We started the year with a deep breath -- and the generous support of the Miner Anderson Family Foundation -- and hired Clarisa Morales Roberts to serve as our first paid Executive Director.
Clare has been a force of nature: She's tightened up operations, expanded services, and refined our mission to promote civic and cultural participation through independently produced media, arts and culture.
Artists, journalists, media producers and culture workers need to be making, creating, communicating and sparking conversations. Indy Arts facilitates their work and increases their impacts through fiscal sponsorship, community-building and organizational development services. Below, we've outlined how we did this in 2009, and what our fiscally sponsored affiliates have achieved.
INDY ARTS 2009 MILESTONES
• More than $90,000 in regranted donations to our 17 fiscally sponsored affiliates, from individuals and foundations
• Lead producer, Journalism Innovations II, May 1, University of San Francisco (with Society of Prof. Journalists, Public Media Collaborative)
• D.I.Y. Workshops: "Group Therapy for Artists," May-June, 1254 Mission Community Space; "DIY Survival," Nov.-Dec., Mission Comics & Art
• The First Symposium for Independent Arts, at Berkeley's Brower Center, and the 10th Annual Expo for Independent Arts in Golden Gate Park
• Nuts-and-bolts support for fiscally sponsored affiliates in business development, grants and individual donors, permits and promotions
• Newsdesk.org receives major grant, hires veteran editor George Shirk to run News You Might Have Missed
2009 FISCAL SPONSORSHIP MILESTONES
• Our sponsorship program has grown to include 17 diverse, autonomous affiliates using media, arts and culture to promote dialogue among communities that aren't served by mass media or existing institutions
• Print Media Congrats #1! The San Francisco Public Press produced the front-page Bay Bridge article for The San Francisco Panorama, the gorgeous broadsheet newspaper published by novelist Dave Eggers
• Print Media Congrats #2! Hyphen Magazine: Asian America Unabridged earned finalist status in the invitation-only 2009 Challenge Fund for Journalism. Great!
• New Projects! We're honored to sponsor VoiceBox ("Public Radio's Eclectic New Show Devoted to the Art of Singing"), NonprofitMapping.org ("The First Interactive Map of Today's Changing Nonprofit Landscape"), Jazzheimer's ("Bringing the Joy of Music to People with Alzheimer's Disease") and more
• New and expanded programming from Oakland Speaks/East Side Stories ("Building Community, Making Meaning, Recording History"), The Bay Bridged (expanded "Make Rock Festival"), MaximumRocknRoll (relaunched Web site with lively new multimedia daily), Hologlyphics, Circus Bella, the SF Women's Film Festival and more
]]>We started the year with a deep breath -- and the generous support of the Miner Anderson Family Foundation -- and hired Clarisa Morales Roberts to serve as our first paid Executive Director.
Clare has been a force of nature: She's tightened up operations, expanded services, and refined our mission to promote civic and cultural participation through independently produced media, arts and culture.
Artists, journalists, media producers and culture workers need to be making, creating, communicating and sparking conversations. Indy Arts facilitates their work and increases their impacts through fiscal sponsorship, community-building and organizational development services. Below, we've outlined how we did this in 2009, and what our fiscally sponsored affiliates have achieved.
INDY ARTS 2009 MILESTONES
• More than $90,000 in regranted donations to our 17 fiscally sponsored affiliates, from individuals and foundations
• Lead producer, Journalism Innovations II, May 1, University of San Francisco (with Society of Prof. Journalists, Public Media Collaborative)
• D.I.Y. Workshops: "Group Therapy for Artists," May-June, 1254 Mission Community Space; "DIY Survival," Nov.-Dec., Mission Comics & Art
• The First Symposium for Independent Arts, at Berkeley's Brower Center, and the 10th Annual Expo for Independent Arts in Golden Gate Park
• Nuts-and-bolts support for fiscally sponsored affiliates in business development, grants and individual donors, permits and promotions
• Newsdesk.org receives major grant, hires veteran editor George Shirk to run News You Might Have Missed
2009 FISCAL SPONSORSHIP MILESTONES
• Our sponsorship program has grown to include 17 diverse, autonomous affiliates using media, arts and culture to promote dialogue among communities that aren't served by mass media or existing institutions
• Print Media Congrats #1! The San Francisco Public Press produced the front-page Bay Bridge article for The San Francisco Panorama, the gorgeous broadsheet newspaper published by novelist Dave Eggers
• Print Media Congrats #2! Hyphen Magazine: Asian America Unabridged earned finalist status in the invitation-only 2009 Challenge Fund for Journalism. Great!
• New Projects! We're honored to sponsor VoiceBox ("Public Radio's Eclectic New Show Devoted to the Art of Singing"), NonprofitMapping.org ("The First Interactive Map of Today's Changing Nonprofit Landscape"), Jazzheimer's ("Bringing the Joy of Music to People with Alzheimer's Disease") and more
• New and expanded programming from Oakland Speaks/East Side Stories ("Building Community, Making Meaning, Recording History"), The Bay Bridged (expanded "Make Rock Festival"), MaximumRocknRoll (relaunched Web site with lively new multimedia daily), Hologlyphics, Circus Bella, the SF Women's Film Festival and more
]]>* A Holiday ArtShare & Celebration!
Tuesday, December 8, 6-8 p.m.
Mission: Comics & Art, 3520-20th St. x Mission St., San Francisco
Walkups welcome, RSVPs requested: http://indyyearendparty.eventbrite.com/
Join Indy Arts and Shareable.net for a FREE holiday meetup! We'll have holiday snacks and drinks, "cultural products" to swap and share, and a World Cafe discussion about the vision, talent and skills it takes to create rich local culture.
Meet 'n' mingle, grab and add to the Gift Table, join the conversation, and be prepared SHARE, three different ways:
* ART 'n' MEDIA: Bring local music, art, publications, comix/'zines, fashion, found treasures, etc., all to share or swap.
* VISION & IDEAS: How can we help create thriving local culture? What does the Bay Area need? What can any of us offer?
* KNOWLEDGE: Got skills, smarts and hard-earned wisdom about making and living in a creative local culture? Us too!
RSVP today, and let us know what you'll bring to SHARE! http://indyyearendparty.eventbrite.com/
Questions? Call: 415-321-4903, or pop us an email.
Stay tuned for updates, and happy holidays from Indy Arts and Shareable.net!
The IndyArts DIY Survival is a series of workshops and social gatherings targeted to the grassroots arts community - organizations and individuals alike - with the goal of strengthening community, building capacity, and letting off some steam! As always, No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds!
TIME & DATE:
December 1st, 6-8pm
LOCATION:
IndyArts' Office
222 Sutter Street, Suite 600
Sutter @ Kearny, San Francisco
DESCRIPTION:
Year-End Fundraising Workshop
It's the 4th quarter -- is your fundraising program in scoring position? Get ready to make those last-minute asks and end the fiscal year in the black!
Join us for an workshop on incorporating message with method and learn how to put these fund development essentials into action:
- Outlining Strategies
- Writing a Winning Message
- Making Solicitations a Year-Round Endeavor
- Creating Your Network Lists
- Learning about Donor Cycles
ABOUT OUR PRESENTER:
Clarisa Morales Roberts is the Executive Director of Independent Arts & Media. She has extensive experience in fund development and leadership, working in the nonprofit sector since 2000. She specializes in Project and Organization Development and has worked as staff and as a consultant for many nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area. She is a graduate of Sonoma State University with a B.A. in Liberal Arts, and attended Graduate School at San Francisco State University where she studied Humanities, focusing on Community Narrative. Prior to her work in nonprofit, Clarisa served in the U.S. Army for 9 years where she received training in communications and media development.
The IndyArts DIY Survival is a series of workshops and social gatherings targeted to the grassroots arts community - organizations and individuals alike - with the goal of strengthening community, building capacity, and letting off some steam! As always, No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds!
TIME & DATE:
November 17th, 7-9pm
LOCATION:
Mission: Comics & Arts
3520 20th Street between Mission and Valencia
San Francisco
DESCRIPTION:
Small and Surviving Project Essentials - An Interactive Panel for Artists and Organizations
Build a culture for Bay Area Arts and keep your sanity at the same time! Join us for a conversation on Vision, Message, Community Building, and Fund Development - the essential building blocks for art projects.
Our esteemed panel of presenters will share their experiences and offer practical tips on how to Survive and Thrive when you're doing it DIY.
ABOUT OUR PRESENTERS:
Alan So is the director and founder of the San Francisco-based arts organization, ME'D1.ATE NETWORK, where he organizes and curates provocative exhibitions and events with a diverse array of local and international artists. He has been featured on PBS, SF Chronicle, SF Weekly, London's Resonance FM, amongst others, for his work with ME'D1.ATE. Most recently, Alan produced, curated and led the PR effort for Soundwave. The innovative sound, art and music series became a sensation with sold out shows, cementing it as a premier festival in the vibrant Bay Area art scene, now in its 4th season.
Scarlett Shepard is a filmmaker and community educator who founded the San Francisco Women's Film Festival on May 15th, 2004. While a student in San Francisco State University's cinema program, Shepard noticed the lack of credit given to women filmmakers in the history of cinema. After consulting with the SFSU cinema department and administration, Shepard embarked on a journey to create a platform that showcases, awards, and celebrates local, student and international women filmmakers. She teamed up with SFSU professors, the SFSU Women's Center of Associated Students, local award-winning filmmakers and a host of local sponsors. San Francisco State University's first Women's Film Festival was born in April 2005.
Rene Yung is an internationally exhibiting artist, thinker, designer and writer. Her cross-disciplinary works articulate the hidden and the overlooked by connecting community, history, and place, to address social and cultural issues in relation to the built environment. Her large-scale public projects engage community on multiple levels to catalyze social change, while creating highly aesthetic works of art that enrich community experience. A native of Hong Kong, Rene has a deep understanding of cross-cultural dynamics and broad experience in working with diverse global communities. She has exhibited at venues including TransCulture, part of the 46th Venice Biennale; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Texas; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. She has completed extensive public projects for organizations including the Seattle Office of Art and Cultural Affairs, the San Francisco Art Commission, and the Wing Luke Asian Museum, Seattle. A graduate of Stanford University, Rene is the recipient of grant awards from the Creative Work Fund, the Center for Cultural Innovation, Open Circle Foundation, and the California Council on the Humanities' California Story Fund. She is on the faculty of City College of San Francisco.
SPACE IS LIMITED - RSVP TODAY to save your seat!
Share on Facebook!
After a smashing inaugural panel last night our Winter DIY Workshop Series is in full swing.
Register Now for our upcoming DIY Workshops!
A series of workshops and social gatherings targeted to the grassroots arts community - organizations and individuals alike - with the goal of strengthening community, building capacity, and letting off some steam! As always, No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds!
TIME & DATE:
November 10th, 6-8pm
LOCATION:
IndyArts' New Office
222 Sutter Street, Suite 600
Sutter @ Kearny, San Francisco
DESCRIPTION:
Get Your $h*T Together! - A Hands on Action Accelerator for Artists
What are your NEXT STEPS?
This workshop aims to help you build a bridge between inspirational ideas and the world of your daily life, finances, and career. Audette will present some important tools and resources to help you harness all that messy fabulous potential and creativity into efficient vessels that will help those ideas find their way to action.
Topics Included in this Workshop:
* Clarifying & Prioritizing Goals
* Time & Project Management
* Creating Dynamic Action Plans.
Join us for hands-on instruction on how to build a Customized Action Blueprint that you can start to implement as soon as you get home!
Audette Sophia is a writer, multi-disciplinary performer and creative career consultant. She has a B.A. in Integrative Arts from Prescott College and is a certified coach from the Life Purpose Institute. She has over 11 years professional arts background including founding and directing two performance troupes, publishing an interactive poetry book, and teaching many expressive arts classes and workshops.
http://www.catalystarts.com/
SPACE IS LIMITED to 20 participants - RSVP TODAY to save your seat!
And share this on Facebook, you know you want to.
Christian Cunningham of The Bay Bridged, Therese Davis of Songbird Festival, and Francois Vigneault of SFZineFest (pinch-hitting for Scarlett of SF Women's Film Festival who got stuck in the bridge collapse madness) provided us all with a fantastic conversation on the in's and out's of DIY Festivals.
Give a listen to the extended discussion to hear how these incredible San Francisco festivals tackle promotions, budgets, booking, city restrictions, and oh so much more!
IndyArts Presents "The Best of the Fests" DIY Panel, Oct 27th, Mission:Comics & Arts
And take a gander at some pics taken by Maven Jessica Brown while you're at it.
Muchas gracias to Leef Smith of Mission: Comics & Arts for hosting last night's event! Be sure to stop by the place (3520 20th Street @ Mission) to get your fill of cool comix, rad art, and the sweetest new spot in town.
Stay tuned for more to come! And watch out for the Doughnut Festival, coming soon to a neighborhood near you...
]]>We at Independent Arts and Media invite you for a night of fun at Mission Comics & Art. From 6-8pm we will have a Post Expo Round Up including a casual Festival Panel comprised of three of our local Festival producers:
Scarlett Shepard, Founder and Director of the SF Women's Film Festival
Christian Cunningham, Co-Founder of The Bay Bridged, co-presenter of Rock Make Music & Art Street Festival
Therese Davis, Founder and Producer of the Songbird Festival
Our esteemed and kick-ass panelists will share their expertise and experience producing some of the spring and summer's best events - including the do's and don'ts of large scale event planning, DIY promotions, marketing, venue selection, and booking, and overall suggestions on how to make the most of festivals for planners and participants.
This panel is part of our DIY Workshop series, we would like your input on other workshop ideas through the year!
Learn and mingle with other arts community trailblazers on what makes for successful arts festivals. Enjoy beverages and light snacks while decompressing from the work day.
Tuesday, October 27th 6:00pm-8:00pm
Mission: Comics & Art
3520 20th St. (@ Mission)
Space is limited!
Please RSVP by Friday through Eventbrite
http://expo-roundup.eventbrite.com/
What: An all-day educational event for the Bay Area music community featuring affordable, cutting-edge panels devoted to the legal and business aspects of the music industry. For musicians, attorneys, songwriters, producers, djs and other music industry related professionals.
When: October 24, 2009, 9:30 am to 5:30 pm
Where: Ex'pression College for Digital Arts
6601 Shellmound Street, Emeryville, 94608
More information here. Check it out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3k9F8DIGU
Search Expo for Independent Arts on YouTube for the extended versions!
]]>For those who missed our incredible keynote speaker at this year's Symposium, or for those who would like to join the discussion again, you have another chance this Saturday, October 7th at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, where Arlene will be delivering the inaugural address in the OLLI@Berkeley Fall Lecture Series.
This event, sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UC Berkeley is from 12:00-1:30 pm, at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley. Free to UC students, staff, faculty and alumni, general admission is $10.
Reserve a place here:
http://olli.berkeley.edu/programs/Fall2009-lecture-series.html
Beast Bloggers Camp 2
Saturday, October 24th, 10-5pm also @ Tech Liminal in Oakland
Learn how to maximize your interwubs impact through everything from blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media tools with advice from the best of the best. These are fantastic opportunities for high-quality, low-cost, hands-on workshops from professionals who share IndyArts' ethos of providing great resources to the community regardless of budget constraints. No One Turned Away for Lack of Funds!
Find out more at the Public Media Collaborative website
or on their Facebook page.
In short, it is a distributed, Internet-era model for social service, which the article describes as more adaptable, packing more impact, and using resources more efficiently:
"The Networked Nonprofit" (PDF)
The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2009
First, highest honors and accolades go out to Jessica Brown, who is by far the most talented events planner I have ever worked with. Jessica has a method and energy that is both fun and reassuring. She is one of the coolest cookies I've ever seen, and I highly recommend her for planning any event of any size. Jessica knows all the best people, places and resources in San Francisco, and truly she is the greatness behind this year's event.
Next, a big shout out to Josh Wilson, Indy Arts Co-Founder and Expo Brain Trust. I had a sudden realization yesterday of what I had been entrusted with when I was hired to do this job. This event, now moving into it's eleventh year was created so artists and culture makers could get their message out, but also so they could come together, collaborate, and make even more interesting art and culture. The Expo for Independent Arts would never have made it this far without the vision, tenacity and persistence of Josh. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude.
Cristina Ibarra, whom many of you probably spoke to throughout this year's planning is a great new talent to Indy Arts. Not only did she single-handedly coordinate the Four Corners Mural project, she worked tirelessly on the Symposium as well. Then she went out and hustled many of the donations we received this year. She has a make it happen attitude and amazing energy that is essential for this kind of work. Even as the rest of us could do little more than sit and drink beer at the after-party, she was dancing to the great salsa tunes going in the background.
Melinda Adams is a long time Expo volunteer and also part of the Expo Brain Trust. This year Melinda did so much for us, from keeping us on track as to who we are as an organization for the Symposium, to helping to find us an Emcee for the Expo Performance Stage, to setting up tables in the morning, to being our stage manager to many, many other large and small contributions that she has made along the way. In a lot of ways, Melinda is the Queen of us All, so please be sure to bow down and kiss her ring when you see her.
Brianna Toth was instrumental in many many ways. Brianna helped with outreach and booking tables for the event, she secured many of the goodies we had at the hospitality table that kept us fed and caffeinated throughout the day, she worked many hours organizing our contacts, helped book speakers for the Symposium and was a great reminder of Indy Arts' DIY roots and ethos.
Susie McKinnon was our fill in the cracks volunteer. She is ever cherry, always efficient, and a true team player. Susie helped us with a lot of the admin work related to Expo, including database management. She did outreach, did some promotional writing for us, and even some graphic design. Then she came out just a day after her vacation to help us with the Symposium and then again to help run the Info Table at the Expo. We are looking into having her cloned.
Anita Linker is another new but faithful Indy Arts volunteer. Anita's forte is for the detail work that has to be done well and right. Anita acted as support for both the Expo and the Symposium and also worked both events. Her steadfast and devotion to arts is what led her to us, and we hope it will keep her with us for the next Expo as well.
Special thanks go out to our Emcees and all of our "day of" volunteers who helped with set up, moving tables, moving vehicles, moving everything. You were the backbone of the event and we could not have done it without you!!! Please do continue to wear your I (heart) Indy Arts T-Shirts with Pride!
And finally, Thank You to all of our Exhibitors and Performers for creating an exciting and interesting pastiche of arts and culture for the day. At the Info Table we got many, many compliments about how great and interesting the exhibitors were. And for the performers, I personally talked to one guy at the end who came to get a T-shirt who said he was just passing through the park in the morning, saw something going on, on the stage and then stayed all day. He said he just couldn't bring himself to leave because he wanted to see what would be on next.
Thank you so much to everyone involved, everyone who helped, everyone who attended.
You made Expo amazing!
Very best,
Clarisa Morales Roberts
Executive Director
aka
Indy Arts Boss Lady