the members of the Leading Organizations pilot program, featuring organizations across the country working with artists in new and innovative ways. Learn...
Metro Arts in Nashville - a leading organization and a learning organization
This story is part of a series of features on the members of the Leading Organizations pilot program, featuring organizations across the country working with artists in new and innovative ways. Learn...
Emerging Leaders of Color Connecting Communities with the Arts
Adrian Molina didn’t get into the arts to work in politics. The Denver-based poet, emcee and educator, who raps and records prolifically as Molina Speaks, is motivated by a creative forces...
Laura Zabel leads the way for Springboard's goals of system change
Saint Paul, Minnesota’s Springboard for the Arts has existed in some form for over 35 years, transforming as an organization several times over before its latest incarnation as Springboard....
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...
Overheard in the StoryBooth: Chicago's Lake FX Summit + Expo
It’s Thanksgiving this week, and StoryCorps has launched a new project and app, with The Great Thanksgiving Listen Project. Earlier this year, Creative Exchange partnered with StoryCorps at the Lake...
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. ...
Event Recap: IdeaLab
About 200 attendees gathered for a day of collaboration at IdeaLab, and a chance to connect and network, hone ideas and get inspired. “I’m particularly excited, looking around the room, I...
Healthy Artists Make More Art - Get Covered!
We’re past November 1st, which means it’s time to get health insurance coverage for 2016. Enrollment is open for insurance coverage across the country, whether you are...
New & Next: Arts and Community Converge at IdeaLab
The people who make a place matter. The artists, creative collaborators and community organizers who create local arts and culture can have a national impact by sharing their work, programs and...
Artists can be the "connective tissue" of a neighborhood -- but first they need a place to live
On any given day, Quest Skinner may be transforming her latest conversation with a neighbor into a vibrant painting. “My art is an expression of the people I meet,” explains...
